From their undergraduate days at Wheaton College to Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School, JT Reeves and Ian Davison have experienced many of life’s journeys together over the past several years.
The two met during their freshman year at Wheaton and studied abroad for three and a half months together in Jerusalem. In 2023, during the revival at Asbury University in Kentucky, their friendship deepened.
“I was serving as student chaplain at Wheaton College during the outpouring,” Reeves said. “I didn’t want to skip classes, but I didn’t have anything I had to be at. The chaplain’s office was fine with me going, and we had about 50 people from Wheaton drive down and experience that first week at Asbury.”
There was worship every night for hours upon hours, Reeves said.
“In a generation whose attention is being vied for every second by technology, God said, ‘No, I’m the most interesting.’ It was a lot of spiritual food,” he said. “I learned prayer is costly. It can involve emotions I don’t like to get into. Worship can take sleep, sports, food and more. But the depth of relationship that is built when you’re worshiping together is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”
While Davison didn’t physically travel to Asbury, he helped lead similar worship experiences at Wheaton. The experience brought Davison and Reeves closer as friends.
“It was like going into the wardrobe in Narnia,” Davison said. “We came back out, and it was like reentering England. That’s what we’ve been trying to make sense of for the last three years. How do we share about what we’ve experienced?”
The summer before they both moved to Birmingham to start their studies at Beeson, they went to South Sudan and Uganda for six weeks, serving in refugee camps and strengthening the churches there. Their friendship continued to grow over the years and has sustained them both as they prepare to graduate on May 1.
“Friendship is a huge part of my walk with the Lord,” Reeves said. “It’s a blessing to have a friend of the same mind and imagination. We’ve been roommates on four different continents.”
The competition that can often happen between theological students never happened between him and Davison, Reeves said. Instead, they’ve been a sounding board for each other, a person to talk things out with and pray with.
“You can pray alone but having someone who almost every day you can seek the Lord with is very underrated in a world where education is often digital," Reeves said.
Reeves, who served as SGA president during his final year at Beeson, with Davison serving as vice president, came into Beeson wondering if he needed three more years of theological education.
“I realized I need a whole lot more education,” Reeves said. “At Wheaton, I didn’t do a great job connecting with professors. Here, I feel like there are multiple professors I will stay in touch with for a long time. I also feel that, in the sermons I’m preaching, I’m doing so in the way Beeson has formed me, especially around the Gospel. Whatever you’re doing needs to bring out the story of Jesus.
“I don’t think there’s another seminary like Beeson in making us see the broader picture in that way. That’s been huge for me,” Reeves said.
Davison echoed that Beeson has helped him study and preach God’s Word more faithfully and given him the tools to do so through the language classes, which he excelled in. During the spring 2026 awards service, Davison was given the William M. Todd Award for excellence in biblical Hebrew.
“I love that Beeson is committed to the Word of God and to a close study of the Word, not just abstract theology,” Davison said.
Davison said he’s also been just as formed by his church, Iron City Church in Birmingham, part of Beeson’s design for its students.
“Beeson is church-centered,” Davison said. “My accountability and my training, in many ways, has been shaped at Iron City. I love Beeson’s vision to serve the local church.”
Davison and his wife, Meghan, will welcome their first child later this year, and in January 2027, plan to head to the United Arab Emirates to serve as missionaries. In addition to his MDiv, Davison earned a missions certificate.
During his time at Beeson, Reeves has traveled back and forth on weekends to preach and teach at his home church in Columbia, South Carolina, where he will continue to serve after graduation. He’ll continue preaching and teaching while partnering with an elder at the church to do more pastoral counseling. He’ll also continue writing, with a book, The True Human, due out in September from Seedbed, a Christian publishing company.