The Leadership in Emerging Culture Doctor of Ministry (DMin) tracks explore the character and shape of effective Christian leadership in the emerging culture.

The Global Missional Leadership DMin program focuses on equipping Christian leaders in church, civil society organizations, and mission communities to confidently, constructively, and effectively carry out the mission of the gospel of Jesus Christ in an increasingly interconnected world.

Students focus on the three domains of church, culture, and leadership and the interface between them. They engage in theological/biblical, historical, and sociological analysis of the emerging global culture to gain cultural and theological self-awareness as 'reflective practioners'. They do specialized research in topics such as consumerism, colonialism, the environment, and social justice. They gain skills in the use of online and mobile social media tools and they develop an international network of scholarly relationships through real-world experiences in Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia.

Learn more about the program:

• Program Overview (see below)
• Program Delivery Model (see below)
• Costs and fees
• What others are saying...

Getting started:

• Admissions requirements
• Become a student
• Preparing for the first module
• Orientation Advance schedule

Program overview

Joe Burnham's overview

GML1 DMin student, Joe Burnham, put together this Youtube video to submit to Google Wave's invitation program. While making his case for why we need Google Wave for the Global Missional Leadership DMin program, he offers a great overview of the program.

View Joe's video, "Why we need Wave"

Program Purpose

Many Christian leaders in churches, Christian organizations and various mission communities recognize that the world is rapidly becoming interconnected economically, technologically, culturally and politically. At the same time, while leaders are often culturally aware, they often lack an adequate confidence and grounding in Scripture, church history, and theology. As a result, they find themselves struggling to adapt to this context so as to be able to fruitfully and effectively proclaim and embody the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In response, leaders need to be reconfigured into reflective practitioners who understand the complexities of this interconnected world and know how to engage it for the sake of the mission of the gospel. Dr. Clark refers to this as a ‘thick understanding’ of an increasingly global culture.

• Global: In order to understand and engage our own local contexts appropriately, we must properly situation our ministry context within the increasingly globalized world where technology is making information and resources more accessible and local communities and nations are increasingly interconnected economically and culturally.
• Missional: We accept the loss of Christianity as the “center” of society and culture in the West. To the degree that a global community necessarily entails religious pluralism, we propose that mission in a global village means moving beyond the idea of sending select people from a “Christian country” to other countries who have not heard the good news. Instead, we need to think of mission as equipping Christians to serve in their own context. 
• Leadership: We seek to cultivate and form Christian leaders who engages in theological reflection that informs practice and vice-versa. These leaders possess a “thick understanding” of global culture and ecclesiology. While they are prepared to scrutinize contemporary ministry models, they are able to offer constructive alternatives.

Program Objectives

Students in the program:

• Establish a conceptual basis for leadership
• Refine one's thinking about strategies for effective leadership
• Explore how one's identification with the person of Christ impacts one's self-perception as a leader
• Engage in and reflect on a cross-cultural experience in order to "think globally and act locally" with regard to leadership issues in their particular ministry contexts
• Reflect on the essential intermingling of leadership and spiritual formation in corporate Christian contexts
• Synthesize a coherent theology of leadership in that will serve to inform one’s practice of leadership

Global Missional Leadership DMin Track-Specific Emphases

Dr. Clark will lead students in accomplishing the objectives above by especially focusing on the following:

• As reflective practitioners, students will focus their learning on the following elements. They will:

  • Explore and trace the philosophical, cultural, political, sociological, religious, and scientific developments that are occurring worldwide.
  • Seek to identify some of the major challenges of our global context for effective Christian mission.
  • Reflect biblically, theologically and historically to formulate suitable responses to these challenges.
  • Explore and describe the ethics, spirituality, and practice of leadership necessary for an international global context.
  • Integrate all that they have learned as reflective practitioners into their own ministry contexts and practices.
• Additionally, students will select an area for specialization under the supervision of their faculty advisor in topics such as Secularism, consumerism and religious fundamentalism, colonialism, social justice, the environment, and family and gender-related issues.

Program Delivery Model

Cohort-based

The Global Missional Leadership DMin track seeks to foster the development of life-long relations among students and advisors. We organize students into groups of 20 that journey together through the entire program. A new cohort launches each academic year. Cohorts meet annually at the face-to-face (F2F) experiences. By means of online synchronous and asynchronous, cohorts critically discuss and probe course-related issues and topics with an eye toward their own ministry contexts.  

Advisor-directed

From the outset of the program, we pair students with an individual faculty advisor who helps them develop and focus their areas of specialization in the customized courses. Faculty advisors ensure the academic integrity of their students’ work by helping them to sharpen their critical thinking, writing and source-documentation skills. Faculty advisors go on to serve as their students’ dissertation advisors.

Advances

Students participate in three face-to-face learning experiences in Europe, Africa, and Asia of around 10 days each. Students engage Dr. Clark and guest scholars, share their research in seminars, engage students and faculty at the host location, visit nearby missional communities, and visit in-person with their advisor. Learn more...

Web 2.0/Social Media Platform

The Global Missional Leadership DMin track leverages various online tools to bridge the distance among students and advisors and to enable students to learn collaboratively. While the lead mentor and faculty advisors provide course content and expertise, students also create significant content for their cohort and for the public.

Students, faculty advisors and the lead mentor use various social-media tools and services to learn and interact with one another. They meet weekly in synchronous chats to maintain and develop community. Students also discuss images, videos, articles/blogs with their colleagues asynchronously in online forums, blogs, microblogs (twitter), video and image sharing sites. Students and faculty identify all program-related material using the 'dmingml' tag.

While students will continue to use desktop and laptops to perform these tasks, students will also increasing use of smartphone mobile technology such as the Apple iPhone or Motorola Droid.

You may join and engage in the on-going conversation at gmldmin.org. You do not have to be a student to participate.