Longtime pastor Malissa Dukes earns doctorate at age 77

While many septuagenarians slow down after a long career, longtime Kingdom Worship Ministries Pastor Malissa Dukes has amassed several degrees over the past several years, culminating with a doctoral degree in ministry she received June 26.

“I’m just really excited,” Dukes said.

At age 77, Dukes said she hopes she sets an example for younger people to follow. It is already evident in her own family, as her son is working toward his master’s degree, and her daughter-in-law received her bachelor’s degree June 26 as well.

Dukes has received all of her degrees in ministry from Christian World College of Theology, earning her associate’s in 2016, her bachelor’s in 2017 and her master’s in 2018.

For her doctorate, Dukes said she wanted to learn more about the relationship between mental health and the church.

“I feel like God will take care of mental health,” Dukes said. “But I realized some young people were dying in the streets of drugs and violence, so I started wanting to get involved in the mental health aspect of the church.”

Dukes said she studied 10 war-torn countries and how they deal with mental health at the youth level. After reading 20 books and writing a 60-page thesis on the subject, Dukes said she came away feeling she needed more compassion.

“In the United States, we’re so well taken care of and don’t realize what people in war-torn countries are going through,” Dukes said. “I read about a school bombed in Afghanistan and the testimony of the children – their nightmares, seeing classmates killed in school – and it really affected me. I’m grateful and thankful and humbled, because I went and got some more information so I could make decisions to bring the youth back into the house of God.”