61 courses with the subject DM, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
DM 201Research Methods Seminar
What is it like to view Eastern Christianity from a Protestant perspective? How can this outside perspective help orthodox leaders understand the special gifts of orthodoxy as well as the misunderstandings that sometimes arise between Orthodox and Protestants? The instructor, a Protestant, will draw from his many years of living among Orthodox believers both in the United States and in Russia. The course will include attention to the sources, methods, and biological tools important for academic research and writing in a theological context.
This course seeks to explore the roots of Eastern spirituality and to study contemporary moral issues from three perspectives: 1) spirituality/morality in Patristic Tradition; 2) practicing Patristic orality in modern society; and 3) facing contemporary moral issues in ministry.
This class is intended to be an introduction to the Canonical Tradition of the Orthodox Church. After a brief overview of sources, the course will move on to a discussion of what Canon Law is. The course will then consider various canonical contemporaneous questions regularly encountered both within and outside the church. This course will emphasize both content and application. Special focus on the Antiochian Orthodox Church position concerning the contemporary problems will be elaborated. Students will be expected to properly express (both in written and oral form) canonical solutions to pastoral problems.
This course explores Eastern Christian understandings of death, resurrection, and eternal life in relation to Christ’s victory over sin and death. The course will assist students in pastoral practice related to ministry to the dying, funerals, and remembrance of the dead.
As Fr. Alexander Schmemann has noted, Orthodoxy seeks to transform whatever culture in which it finds itself. This course will explore the different ethnic and national contexts in which Orthodoxy has historically enculturated itself, as well as the special challenges that Orthodoxy faces in pluralistic Western societies in which Orthodox believers are a religious minority.
This course examines the Orthodox cycle of biblical readings for the church year and how these readings shape the liturgy, preaching, and commemoration of Christ, the Theotokos, and the saints. Special attention will be devoted to the church’s 12 major holidays.
This course explores the two types of knowledge in Orthodox Christianity: knowledge of the mind and knowledge of the heart. The course will discuss the essence of Orthodox Christian knowledge through true encounter, and the expression of such experience in the diverse human epistemological and philosophical frames of mind. The course will also highlight the importance of establishing a priority for using a specific order of epistemological questions to accurately express the encounter. The course will then highlight Orthodox methodologies and their foundational dependence on a lifestyle of a “change of mind” and the requirement of this change for a true Orthodox conversion, not just in form but also in essence.
This course is to assist students in designing a doctoral project in a particular area of ministry. Theoretical issues underlying the situation and a method for addressing these issues are clarified as the student develops the proposal in consultation with peers and faculty. DMECFP Eastern Christian Final Project The program requires satisfactory completion of a doctoral project and paper, which must demonstrate the candidate’s ability to identify a problem, issue, or concern in their own ministry; integrate appropriate theological, biblical, and professional resources; and develop a method for resolution. The doctoral project/paper must reflect depth of theological insight and its positive integration with the practice of ministry. (6 credits)
This course lays the foundation for a missional theology developed from within the pastor’s leadership postures, habits, and practices of cultivating environments of communal discernment as their congregation participates in God’s mission in the congregation’s specific context. This course will transition into the identification of a specific research project as the pastor’s embodied setting from within which missional leadership postures, habits, and practices will be cultivated.
This course will explore and develop the pastor’s research project by refining the research question and identifying an appropriate research methodology within the embodied setting while giving attention to the “lived experience” of the persons and community from within which the pastor will engage the rest of the program. Consideration will be given to defining theological reflection paying attention to developing a practice which allows us to be open to trust God as the initiator and guide of both vocation and call.
This course explores authority and interpretation of Scripture with a focus on how race has operated in scriptural interpretation in the United States. Particular attention is given to sociocultural realities that shape the way individuals and institutions approach Scripture.
This course is a historical, theological, and practice exploration of the role of the pastor as leader of adaptive change. It re-interprets the key marks of ordained ministry—word, sacrament, order, and service—for the new missional context. The aim is one of transition from a focus on the pastor as adaptive change leader into a focus on the pastor’s congregation as missional community, and therefore, the need for an appropriate ecclesiology.
How does it look to think about congregations not as communities that have to participate in God’s mission but that already are? What does it look like to think about the church not as a voluntary organization but as a community constituted by God? These are the kind of questions we deal with in this course as we explore the relationships between God’s mission in the world, the church, and salvation.
This course will explore a variety of ways in which the pastor as adaptive change leader can cultivate environments of communal discernment in their congregation for the sake of participating in God’s mission in their specific context. This course will transition from a focus on the congregational environments of communal discernment to a focus on how the congregation’s missional discernment is shaped by a relational engagement with their specific context.
Building on the previous course’s habits and practices of communal discernment in a congregational setting, this course will take such processes of discernment into a journey of discovery in the neighborhood by using the postures, habits, and practices of community exegesis, by deep listening to the neighbor, building relationships, and forming bi-cultural bridge communities as an integral part of discerning the congregation’s participation in God’s mission in their specific context.
This course will explore what it means to do public theology with an emphasis on reading and understanding the larger operations of power in church, neighborhood, and culture. Understanding that God is actively at work in the world, students will be challenged to explore how they can lead their communities to join in that work of God and to offer prophetic, embodied witness to God’s call to love and justice.
DM 370Leadership in the Midst of Conflict and Change
The premise of this course is that engaging conflict and change in productive ways is a crucial part of a community’s discernment process and can lead to a clearer understanding of how the community might participate in God’s mission in the world. Consequently, this course focuses on helping congregational leaders learn how to encourage healthy conflict, rather than the fear or avoidance of conflict, in their particular settings. DM 00 Noncredit Seminar Will be taken online. For students needing assistance in project development. This course is not for credit.
This is a capstone seminar in which students share both their project and final results. This will be a shared evaluation process, in which students offer support and careful critique of themes which will become part of an ongoing dialogue for this cohort and future cohorts. Prior to this, students will complete a three-credit elective of their choice to address a particular theme or aspect related to the question and project they have been developing all along. Faculty who have taught in the program will participate in guiding this final seminar.
The program requires satisfactory completion of a doctoral project and paper that must demonstrate the candidate’s ability to identify a problem, issue, or concern in their own ministry, integrate appropriate theological, biblical, and professional resources, and develop a method for resolution. The doctoral project/paper must reflect depth of theological insight and its positive integration with the practice of ministry. (6 credits)
This course introduces the commitments, shape, history, and contexts of Reformed theology through the lens of worship. Where—past and present—do we find Reformed communities? What is the shape of their worship life? And what do these patterns tell us about the commitments of Reformed theology?
This course explores the research methods necessary for the academic program. As part of the course, students will have an opportunity to explore a research question that might become the basis for a doctor of ministry final project.
This course considers selected themes in Reformed spirituality, looking back to explore strands that could have the potential to contribute to personal spirituality and ministry today. The aim will not be to promote an uncritical adoption of past stresses and habits (i.e. to transplant the past to the present) but to engage critically with the tradition together. Some elements will open up fresh roads to explore for today, and others we may decide are dead ends; either way, this will help us to reflect critically and imaginatively on ways to nourish spirituality in ourselves and others. Everyone will engage with the material in their own way, bringing to it their own history, experience, and present context. Course participants will use and reflect on John Baillie’s A Diary of Private Prayer as a 20th century classic of Reformed spirituality.
In the Reformed tradition, Scripture is a crucial impetus for the ongoing reformation of the church. This course explores the interpretation of biblical texts in the context of the current environmental crisis. We will evaluate critical arguments that implicate the Bible as a contributor to the problem and attend to more constructive readings that partner biblical scholarship with environmental ethics. This course integrates the study of the Bible and Reformed theology through the study of a cluster of biblical themes (creation, stewardship, land, environmental crisis, and apocalypse), models pastorally responsible and theologically sensitive readings of texts related to these themes, and stimulates reflection on how these biblical themes might function as a resource for preaching and teaching in the life of Christian communities today.
Reformed theology has always been deeply invested in the importance of the church, its common life, and its visible unity. Reformed theologians have been at the forefront of the ecumenical movement. North American and Western European contexts have nonetheless produced different forms of Reformed church life, and the ecumenical movement is largely faltering. This course will explore what contributions Reformed ecclesiology may still make in the great transitions 21st century Christian communities experience in the Western world.
This course will invite students to critically examine Christian theology and ethics in light of historical and contemporary abuses of power, marginalization, and domination by Christian leaders. It will bring the Reformed tradition into dialogue with postcolonial, womanist/feminist, and trauma theologies among other historically overlooked perspectives.
In both the Western European and North American context, there are churches who have rediscovered the notion of the missio dei, the mission of God. Theologians rooted in the Reformed tradition have been deeply involved in these conversations. At the same time, in both contexts for significant amounts of people the Christian faith, and any religious conviction, is increasingly implausible. This course explores the ways in which theologians and practitioners are engaging the challenge of being church in a post-Christian world.
Theological reflection is shaped by contexts large and small. This course will sample how writings from within the Reformed tradition have interacted with particular local forces. Students can use this course to hone in on the ways their own project topic is rooted in a particular local context, with history, traditions, and ways of interpreting and communicating the gospel.
In this course students create an initial draft of their project and work together to hone and improve one another’s project plans. DMRFP Reformed Focus Final Project This course requires satisfactory completion of a doctoral project and paper, which must demonstrate the candidate’s ability to identify a problem, issue, or concern in their own ministry, integrate appropriate theological, biblical, and professional resources, and develop a method for resolution. The doctoral project/paper must reflect depth of theological insight and its positive integration with the practice of ministry. (6 credits)
Overview of historic intergenerational dynamics in a variety of institutions and movements primarily with Black Christian traditions. Emphasis will be placed on historic, theological,
This course is an exploration of community engagement and participation in larger social movements as an expression of and as distinct from Black church formal institutional practices. Students will theologically examine social movements through biblical and other historical narratives, implementing a social-political lens and raising questions about how today’s church writes its own history in the context of contemporary movements.
Engagement with current ministry in Black Church traditions with particular attention to aesthetics and materiality and the significance of social context. The course will introduce students to principles of design thinking as a tool to lead congregations in imagining possibilities for ministry in a specific setting.
Exploration of engagement with Scripture as a living witness in Black churches with particular attention to practices of hermeneutics and their relationship with sociocultural location.
Exploration of forms of sacred proclamation in Black church traditions and how proclamation in these instances, including preaching, artistic, and aesthetic expression, reflects awareness of specific context.
This course considers gender dynamics in Black church traditions and the significance of gender to Black church conceptions of community and leadership possibilities.
A consideration of the global reach of current social movements and the place of Black church traditions in that larger ecosystem. DMBSFP Intergenerational Black Church Final Project The Intergenerational Black Church Studies focus requires satisfactory completion of a doctoral project and paper which must demonstrate the candidate’s ability to identify a problem, issue, or concern in their own ministry, integrate appropriate theological, biblical, and professional resources, and develop a method for resolution. The doctoral project/paper must reflect depth of theological insight and its positive integration with the practice of ministry. (6 credits)
Explores research methods necessary for the academic work of the program; teaches basic ethnographic or other appropriate research methods. Gives students the opportunity to explore a research question that might become the basis for a D.Min. project.
Orients students toward the historical, theological, and practical nature of spiritual direction. Addresses issues of spiritual direction across contexts and in diverse communities. Incorporates practice spiritual direction sessions. Includes skills in asking formative questions and deep listening.
Spirituality in the Christian tradition is largely influenced by Western cultural values. This course develops a more holistic framework of spirituality through engaging non-Western spiritual traditions, including the writings of authors of color from Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian traditions. Key themes to be explored will be: divine encounter, suffering, communal discernment, and embodiment.
In this course, students will explore discernment as deepening connection to God, cultivating compassion for oneself in service, and embodying compassion in acts of care and justice. Within this framework, this course covers traditional practices of individual and corporate discernment. Throughout this course students will practice discernment in their own spiritual journeys and be equipped to lead others in discerning how to participate ever more fully in God’s compassion in the world.
DM 772Thomas Merton: Monk, Poet, and Social Critic
In this course, students will explore the life and spiritual writings of Thomas Merton, including his writing on war and racism and his interreligious dialogue with Buddhism. Merton’s concepts of the true and false selves will receive special attention especially in relationship to how those concepts are deployed in current popular spirituality.
This course explores the theology and development of several major Protestant spiritual traditions, including Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican (including Wesleyan), and Anabaptist, and spiritual practices/emphases associated with them. Attends to how culture and context shape these traditions.
Students in this course will explore the life, theology, and spirituality of Howard Thurman, a seminal figure in 20th century Christian spirituality and civil rights. Central to the course will be Thurman’s construal of the relationship between mysticism and prophetic justice ministry. DMCSFP Christian Spirituality Final Project The program requires satisfactory completion of a doctoral project and paper, which must demonstrate the candidate’s ability to identify a problem, issue, or concern in their own ministry, integrate appropriate theological, biblical, and professional resources, and develop a method for resolution. The doctoral project/paper must reflect depth of theological insight and its positive integration with the practice of ministry. (6 credits) Creative Writing and Public Theology Focus The Doctor of Ministry in Creative Writing and Public Theology will invite student writers to listen to and experiment with different writer’s voices in a variety of genres and to imagine new possibilities with regard to purpose(s), audience(s), and context(s) in theological writing. Along the way, students will grapple with the following questions: 1) What do I want from my writing? 2) What does my/the church want for my writing? 3) What does society
Students choose one of two options. DM 930-1 Memior This course will explore memoir writing through readings, discussions, writing exercises, and workshopping those writings. It will engage a variety of topics and subjects. Students will practice/experiment with writing memoir as well as making constructive comments on the work of peers in the workshop setting.
This Theology Content course is an intensive, week-long course intended to engage students in the question of how to tell stories in times such as these. The course attends to matters of context as well as the methods of storytelling in engagements with the Christian story and vision.
In this course we will examine the interplay between science and religion by examining ecological and theological perspectives on climate change. We will begin with an exploration of how ecology and Christian theologies see the relationship between humans and nature. From there, we will delve into climate change, asking how theological and ecological viewpoints contribute to our
DM 981Thomas Merton: Monk, Poet, and Social Critic
In this course, students will explore the life and spiritual writings of Thomas Merton, including his writing on war and racism and his interreligious dialogue with Buddhism. Merton’s concepts of the true and false selves will receive special attention especially in relationship to how those concepts are deployed in current popular spirituality. This course will allow students to explore the fluid dimensions of faith and the complexities of their vocational context. Reading Merton’s writings will reveal the work of a public theologian and demonstrate how theological and scriptural knowledge are integrating into their cultural contexts. Merton’s writings will also help students analyze their own cultural contexts to frame and respond to crucial issues in their ministry.
This final Craft of Writing course unfolds online over 10 weeks and is intended to support students as they develop their final creative manuscripts for the Doctor of Ministry project. This is a workshop-oriented class that provides ample time to write, to share their writing and receive feedback from classmates, to consult individually and in small groups with mentors and faculty advisors, and to ask questions about their work. Note: Final Creative Manuscript proposals and the manuscripts themselves must be accepted by the Doctor of Ministry Director, so any work in this class is subject to final approval through the program’s office. DMCWFP Creative Writing Final Project This course is intended for students working on their final project for the Doctor of Ministry in Creative Writing and Public Theology. During this time, students will write their final project, which will include a Creative Manuscript (genre and length to be determined in conjunction with faculty advisors) and a prose Statement of Vocation as a Public Theologian (20-25 pages, documented in Chicago Style).
