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Cancer Survivor Janet Orlin Graduates With a Sense of Calling and a New Career

Raised in a secular Jewish home in New York City, Janet Orlin remembers that though there wasn’t a strong sense of religious tradition in her family, there was a strong sensitivity to issues of social justice and a concern for serving those in society with limited power. This sensitivity was largely shaped by her grandfather’s work as a union organizer.

Perhaps it was this concern for serving others that led Orlin into the medical field, early in her career, when she worked in medical schools as an administrator for biomedical researchers. Later, her desires for service led her to consider studying to become a medical chaplain.

In 1998, Orlin applied to Fuller Seminary, where she hoped to begin fulfilling that desire by earning an M.Div. “Before I was even accepted, however, God told me that while I was supposed to come to Fuller, his plan for me was not hospital chaplaincy,” Orlin recalls.

It was the beginning of a long struggle for Orlin to discern her sense of call. “I was entirely certain that God wanted me at Fuller, but I had no sense of why God wanted me to get this education. I tried on the idea of doing parish ministry or getting a Ph.D., but those possible career directions never seemed to fit me for long,” she says.

Fuller was good place for her to wrestle with possible directions, she says. “One of the reasons I chose Fuller was because of its broad view of what constitutes ministry. I was glad not to be at a seminary that almost exclusively trained students for parish ministry, and I was grateful to see the diverse and creative ministries to which God called some of my fellow students. I was privileged to see how God moves in all kinds of ways, many of them outside the box of the traditional church,” Orlin recalls.

Two years into her studies, however, Orlin’s search for direction took a backseat to a new struggle, one of the most painful struggles a woman can endure. In June 2000, at the age of 32, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The subsequent cancer treatment and the slow physical recovery severely limited her ability to continue her studies, and she faced many losses – physical and psychological – that deepened her acquaintance with grief.

“It was not easy going through cancer as a single person with a limited social network nearby, and it seemed almost certain that finishing my M.Div. was going to be another casualty of my diagnosis, but God in his mercy did not require this of me,” Orlin says. “God provided for me in all kinds of ways, and with great providence many things fell into place that allowed me to slowly continue my education, giving me faith that God wanted this for me.”

This summer, Orlin is completing her education at Fuller with an awareness of something more significant than earning a degree. “My completion of my M.Div. is not just a sense of academic achievement, it is also for me a step in healing from cancer, a sign of God’s very real conquering of death,” she says.

In addition, Orlin has discovered through her ordeal a new vision – and opportunity – for ministry. “My sense of calling now is to be doing work that combines Christian spirituality and healthcare,” she says. “I recently accepted an unusual position at UCLA that manages to combine all of my professional experience, my training at Fuller, and even my experience as a person living with cancer.

“I will be working with a group of researchers who are devising and testing strategies to increase minority participation in cancer screening. Their primary strategy involves setting up health committees at churches and training lay-members to do education within those churches about the importance of cancer screening. I will be participating in the recruitment of churches and will remain the key liaison with the churches. I will also have a role in the design and the execution of the research study. The knowledge gained from these studies will hopefully prove useful to others who might consider starting social service programs through churches or religious congregations.”

Orlin credits Fuller with preparing her for her new ministry. “Fuller has both helped me to integrate the social concern my family instilled in me at an early age with my evangelical faith, and it also helped me to ground such concern on the foundation of my faith,” she says. “I don’t think any other seminary would have been so formative in this respect.”