I am teaching a seminar class with Mike King (YouthFront) addressing Missional Leadership and Discipleship this May. What makes the class interesting and challenging comes from the course being offered as a "hybrid" project. Part of the class will be "face to face" instruction in KC (May 21-25) while the rest of the class will be online (June 1 through July 30 with time off for family commitments) so that students can enter into contexts where they "practice" missional leadership and discipleship and reflect online. Here are portions of the syllabus.
CED790 SEMINAR IN CHRISTIAN EDUCATION (3 HOURS): Missional Leadership and Discipleship. Subjects of relevance will be studied according to the needs and interests of the participants. Repeat credit will be allowed for non-duplicated seminar subjects. Subject Topic: An investigation into the life of the missional church and its practices, with specific attention to formative process that occur in the midst of cultural engagement
Course Narrative & Rationale
Hearkening to the works of Leslie Newbingen, Darrel Guder and Brian McClaren, new churches emerge that take seriously the missional mandate of God. How do contemporary churches discern and engender life engaged in missional practice? What formative processes guide congregations whose task remains transformative engagement of local communities? This course explores contextual and organic ecclesial practices, dispositions, and communal structures to answer these questions.
Course Outcomes
At the end of this course the student will be able to:
1) Articulate a working theology of missional leadership
2) Assess a local setting for missional ministry potential
3) Utilize specific practices for the sake of missional ministry
4) Conceive of a specific structures to guide a missionally shaped ministry
Required Texts & Course Materials
Brafman, Ori and Rod Beckstrom The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations New York: Portfolio Hardcover/Penguin books, 2006 (240 pp) ISBN-10: 1591841437
Frost, Michael Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006 (327 pp) ISBN 978-1-921202-84-1
King, Mike. Presence-Centered Youth Ministry: Guiding Students into Spiritual Formation. Downer’s Grove: IVP Books 2006 (187 pp) ISBN 10-0-8308-3383-8
Minatrea, Milfred Shaped by God’s Heart: The Passion and Practices of Missional Churches San Francisco: Jossey Bass. 2004 (184 pp) ISBN 0-7879-7111-1
Roxburgh, Alan J. The Sky is Falling!?! Leaders Lost in Transition. Eagle, ID: ACI Publishing, 2005. (187 pages) ISBN 0977718409
Recommended Texts & Course Materials
Frost, Michael and Alan Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003 (223 pp) ISBN 978-1-8768-2587-4
Guder, Darrell L. (Ed.) Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1998 ISBN 0-8028-4350-6
McClaren, Brian. A Generous Orthodoxy. Grand Rapids: Zondervan 2004. ISBN 0-310-25803-0
Padgitt, Doug. Church Re-Imagined: The Spiritual Formation of People In Communities of Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan/ Youth Specialities, 2005 (240 pp) ISBN 0-310-26975-X
Roxburgh, Alan, Fred Romanuk, and Eddie Gibbs. The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2006 (240 pp) ISBN-10: 078798325X
Wesley, Paul (Comp.) Leslie Newbigin, Missionary Theologian: A Reader. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2006. ISBN 0-8028-2982-1
Course Outline
What is Missional Church?
Missional Narratives: Grounded Theory & Definitions Discussion
Missional Encounters and Practices
Missional Practices
Missional Structures
Leadership and Discipleship
Summaries: Project Discussion
Online discussion: Expanding the narratives on Missional Leadership
Exploring local Practices & strategy
Course Assignments & Requirements
1) Class participation (500 pts): As a hybrid course, this class provides both a learning community and opportunity to contextualize knowledge developed in a local setting. To facilitate both processes, students are required to be fully engaged in face to face sessions at the NTS campus as well as continued online discussion following the class either in general online discussion or in smaller communities of support. Class participation will be divided into two components: class interaction and online discussion.
200 points: Students are required to attend all sessions on campus and engage in class discussion. This grade includes the submission of a 5-7 page analysis of The Sky if Falling !! due at the beginning of the first day of class
300 points: Students are required to log on and discuss class assignments online at least twice a week. Due to the nature of summer commitments students will be allowed to miss the equivalency of two weeks of online discussion (one week per month) over the eight week period. The remaining weeks’ discussion will be evaluated on a scale of 50 pts/weekly
2) Working theology of missional leadership (200 pts): Students will submit a five to seven page summative work listing their core convictions concerning missional leadership. This theology must address the nature of missional ministry, the role of the leadership in ministry, and the role of the church in missional ministry. This position paper should include references, where appropriate, using Turabian form and style. The paper should provide a rationale that the student can use in articulating his or her ministry to others as a way of inviting people into the ministry, or in describing the student’s ministerial role to other pastors involved in ecclesial ministry.
3) Working strategy for missional leadership in a specified context (300 pts). The student will develop a working strategy for beginning and sustaining missional ministry in a specified context. Attention must be given to both discerning the nature of the ministry, the specific practices that will guide missional praxis, and a tentative structure for holding those practices in place. The plan should be consistent with resources explored through the class, coherent in how each element works together and pertinent to the context selected. The overall plan may include multiple media resources (pictures, graphs, etc) but should include a “narrative” that comprehensively describes the strategy in seven to ten pages.
Method for Submitting Assignments
Submit all assignments through the assignment section of Black Board as scheduled
Policy Regarding Late Work & Missed Exams
All work reduced 15% after deadline for the first week. Assignments will be reduced and additional 15% for each week late thereafter
