Bethel Seminary St. Paul Launches Community Ministry Leadership Degree

Mark Harden is intimately acquainted with the challenges of urban life. Growing up in Detroit and later patrolling its streets as a law enforcement officer, he’s seen the worst the inner city has to offer. He has also seen the potential lying dormant in our urban centers, waiting for a compassionate, knowledgeable hand to help unleash it.

Harden was recently named dean of Multicultural Affairs at Bethel Seminary and is lead faculty in the seminary’s newly launched Master of Arts in Community Ministry Leadership (M.A.C.M.L.) degree program in St. Paul. An ordained pastor and former
police officer, he received master of arts degrees from Marygrove College and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University. He taught as adjunct faculty at the Ecumenical Theological Seminary in Detroit; served as associate staff minister at Greater Christ Baptist Church; and was director of Christian education, dean of the Bible Academy, and youth minister at St. James Baptist Church. Harden also was a patrolman and Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) officer in suburban Detroit and served as World Vision’s church mobilization coordinator there. He was instrumental in founding and leading two Detroit-area organizations: Streetwise, Inc., a ministry to urban youth, and Detroit Love, Inc., a Christian outreach and development ministry.

Under Harden’s leadership, the new M.A.C.M.L. program teaches an integrated and proactive approach to city ministry. “It’s not just about feeding the poor,” Harden says. “It’s about equipping seminary students to empower individuals and families through transformational ministry in the urban context.”

The program emphasizes a holistic perspective, assessing needs, developing skills, and implementing initiatives. Its objectives are to prepare students to:

• assess and address holistic and developmental needs of individuals, families, youth, and children in an urban context;
• identify and evaluate the explicit and implicit theological and theoretical components of Christian ministry and its appropriateness;
• apply community organizing and development principles for community building and comprehensive ministry initiatives in an urban context;
• facilitate church- and community-level strategic program planning and implementation for transformational ministry;
• articulate a practical theology of ministry that communicates Christian values and the role of faith and spirituality in public ministry; and
• develop essential features for management and mobilization of an effective faith-based organization for Christian ministry.

M.A.C.M.L. students engage in the classical disciplines of biblical studies, systematic theology, and church history to form a foundation for their ministry training. They take introductory courses in transformational leadership, cultural awareness, and spiritual and personal formation. Then they build on that learning with specialized courses in church-based community outreach and mission agency professional ministry, courses like Compassionate Urban Ministry and The Church in the Urban World. In their final year of the program, students participate in a mentored leadership development course to ensure the integration and mastery of their theological preparation for hands-on ministry.

Harden’s life experiences have perfectly primed him to lead this new program. Having ministered in urban environments himself, he is passionate about teaching others to do likewise. Citing Christ’s example as his model, he explains that “Jesus met human needs as He traveled from city to city. Life experience ignited my passion for city ministry, but Jesus’ life and ministry are what fuel it.”