Heart&Mind
Summer 2007
• With Jesus on the Muslim Road
• The Most Unreached People on Earth
• The Growing Edge of Thinking
  • Students Said...
• One for the History Books
  • Why Me God?
• Trout Lake Camp Celebrates 60 Years
  • Quotes about Trout Lake
  • Best Week of Summer, All Summer Long
• Campus News
  • President George Brushaber Announces 2008 Retirement
  • Festival of Hope
  • Seminary Professors Release New Books
  • Seminary of the East Roundtable Dinners
  • Harden Installed as Dean of Intercultural Relations
  • From Here to Eternity…
  • Miroslav Volf Visits St. Paul
  • Remembering Norris Magnuson
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| Students Said... |

Doctor of Ministry Cohort Journeys to Jordan

Doctor of Ministry students in Bethel Seminary's new Global and Contextual Leadership program were reduced to tears in Amman, Jordan, during the first of three scheduled international intensives – not because they cracked under heavy academic demands, but because they were so moved by what they saw and heard. "Tears ran down my face as I listened to Middle Eastern leaders tell of their efforts to bring peace to their region," says participant Naomi Ludeman Smith, associate professor and director of first-year programs at Bethel University's College of Arts and Sciences.

The first-of-its-kind program at Bethel Seminary has attracted 12 top leaders from across the country, including Ludeman Smith, two national BGC leaders, and heads of global and contextual ministries from several churches.

Becoming Agents of Change

"The Doctor of Ministry in Global and Contextual Leadership develops skills that will assist participants in exercising transformational leadership in cross-cultural and international settings," says program lead faculty Wilbur Stone, Ph.D. "These key skills include understanding the critical relationship of context to ministry, and the ways in which context affects the nature and style of effective leadership. Students must learn to exegete a cultural context with an intentional emphasis on an urban situation; understand the nature and process related to introducing innovations within a specific cultural setting; and become more effective agents of change."

The program is targeted to persons involved in international business or ministry-related vocations; cross-cultural ministry among the burgeoning population of immigrants, refugees, and migrants in the U.S.; and missions pastors, denominational missions leaders, international non-profit leaders, and others called on to exercise effective transformational leadership on a global scale. Rather than attempt to teach these skills in a classroom, Stone and Sam Rima, Ph.D., director of the seminary's doctor of ministry programs, co-created a D.Min. degree that would expose students to learning experiences in a variety of global contexts.

Last January, while in Amman, students took the Intercultural Development Inventory to measure their intercultural sensitivity, and discussed the importance of moving away from a mono-cultural worldview toward a more robust multicultural perspective that will increase ministry and leadership effectiveness at a time in history increasingly characterized by rapid globalization on all fronts.

No Media Spin

Participants also spent time in dialogue with Ronnie Lessem, Ph.D., director of the Trans-cultural Centre and Trans-cultural Programmes at the University of Buckingham, U.K., and with Alexander Schieffer, Ph.D., founder and managing partner of the Center of Excellence for Leadership and Learning in Munich, Germany. "Lessem and Schiffer took us to the growing edge of their thinking," says student Gary Reynolds. "They weren't sharing something that they had packaged in final form some decades back." Palestinian Muslims and others spoke to the group as well, discussing conflicts in the Middle East and how they personally have been affected by them.

For most of the students, a highlight of the week was getting to meet and hear from those Jordanians who shared their personal stories about strife in the Middle East and the disruption it has caused their families. Direct interaction without any media spin provided students with perspectives they had not previously considered, helping them understand the incredible complexity surrounding issues in the Middle East. "I think many of us were surprised to learn how defensive we could be when presented with ideas and beliefs that differed from our own," says Rima, who lead the Amman intensive. "We learned how challenging it can be to fully enter into the story of another and move beyond hearing to genuine understanding, which can then build a bridge for effective communication."

During the few times students weren't involved in class and discussion, they found time to explore old Amman, the second oldest, continuously inhabited city on earth; Mount Nebo, where Moses first viewed the Promised Land before he died; the Dead Sea; and the ancient rock city of Petra.

Next Year and Beyond

A second overseas intensive is planned for 2008, when students will travel to Vijayawada, India, for work on contextual theologizing. The program's third year will feature an urban ministry course conducted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Stone anticipates holding intensives for future cohorts in locations such as Cameroon; Nice, France; South America; and Eastern Europe.