Every year, someone asks me a version of the same question:
Why the UK?
It is a fair question. In a world of digital classrooms, Zoom lectures, and AI-driven research tools, why put students on a plane and fly them across the Atlantic? Why invest the time, money, and energy required for international travel?
Simple. Because formation requires exposure.
At Manna University, we partner with a study tour company to take students through London and beyond, not as tourists, but as learners. The itinerary includes places many have only seen in textbooks: Windsor Castle, Canterbury, the Tower of London, Parliament Square, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the Churchill War Rooms. We walk the city. We stand where history unfolded. We see the architecture of empire, the evolution of constitutional governance, and the intersection of church and state.
These are not random stops.
Windsor Castle tells the story of monarchy and continuity. Westminster Abbey holds the memory of kings, reformers, poets, and pastors. The Tower of London reminds us that power is NEVER neutral. The Churchill War Rooms immerse students in the moral weight of leadership decisions made under existential threat. Canterbury brings the history of Christian witness into physical space. Parliament Square makes visible the architecture of public life and the memory of complex, yet impactful world leaders.
As Dr. Mark Batterson often says, “change of pace plus change of place equals change of perspective.”
When students stand in spaces where decisions altered nations and movements reshaped culture, abstraction gives way to embodiment. Leadership becomes less theoretical and more historical. Theology becomes less isolated and more situated. Students begin to see that ideas have consequences, that faith interacts with public life, and that leadership requires moral courage across time.
I remember the first time I stood inside the Churchill War Rooms beneath London. The space is not grand. It is tight, low-ceilinged, and almost claustrophobic. Maps still hang on the walls. Phones sit on desks as if someone had just stepped away. You can almost feel the weight of decisions made in those rooms while bombs fell above.
It struck me that the fate of nations was shaped in spaces that felt small and ordinary. Leadership there was not dramatic in the moment. It was disciplined. Patient. Resolute. Men and women showed up day after day to do the next right thing under pressure most of us will never experience.
Standing there, I realized something I could never have learned from a lecture alone: courage is often quiet. History is not shaped only by charisma. It is shaped by conviction sustained over time.
That moment reframed how I think about leadership formation. We are not preparing students for stages (although some will indeed stand on stage). We are preparing them for rooms where decisions matter.
I remember standing inside Canterbury Cathedral, aware that this was not simply architecture but testimony. The stone floors are worn from centuries of footsteps. Light filters through stained glass that witnessed reform, division, martyrdom, and renewal.
It is one thing to study church history in a classroom. It is another to stand where Thomas Becket was martyred and realize that theological conviction once carried real, physical risk. Faith was and is not theoretical.
What struck me most was not the violence of the past, but the endurance. The church has fractured, reformed, struggled, and persisted. Leadership in that space was not about maintaining comfort. It was about stewarding truth across generations.
In that moment, I was reminded that formation is not about producing quick impact. It is about shaping leaders who can carry conviction without becoming brittle, who can remain faithful when history presses hard against them.
There is something about walking where history happened that recalibrates how we think about our own moments. But our time in the UK does not stop with London.
At Manna U, we’ve been honored to have scholars selected to present at the Oxford Symposium on Religious Studies, a global academic gathering hosted in Oxford. This year, three Manna U Majors will present research at the Symposium. That matters.
It matters because our students are not merely consuming knowledge. They are entering international, pluralistic, scholarly conversations, while maintaining faithfulness to the convictions of biblical higher education.
This is not about prestige. When you sit in sessions alongside scholars from multiple continents, you realize quickly that the church is larger, the questions are deeper, and the work of theological reflection is more global than you imagined.
Studying abroad forces humility. It disrupts assumptions. It reveals how much we do not know. It invites students to ask better questions. It trains them to observe before they speak. It situates their faith within a broader historical and global narrative.
And for a university like ours, deeply connected to military communities, global church partnerships, and distributed theological education, global awareness is not optional.
Why do we take students to the UK?
- Because leadership requires perspective.
- Because theology requires context.
- Because formation requires exposure.
And because when students see the breadth of the global church and the depth of Christian history, they return home not just more informed, but more anchored.
Travel does not automatically produce wisdom. But when intentionally framed, it expands the horizon from which leaders discern.
That is why we go.
Dr. Carlo A. Serrano, President