Marty Cramer

From Lay Leader to Pastor

Marty and Darrell married while she was getting her bachelor’s degree in communications at Ohio State University, and they later had two kids, Ben and Julie. That joy she had experienced led her to fall in love with the Church of God’s doctrine and practice. Marty became involved in lay ministry at Meadow Park Church of God in Columbus, Ohio. 

Eventually, while in prayer with a fellow church member, she had a significant encounter with the Lord in which she felt called to be a pastor. “We each had the picture of Lillie McCutcheon, a very famous preacher, laying her hands on me and calling me to preach,” Mary says. Soon after, she and Darrell took on lay leadership of a small church in Milford Center, Ohio.

Darrell was an entrepreneur and Marty worked alongside him in his businesses, dedicating their endeavors to the Lord. However, changes in the market and a decline in Darrell’s health due to a chronic condition led Marty to explore ideas for additional sources of income. “I had another significant event where the Lord spoke to me,” Marty says. “It was pretty dramatic for me, and it was that I was supposed to go into vocational ministry.”

In God’s humorous way, the search for a simple means of additional income instead led her to take a new step in her calling. “But I couldn’t do that until I went to seminary,” Marty says. “So, while I was looking to find extra income, I ended up on a path where I was not earning anything, but we were paying to go to seminary.”

Shaping a Ministry Philosophy in Seminary

Marty started working toward her M.Div. in 2003, driving from Central Ohio to Anderson, Indiana for classes weekly for four years. Her professors and classes profoundly shaped her personal ministry philosophy. “I had this piece growing in me… [Jesus] loved people before he knew them,” Marty says. “Because he loved them, he could engage them differently.” She also began to see the value of hospitality as a major biblical principle that undergirds how we love others and support each other within Christian communities.  

Following seminary, because of Darrell’s health and changes in the market, they were forced to sell both their home and business and file for bankruptcy. Their life entered a challenging season, but the Lord had providentially prepared Marty to be able to earn income outside of their business while continuing to serve in vocational ministry. She moved away from pastoring and moved into chaplaincy. “And that’s where I found all my life experience pieces really fell into together completely,” Marty says.

Chaplaincy: Life Experience and Ministry Calling Combined

Marty had spent years ministering to congregants, visiting homes, and listening to their stories She has many stories of individuals prominent in her memory because of the lessons they taught her about being willing to receive the hospitality they offered. These experiences as a pastor shaped her approach to caring for patients in the hospital.

As a chaplain, a major part of her work has been supporting families going through pregnancy loss. Working with these families has given her ample opportunities to comfort and bless others while exercising her model of chaplaincy. “It takes courage to be with families who are experiencing the most fundamental human loss,” Marty says. “But whether I am with them or not, they still have to go through it. If I give up trying to fix this unfixable, pain-filled situation, I can keep my eyes open to the miracles God is working in their midst.

Asbury Seminary and the D.Min.

When Marty became a board-certified chaplain, she was challenged to find a way to articulate her model of pastoral care model of inviting others to share hospitality, a unique model that turns traditional ways of thinking about hospitality upside down. Inviting patients to be the host allows the patient to share what they have—space, experiences, even tears or pain—and receive the blessings of sharing and giving. “This is what Jesus did when he came as a stranger and invited others to welcome him into their homes and hearts,” Marty says. Her premise is that even the most vulnerable patients can find wholeness when they feel valued and they are more open to recognizing God’s presence in the visit. 

While she knew a doctoral program could help her do the research she needed, she had no interest in merely getting a degree for its own sake but wanted her research to benefit chaplaincy and the church. “I’ve always known about the academic integrity of Asbury Seminary and theologically am very closely associated with it,” Marty says. “I knew that if I did the work here, I could get the help I needed to test out this model of pastoral care to see how we can make it useful for chaplaincy.”

Marty began her Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) program at Asbury Seminary just before the COVID pandemic in 2020 and she is scheduled to graduate in the spring of 2025. The focus of her cohort is spiritual direction and has featured classes by beloved spiritual formation professors Dr. Stephen Martyn and Dr. Mike Voigts, and coaching by Dr. Christine Pohl, the latter of whom passed away in 2023. One thing Marty did not expect from her D.Min. program was to be challenged to think about how her ministry model of loving first and inviting hospitality from patients benefits not only those to whom the chaplains are ministering but also the chaplains themselves. “Praise God for that,” she says. “It’s living right smack in the heart of being a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, even in the context where you cannot openly proclaim the gospel. It’s soul-nourishing for the chaplain, at the same time being so good for the patient. So that’s a real benefit of being at Asbury Seminary.”

Marty received vital insight into her model of pastoral care from her cohort and is currently in the workshop phase of her program, working with other chaplains. “I’m teaching about what this model of pastoral care is, the biblical foundations, how it’s good for the patient [and] good for the chaplain,” Marty says. “Then they’re practicing it in their own context and coming back and we’re talking about what they’ve learned.”

Fortunately, Darrell’s health has continued to improve over the past several years, and he and Marty are celebrating over 47 years of a supportive marriage. Marty hopes to take all she continues to learn from her research in her D.Min. program and resource other chaplains as well as those in parish ministry through publishing. She is truly grateful to study for the benefit of the church and its ministers.