Thanks to your faithful partnership, Pastor James Ward is reaching hearts across America with a biblical call to healing and reconciliation.
Regent University is honored to recognize Pastor James Ward as its 2025 Alumnus of the Year. An accomplished author, nationally recognized thought leader, and senior pastor of Insight Church, with two campuses in the Chicago area, Pastor Ward has emerged as a powerful voice of reconciliation and healing in an often-divided nation.
His pioneering message of “Zero Victim” thinking—outlined in his best-selling book of the same name—provides a biblical framework that empowers individuals to reject a mindset of victimhood. Birthed through his own childhood experiences while growing up in segregated Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Ward’s “Zero Victim” mindset would take on new urgency amid America’s intensifying social, political, and racial unrest.
Your Support Fueled a Vision Beyond Victimhood
“In 2019, I sincerely felt the Lord stirring my heart to update the book and expand it,” Ward recalls. “There was a convergence of victimization in our nation—from COVID, the election, and the racial tension. The door was now open to deliver that message to the nation.”
That obedience to God sparked a divine moment of preparation, as Ward was about to reach a much larger audience via the mainstream media. His “Zero Victim” message would soon become a much-needed, alternative unifying perspective grounded in Scripture and theology, rather than a divisive socio-political ideology.
When attention turned to Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the August 2020 police-involved shooting of Jacob Blake—whose mother and grandmother were members of Ward’s church—he was thrust into the national spotlight. Eventually, Ward was invited to serve on President Donald Trump’s advisory roundtable, an unexpected move that he says was “a Joseph moment… something God shows you years before and then uses under conditions that sometimes are unfortunate for something good to come out of it.”
My time at Regent was formative. … I needed something to help me develop professionally and
academically. The program was absolutely relevant to my real-life work experience.
– Pastor James Ward (DIV ’13)
Through media, government, and ministry, Ward’s influence continues expanding across the nation and around the world. He serves on numerous corporate, ministry, and advisory boards, including Regent University’s Board of Trustees. Ward is also the chairman and CEO of the TLN Media broadcast and digital media company. In all his endeavors, Ward serves alongside his wife of 25 years, Sharon, and together they have two adult children: Hannah and Jonathan.
You Laid the Foundation for a Life of Impact
In 2008, a random, online search led him to Regent University and its motto: “Christian leadership to change the world.” The School of Divinity’s master’s degree program laid a foundation of faith that still shapes Ward’s ministry and service today.
“That motto is the thing that really connected with me,” he recalls. “My time at Regent was formative. It was tremendously impactful in my life. I needed something to help me develop professionally and academically. The MDiv. program was absolutely relevant to my real-life work experience. I felt it was perfectly designed just for me at that time.”
To donors who help make a Regent education possible, Ward offers this encouragement: “God is building His Church, but I believe that the faculty members in higher education are the actual architects of the Body of Christ to equip local pastors and missionaries to do the building. An academic, Spirit-filled institution, like Regent, is vitally important for the architecture of what God is doing.”
In honoring Pastor James Ward, Regent affirms the truth of its mission: Christian leadership truly can change the world.
