Doctor of Ministry in Contextual Theology : DMin
Program Type
Hours
36 HoursLength
3-4 YearsNorthern’s DMin programs enable ministry leaders to undertake doctoral study that is both academically rigorous and deeply engaged in ministry practice, personal renewal, and God’s mission in the world.
Student Experience
Programs are structured in a cohort model. Students can expect to form a unique community of learning as they journey through the program. Courses offered in the Intensive model encourage strong relationships among peers, developing friendships in ministry that serve students well professionally and personally. Courses are also open to students from other cohorts and programs, giving students the best of a cohort model together with the dynamism that comes from encountering new colleagues in various classes.
Student Experience
Programs are structured in a cohort model. Students can expect to form a unique community of learning as they journey through the program. Courses offered in the Intensive model encourage strong relationships among peers, developing friendships in ministry that serve students well professionally and personally. Courses are also open to students from other cohorts and programs, giving students the best of a cohort model together with the dynamism that comes from encountering new colleagues in various classes.
About the DMin in Contextual Theology
The cultures of the West have shifted in North America. It is longer a monolithic Christian culture. In the last 60 years, in many of its most populated areas, North America has become a post-Christendom culture, a society of multiple cultures (Canada and U.S. differing as to how this is managed as a society) with various antagonisms, histories, and languages driving its meanings and organizing its way of life.
In order to lead a church into mission, it must engage its context no longer assuming that its habits of church, its language of Christianity, and its postures for engagement from 60 years ago still apply. Instead, we must be able to read our contexts, think through the gospel contextually, and organize church differently for the mission of God in Christ. This is the work of contextual theology. The DMin in Contextual Theology program aims to train Christian leaders to lead their congregations into engaging their local contexts for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Supervisors
Every student will have a supervisor to oversee his or her thesis writing. The program has employed many scholars of world wide reputation. Here are just a few of our supervisors:
- Dr. John Bowen – Wycliffe College, Toronto
- Dr. William Cavanaugh – DePaul University
- Dr. John Franke – Yellowstone Theological Institute
- Dr. Ross Hastings – Regent College Vancouver
- Dr. Scott Hagley – Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
- Dr. Elaine Heath – Duke Divinity School
- Dr. Len Hjalmarson – Thunder Bay ON
- Dr. George Hunsberger – Western Seminary
- Dr. Roland Kuhl – Center for Parish Development
- Dr. Mark Lau Branson– Fuller Theological Seminary
- Dr. John McKnight – Asset Based Community, Northwestern University
- Dr. Scot McKnight – Northern Seminary
- Dr. Christine Pohl – Asbury Theological Seminary
- Dr. Alan Roxburgh –Missiologists Missional Network, Vancouver
- Dr. Bryan Stone – Boston University
- Dr. Brian J. Walsh – University of Toronto
- Dr. Amos Yong – Fuller Theological Seminary
Cost
The program costs a total of $19,900 (DMin) paid out over four years. Northern Seminary works out a payment plan that can fit into many people’s budgets. Northern Seminary encourages pastors, leaders, ministers, to advocate for funding from sources like their local churches, denominational offices, benefactors for this worthy task of preparing leadership for the future.
Apply Now
Click here to apply. Fill out forms and supply an essay. Then allow three weeks for processing. At which time you’ll have an interview with David Fitch. We look forward to welcoming you to our program.
Requirements for Completion
The degree program is composed of seven seminars. It brings pastors from around North America and around the world to spend four years together on a journey through these seven seminars. Each student writes a Thesis at the end and goes through a capstone Oral Exam.
DMin programs are four year programs, consisting of seven courses over three years and a year for thesis writing. Occasionally a student will need more time to complete program requirements. In that situation, the outer limit for completion of the program is ten years.
Curriculum
The Doctor of Ministry program consists of 36 quarter hours of study. Each course is structured in a one-week intensive format. Each student writes a thesis at the end of the program.
- Core Courses – 3 courses /12 quarter hours
- Specialized Courses – 4 courses / 16 quarter hours
- Thesis Project Research and Writing – 8 quarter hours
Core Courses
DM 7015 Becoming Doctors of the Church (4 quarter hours)
This course introduces students to the function and importance of the office of “doctor of the church.” In the course, students delve deeply into “why I believe” the central tenets of the faith and identify and begin to research a key ministry context. The research will become central to the doctoral thesis.
DM 7045 Bible and Theological Method (4 quarter hours)
This course is a general hermeneutics course that grounds theological method and the study of Scripture. It provides an opportunity for students to engage specific biblical texts and theological topics as they relate to their ministry contexts and thesis.
DM 7060 Thesis Design (4 quarter hours)
This seminar walks the student through constructing a thesis that begins with a driving question about the relationship between their specialization and a ministerial context.
Course Content
Pre-Intensive Work
Prior to each intensive course, students complete reading, reflection, and assignments through which learning is applied to one’s own ministerial context. Students bring a variety of individual ministry issues to the course. Each course is designed with this in mind so readings and assignments allow for flexibility in terms of personal focus.
Intensive Weeks
Courses typically meet in the winter and summer of each year for a week-long intensive from Monday – Friday midday. This is a productive, flexible format for doctorate study and allows students to focus for several months on each course. Course sessions involve engagement of heart, intellect, and practical implementation. The goal is to create a community of faith, learning and support. During intensives, students engage in reflection and development of action plans for responding in new ways to issues and opportunities in ministry.
Post-Intensive Work
Following each intensive week, students complete reflective assignments, often leading to further research and study in order to faithfully implement new ministry action within one’s ministerial context.
Courses
Overview of DMin in Missional Leadership Courses
The Mission Shaped Church in Post Christendom (David Fitch)
The practices of the N. American protestant church have largely been dependent upon Christendom assumptions that make mission a program of the established church. The theology of Missio Dei, the onset of new post- Christendom contexts in N. America presses for a fresh approach to cultivating missional congregations. This course examines the cultural assumptions, theology that undergirds the practices of the church. It then re- describes the historic practices of church for the shaping of congregations in Mission
Becoming Doctors of the Church (Mark Mulder)
This seminar orients the doctoral student to being a contextual pastor theologian. It teaches the student ethnography as a pastoral discipline and research method. Fundamentally, the course places each student as a pastor within his/her own ministry context as opposed to a researcher above the context operating upon the field as an object for research. The student will learn the basics of constructing an ethnographic project, how to definehis/her “field,” record the narratives, ask the right questions, make substantive observations, and then reflect theologically about what has been seen and heard.
Contextual Theology (David Fitch)
Each of us engages in life and ministry on the basis of our own “working” theology. This course helps the student define his/her own theological assumptions, the context from which they come, and well as develop a method which enables him/her to dialogue in context, grow and extend one’s theology so as to connect with and shape a community of Christ in context. At the end of this course, the student should a.) Come to grips with several theological convictions that lie at the foundation of his or her life and ministry, b.) Possess the means by which to extend those theological convictions into new contexts under the Lordship of Christ.
Incarnating the Gospel in Culture (Soong Chan Rah, Al Tizon)
This course explores the inter-section of gospel, church, and culture by bringing together biblical, theological, cultural and social science resources to the issues of engagement with one’s particular context. We will learn how to exegete the deep patterns and structures of a community’s life within a context in order to recognize how such issues as power, distance, gender, place, race, gender etc. shape an understanding of the gospel and contribute to the shaping of the church.
The Bible in Context: Gospel, Kingdom and Salvation (Dennis Edwards/Michael Gorman/Lynn Cohick)
The contextual theologian must both understand the Bible in its original context and be able see his/her own context thru the Bible. He or she must be able to move from the text to interpreting his/her local context through the lens of what God is doing as revealed in the Bible. This course examines three key themes of the Bible: gospel, authority, and kingdom, along with the related issues of atonement, conversion and women in ministry. During this class, we are learning how to understand these issues first Biblically. This provides the foundation from which to reflect off the context and understand the context in terms of what God is doing. The student will leave this course with a thorough understanding of gospel, kingdom, and church for the practice of interpreting these themes in a local context.
Missional Leadership (Alan Roxburgh, Mark Lau Branson)
While North American culture is passing through a period of rapid, discontinuous change, little has been offered to church leaders in terms of frameworks and resources to understand and lead church systems through this change. This course provides an alternative framework for understanding the nature and effects of discontinuous change, transition and liminality. It provides a constructive methodology for non-linear leadership based in the theologies of God as Trinity, creation, and the Spirit as one who forms a future among a people. Using systems and complexity theory, this course blends theology and ministerial practice in a new understanding of leadership to open up the future and make provocative proposals for the church to move into the future.
Thesis Design (David Fitch)
This seminar walks the student through constructing a thesis that begins with a driving question and the participant observer located in a ministerial context. Then an ethnographic process is constructed, theological and cultural concepts located, and a bibliography constructed that sets the stage for a final performance of an original contribution to contextual theology. The approval of the thesis proposal that comes from this class sets the stage for the final thesis that provides the capstone of the Doctoral process.
FAQS
Student Stories
Read what our students have to say about their experiences here.