Jason Clark

Back in April, I wrote about a new Doctor of Ministry program, George Fox Seminary have asked me to develop, and be the lead mentor for.

I’ve been buried in the syllabus and fine detail for marketing and accreditation, and wanted to surface and try to see the wood for the trees, by posting a quick summary here, of what I think this program will be about, and it’s distinctives.

So my first run at distilling several dozen pages:

Who is this program for?
The Global Missional Leadership D.Min exists primarily for Christian leaders in church, the business world, and mission communities, who are looking for a comprehensive professional and educational development at a Doctoral level, to equip them for work and ministry, in our global emerging context.

The GML D.Min is therefore centred around these elements:

Focus
1. Missional and Emerging: Church, Leadership and Culture. These are the main domains of exploration. An exploration of the nature of our emerging culture, and the implications for church, mission, work and leadership.
2. Global: An exploration of these domains by first hand visits to Europe, Africa and Asia, to get outside the box and gain a truly global perspective and experience
3. Themes & Topics: Include, Secularism, Consumerism, Post-modernity, Colonialism & Globalization, Social Justice, The Environment, Religious Fundamentalism & Terrorism, ‘Human identity: The Role of Women, The Family, Sexual Identity’, ‘Church, World & Culture: The nature and purpose of Church’, The Nature and Art of Global Missional Leadership

Method
4. Reflective Practitioners: A new breed of christian leader who wants to engage in theological reflection that informs practice, and practice that is informed by theological reflection. Meeting with other ‘reflective practitioners’ in our global face to face locations. To learn from each other in a co-hort, where our church, mission and workplace roles can provide synergy to each in our learning, and ministry contexts.
5. Theological, Biblical, Historical, and Sociological: To use these modes of exploration for a ‘deep’ understanding of global missional leadership, church and culture.
6. Hybrid & Web 2.0: Learn through integrated technology and the education tools of our emerging culture, into learning and ministry, becoming masters of social media, to be confident and fluent in the art of incarnating ministry and leadership through the language and media of our global culture.
7. Specialization: Have the opportunity to specialise and become ‘expert’ with an area of interest, and to impart that expertise to the cohort and the wider christian community

Values
8. Open Source: Create content and resources that are accessible for free through public “channels”, of forums, blogs, pod/vod-casting, image-sharing tools etc.
9. Relational: Be committed to relational learning and mutuality, wanting to become part of a cadre of coaches, mentors and friendships, within this global learning environment
10. Church: Robustly critique the church in all it’s forms, including the ones most dear to us. Yet inspiring each other with a love and passion for the nature, purpose and mission of the church.

Programme Structure/Delivery
Years 1 & 2: The first two years of the program are led by Jason, as lead mentor. Students have required reading for each semester, around the program topics, and are assessed by online discussions, and written papers. Students all meet in for three face to face times, as described above, each time a 9 day duration. During these first two years students will identify their area of specialization for personal research and development.

Years 3 onwards: On completing the first two years work, and achieving doctoral candidacy, students will complete either a project or dissertation (with a doctoral supervisor) that addresses a work/ministry/organizational problem in depth and provides a researched framework that underpins a proposed response.

This stage is an opportunity for students to synthesis their learning experience during their cohort mentor led stage, research their own personal area of interest further and make application with that to an area they wish to address.

Lead Mentor
Jason has 8 years experience of working in the city of london in a business environment, is a qualified high school teacher, and has planted a church that he now pastors/leads full time. He has completed a D.Min at George Fox Seminary, and is a PhD candidate at Kings College London, in ‘political theology’ exploring the nature of consumer and secular culture and the implications for ecclesiology.

He travels regularly speaking on the issues of this D.Min program, writes a well known blog, and is in the middle of two related book projects.

Locations
Students, instructors, and advisors will gather as ‘reflective practitioners’ in 3 international contexts for an immersive learning experience in which students will engage one another, their instructors and advisors, and scholars and Christian leaders in each context. To this end, we are establishing ongoing, mutually beneficial partnerships with seminaries at the following locations:

1. Europe
* London School of Theology (LST), in London, UK, with excersions to Oxford University and Cambridge University
* Tabor Seminary, in Marburg, Germany
2. Africa
Rotating between two schools
* Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), Nairobi, Kenya
* South African Theological Seminary (SATS), in Gauteng (near Johannesburg), South Africa
3. Asia
* Malaysian Theological Seminary (STM), in Seremban, Malaysia