Jim Ramsay

Last updated: October 14, 2024

Discerning a Call to Missions

Jim Ramsay began to develop a love of culture and language while he was in college. He spent one semester studying abroad and began discovering the wider world in his emerging years. Additionally, he was growing in his faith at the time. Growing up in a Christian family, he had an understanding of faith as something that supplements everything one does. This combination of love of culture and faith came to an inflection point at a family reunion where Jim overheard some of his aunts’ and uncles’ stories about being missionaries and cross-cultural workers. “When I heard their stories, I thought, wow, I can take this love of culture and language and combine that with what had been a deepening faith during my college years, and it’s this thing called missions,” Jim says.

Jim became intrigued with the idea of mission work but still wasn’t certain what he wanted to do with his life by the time he graduated college. As a mathematics major, he decided to pursue graduate studies in mathematics at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. There, he attended a church that had more robust mission efforts than his home church. This further inspired Jim and pushed him toward a decision about his vocation. “As I learned more about missions, about actual people who are serving in missions, I began to realize this is what I want,” Jim says. “So I said goodbye to mathematics, came back to Kentucky, and began looking at seminaries.” 

Despite Asbury Seminary being in his home state, Jim wanted to go somewhere different to get out of Kentucky. However, during a visit to a seminary in the Chicago area, he had a conversation with the provost that led him to reconsider Asbury Seminary. “He finally looked at me and said, ‘Now you’re Wesleyan, right? And you’re from Kentucky, right? You’ve got the best Wesleyan seminary in the country right in your backyard. You should go to Asbury Seminary.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll look at them,’” Jim says.

Intercultural Studies and M.Div. at Asbury Seminary

After contacting Asbury Seminary, Jim became a seminary student and began pursuing his M.Div. degree. He entered the degree program with some insecurity since he did not feel called to be a pastor and did not initially know there were non-pastoral tracks for the M.Div. program. He even began the candidacy program for the United Methodist Church before feeling a strong interjection from the Lord. “I felt the Lord say very definitely, ‘No, I’m not calling you to be a pastor,’” Jim says.

Fortunately, Jim soon discovered intercultural studies and fell in love. Despite having an interest in culture, languages and missions for many years, he had not previously had the opportunity to study intercultural studies at a higher education institution. “I tried to take all my electives in the intercultural studies area and that moved me in that direction.” 

He likens the M.Div. program to a liberal arts degree in that he was able to study a wide array of subjects that interested him. Alongside his growing love for intercultural studies, he also enjoyed classes on subjects such as history, theology, languages, and more. This wide variety of subjects correlates well with the missionary vocation he was about to undertake since missionaries are often required to wear many hats. 

Most of all, he felt that intercultural studies provided a holistic approach to ministry that resonated with him. “If all you go equipped with is Bible and theology – which are extremely valuable, I’m not saying put those aside – but if that’s all you go with, you don’t have the equipment of how to take this and translate this into a different culture, different context,” Jim says. “How do I survive myself? How do I deal with the family that just had a loss? You don’t have the whole package. What I love here is I felt like the whole package was offered.”

By the time he started the M.Div. program, he was married to his wife, Shawn, and they had already started to have children while living in Danville. Jim worked full-time in the IT industry and commuted to the Seminary for classes. This meant that it took him 7 years to complete his M.Div., but the entire experience was incredibly formative for Jim and his family. They had influential mentors in their hometown and the company Jim worked for was Japanese-owned, providing its own cross-cultural experience. “I’m really glad that I didn’t just finish college, go to seminary and then go to the mission field. Those were extremely valuable years to us as a couple, as a family, and then me in my own profession,” Jim says.

Joining TMS and the Road to Kazakhstan

While studying at Asbury Seminary, Jim met people from TMS Global, called the Mission Society at the time, and appreciated the way the organization approached mission work. According to Jim, TMS stands for train, mobilize, and serve and has its origins in the United Methodist Church (UMC). It was formed as part of a renewal effort within the UMC to help Methodists be more involved in missions. While no longer part of any one denomination, TMS works with several denominations, shares in the Wesleyan history and has a distinct Wesleyan approach to missions. This is what attracted Jim to TMS. “It’s a needed voice in world missions,” Jim says. “The high view of culture, the high view of God’s grace, this going before us – all those things that we emphasize in the Wesleyan tradition, I think, are needed voices in missions.”

Although the Ramsays did not yet feel a particular call to a country or location, they were recruited by TMS Global and began the process of placement. “They said, ‘Would you consider Kazakhstan?’ And my first response was, ‘Where is it?’ I literally had no idea,” Jim says. However, according to Jim, TMS believes that placement is a discernment process between aspiring missionaries, the organization, and the local receivers in that country or region. Over a year, the Ramsays read and studied much about Kazakhstan and communicated with individuals living there. “God did some neat things to affirm it for us,” Jim says “And so by the time we made the decision to go there, we felt very affirmative.”

Jim and his family moved to Kazakhstan in 1996, arriving in a country still recovering from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The transition was difficult and the conditions in Kazakhstan were a challenge. During their first winters in Kazakhstan, temperatures would sometimes drop as low as minus 20 to minus 40 degrees. Because the infrastructure had collapsed, heat and power in homes were not a guarantee. However, Jim felt the education he received at Asbury Seminary and the training from their sending organization helped make his family ready for the challenges. 

“I was grateful for the good preparation I had here at the Seminary, and TMS Global takes training very seriously,” Jim says. “I did feel well prepared for understanding culture, engaging culture, understanding how culture is going to affect me, and how it’s going to affect our family. So we were prepared. Doesn’t mean we didn’t experience culture shock, but we understood what it was and knew how to navigate it.”

The Work in Kazakhstan

The team of about 20 missionaries that the Ramsays joined in Kazakhstan approached the government to ask what they needed the most help with, to which they responded with the areas of education, health, and business. The team began to address all of those needs. One of the main avenues of doing so was operating a school of about 160 local kids that employed almost entirely local teachers. The team also had a medical clinic and a seminary for a time. “My specific role was being team leader most of those years,” Jim says. “And then I was also the director of the school and I taught in the seminary we had. I taught culture.”

The team also started a church which quickly saw rapid growth. The team discovered that the conditions in Kazakhstan were ripe to receive the gospel. “There was a spiritual openness that you rarely see because it was coming out of this time of pretty hard oppression and very limited information,” Jim says. “And so there was an openness to the gospel, openness to the things of God that was enormous.” 

Many churches were planted and grew quickly in that season. Unfortunately, many of them did not survive the continually shifting culture going into the 2000s. However, the church that Jim’s family and team started is still thriving today. “I can happily say that in one month we’re going to be going to visit our church on its 30th anniversary,” Jim says. “And there’s not been an American involved in leading that church for almost 20 years now.”

The strength of the church is a testament to the faithfulness of God through the work of the Ramsay family and their team, as well as their commitment to see it healthily sustained under local Kazakh leadership. After 10 years in the nation, an opportunity arose for the Ramsay family to move back to the U.S. The TMS base office was looking for someone to oversee all the mission work globally. Jim twice turned down offers for the position to fulfill their second term in Kazakhstan. Once that term ended, with one kid in college and two more about to enter college, Jim and Shawn prayed and felt it was the right time to make the transition. However, it was not an easy decision; they loved their life in Kazakhstan. “A very wise person said to me two things when I was wrestling about this,” Jim says. “One thing is the thing that qualifies you to do this job is that you want to stay on the field. And the other thing is, if you ever wait to leave, until you’re done, you’ve already stayed too long.” 

Back to the U.S. and Becoming President of TMS

Jim and his family moved back to the U.S. in 2006 and he has worked in the home operations for TMS ever since. He held several positions in the organization before becoming President and CEO in 2024. He took the position with the goals of helping orient TMS in light of the changing world of missions, positioning the organization for the future, and raising up younger leaders. “I’m excited about it, but also it’s a wild time in world missions,” Jim says. “It’s changing so rapidly that organizations have to adapt quickly to what’s happening in the world.”

A major factor of TMS’s future and Jim’s role as its leader is responding well to the increasing awareness of missions as proceeding from the global church as opposed to merely the Western church. “The big shift, which is not a new shift, is the globalization of the church,” Jim says. “Some people are just discovering it this decade, but it’s been known and documented for some time. But now also the globalization of missions. So missions is truly from everywhere to everywhere, a term that was coined a long time ago. We’re really seeing that now, but how do we live into that well, especially as Western agencies and Western leaders who are used to being in the driver’s seat?”

Jim hopes to help bring organization and clarity around this and other challenges that face TMS during his time as president and then “say bon voyage and get out of the way,” as he says, to let younger leaders take it into the future. He will still have plenty of work to do investing in even the youngest future leaders. “I do have grandchildren, so I have ways to occupy myself when that time comes,” Jim says.