In a class of her own: God’s good work in the life of Norma Hedin 

In 2000, when Adam Davis (’02, ’11), took the course Principles of Teaching as an elective in his Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Master of Divinity degree plan, “a light bulb went off.” 

Davis, who serves as the associate pastor at Belle Aire Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, says the class and the professor, Norma Hedin (’84, ’90), “played a significant role for me in determining, in many ways, kind of the future direction of my life.” The lessons Davis learned through Hedin’s class, and subsequent foundations of education classes after he added a Master of Arts in Christian Education degree to his seminary studies, in addition to his MDiv degree program, are still used as he leads the educational ministries at the Tennessee church. Davis is one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of students Hedin taught and inspired during her 17 years as a professor of foundations of education in the Jack D. Terry School of Educational Ministries at Southwestern Seminary. Hedin, who has served as the provost of Dallas Baptist University since 2018, faithfully taught aspiring ministers of education and other Christian workers how to teach Scripture, design lesson plans, the history of biblical education, and how to set teaching goals and objectives that would impact the affective and cognitive domains of the learner’s brain. Additionally, she taught scores of Doctor of Philosophy students in the Terry School how to write their doctoral dissertations in the “language” of statistics – the “language” of the program at the time. 

Hedin’s desire to teach teachers to teach with excellence stems from her own salvation experience and calling. 

The morning after praying to receive Christ at Biltmore Baptist Church in her hometown of Elizabethton, Tennessee, Hedin knelt beside her bed with an open Bible and began to read. The nine-year-old wanted to know what to do next to grow in her relationship with Christ. She explains the influence of her church and her grandparents taught her the next steps in walking with the Lord, but so did attendance at church summer camp, where she eventually became a counselor herself as a high school student. 

The petite, reserved Hedin says during this time she “began to see that God can use even the smallest people, the most introverted people. He can use anyone for His Kingdom.” 

After one summer of camp, she asked the Lord, “Please don’t put me on the shelf. Let me be used by You.” After praying that prayer, Hedin began looking through her Bible and came to Philippians 1:6 and the promise that He who began a good work in her would continue to perform it until the day of Christ Jesus. 

Hedin explains “in that moment” she sensed a call to be obedient to the Lord, whatever it meant. The college-aged counselors at the camp attended Christian colleges, which Hedin learned about for the first time and saw as “an opportunity to attend an institution that would help prepare me for what God had in my life.” One of her school counselors asked her what she wanted to do in life and Hedin said, “I really want to help people in the church know what to do after they become Christians,” because, as she explains, “I felt there was a gap that people would come to Christ, but then they wouldn’t know what to do after that to grow in Christ.” 

The high school counselor told Hedin about Bryan College, a Christian liberal arts college in Dayton, Tennessee, about four hours away from her East Tennessee hometown. The college had a Christian education program and Hedin says her years at the institution “really changed the trajectory of my life.” 

At Bryan College, her major professor, Brian Richardson (’66, ‘71), told her about Southwestern Seminary. Richardson had an arrangement with the seminary that a Christian education graduate of Bryan College would have 15-hours counted toward what was then known as the Master of Arts in Religious Education. Richardson also told Hedin “words spoken at the right time,” that changed the course of her life, she says, as he encouraged her to enroll for study at Southwestern, earn a doctorate, and return to the college to teach. 

Following college graduation, Hedin married her husband, Eric, and moved to the Chicago area to serve with a Christian ministry for three years. During this time, the Lord spoke to her and said, “Now is the time to complete the work that I’ve started in you and move forward in that.” As the couple looked to relocate to Texas, her husband had three job offers in the Dallas area within a week. 

Hedin was one of hundreds of students in the 1980s working toward earning a MARE, but William R. “Rick” Yount (’75, ’78), one of her foundations of education professors and later faculty colleague, says she stood out among the other students. 

“There were a few students who came through the master’s class that gave the evidence that this student is doctoral material, and, perhaps, even faculty material for some graduate school somewhere,” Yount says. “And Norma was one of those people.” 

After graduating with her MARE, Hedin began her doctoral studies where Yount says she did “exceedingly well” and “worked hard behind the scenes, but she didn’t talk about that. She just performed.” As a doctoral student, Hedin served as an editorial assistant for the Southwestern Journal of Theology. In the role, she met fellow doctoral students who needed their dissertations edited and proofed. The Lord used the experience she gained later as she taught doctoral students to write their doctoral dissertations in the required formal academic style. 

Hedin graduated with her Doctor of Philosophy in 1990, the same year she was elected to the faculty as an assistant professor of foundations of education. In the classroom, she was known for her teaching abilities and high standards of excellence, but also for the care and concern she had for each student. 

N. Chris Shirley (’94, ’02), interim dean of the Terry School and professor of foundations of education, was one of Hedin’s master’s level students and she was his doctoral supervisor. Hedin and Shirley later served together at DBU. 

Shirley was “impressed” by Hedin’s ability to teach as she not only taught the students how to teach but modeled it before her class. “Her example in the classroom was a lesson in itself,” he says. “This is the kind of teacher we’re training.” Learning from Hedin’s example, Shirley still seeks to emulate the same model to his students today. 

In 1995, Hedin became the associate dean of the then-School of Religious Education, where she oversaw all the school’s master’s degree programs, chaired the curriculum committee, served as a permanent member of the school’s PhD committee, and served on a number of seminary-wide committees, where she learned leadership lessons from the late Bill Tolar, Tommy Brisco (’73, ’81), Jack D. Terry Jr. (’62, ’67), Daryl R. Eldridge (’77, ’85), and her fellow Elizabethton-native, Robert “Bob” H. Welch (’85, ’90). 

Calling Hedin “the most brilliant young lady” he has ever met, Welch, who served as the dean of the Terry School from 2004-2008, said she was “consistently selected by the students as the number one professor” in the Terry School and “frequently the number one professor selected by the students in the entire seminary.” Welch says other faculty members compared themselves to Hedin and her teaching abilities as she challenged them to be better teachers by her example. 

While her teaching impacted her students, Davis explains Hedin’s walk with Christ did as well. He says in one of Hedin’s classes he mentioned a prayer request and several weeks later she asked Davis for an update – mentioning the individual’s specific name and specific event involved. 

Davis says the experience made him realize Hedin was “a little bit different breed of teacher” as she is “someone who really cares.” He says it revealed in “many ways” her “walk with the Lord and her prayer life.” 

In addition to her classroom instruction, Hedin contributed chapters to The Teaching Ministry of the Church. The first textbook of its kind, the 1995 publication was written by foundations of education professors at Southwestern Seminary and used in Christian education classes around the world. 

In 2005, when DBU began its PhD program, the university asked Hedin to teach the research seminar she taught at Southwestern to the Dallas-based institution’s inaugural cohort. She taught simultaneously at Southwestern and DBU, until she left Southwestern in 2006 to serve as a senior fellow at B.H. Carroll Theological Institute. She served at Carroll for nine years, all the while teaching as an adjunct at DBU as they added more courses to the doctoral program. Hedin also taught Christian education courses at the Canadian Baptist Theological Seminary. 

Hedin says “over the years” DBU would ask her to come and teach on the faculty and she would explain, “God has not released me from theological education.” She says making the decision to step away from theological education was “a really big decision” because “God called me to theological education and preparing people for the church.” Hedin adds, “Stepping away from that was something that I really had to wait on the Lord to release me from.” 

However, when DBU’s longtime president, Gary Cook (’77), announced his retirement, the incoming president, Adam Wright, approached Hedin about serving at the university full-time. Wright had been in DBU’s second cohort of doctoral students and Hedin chaired his dissertation committee. For two years she prayed to seek the Lord’s direction and “God gradually released me” from theological education “and a lot of it had to do with the transformational experience I had as a college student.” 

“Knowing how attending a Christian liberal arts college, just like DBU, had changed the trajectory of my life and prepared me to do things that I never anticipated” served as a catalyst for Hedin to begin serving full-time at DBU in 2016 as the vice president for executive affairs. As she transitioned from a seminary setting to a university setting, she explains she prayed “the Lord would be the voice behind me saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” 

In 2018, Hedin moved to the role of provost at DBU. As the university’s chief academic officer, she oversees the university’s eight colleges and schools, academic accreditation, institutional effectiveness and assessment, and academic support, which includes the university’s library, registrar, advising, and writing center. In addition to her responsibilities as provost, she is also a professor of leadership and research in the Gary Cook School of Leadership at DBU. 

The lessons and experience Hedin learned at Southwestern – both in the classroom and in faculty and administrative capacities – are the same she uses at DBU today. 

“Knowing about teaching and learning has served me really well in this role because one of the main things we focus on is faculty development and helping them know how to be an effective teacher in the classroom,” she says. “But also, there’s a ministry component to it because we’re integrating faith and learning — there’s no separation between what we do in the classroom and what we live out in our lives. Because I have a theological background it helps me shape the focus on ministry to the students.”

The good work God began in the life of nine-year-old Hedin continues to bear fruit as her students serve around the world. However, her impact on Seminary Hill remains embedded in the lives of Terry School faculty she taught and trained. 

“She represents the best of Southwestern, particularly what the school is about where we are training church leaders, but we’re also training Kingdom leaders,” Shirley says of his former professor and colleague. 

“I am here today because God used Southwestern in my life,” Hedin concludes. “I’ll always, always, be grateful for that.” 

Ashley Allen (‘03, ‘09) is managing editor of Southwestern News.

Some photos for this article were provided by Dallas Baptist University.