MASTER OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN MISSIONAL LEADERSHIP

The MRE in Missional Leadership helps you build upon solid biblical theology and pastoral foundation. If you are committed to leading within the church and find yourself challenged by the implications of a practical and living gospel in an everchanging, dynamic culture, this course of study is for you.

Through the MRE program at RU the congregation, not the classroom, is where you will gain, expand and grow your understanding of missional leadership. This dynamic, hands-on approach to religious education offers you a chance to work in ministerial roles in which you can develop your leadership capabilities.

This unique program will connect you with resources and people beyond RU’s outstanding resident faculty, including key leaders in both the missional and emerging church movements, as well as missional leaders from around the world. As a graduate student, these leaders will serve both as faculty and online mentors.

Congregational leaders today can no longer assume that “if we build it, they will come.” Things have changed. Often, church leaders are doing everything they’ve been trained to do, better than they’ve ever done it before, but with diminishing impact. The emerging ministry situation in which we find ourselves will require nimble congregations, imaginative leaders, and new ways for preparing women and men for ministry. The MRE in missional leadership is Rochester University’s attempt to bring a different approach to training ministers for Christian communities in a new missional era.

Ministry challenges in a new missional era don’t always come with obvious solutions. Leaders, therefore, must be able to interpret their own cultural settings, recognize new opportunities to experience the hospitality of God on terms other than their own, and equip themselves and others with the spiritual practices necessary to experiment in the midst of ambiguity and anxiety. These are challenging times, but they’re also exciting times for those who have a sense of adventure and are willing to trust the leading of a living God into a new future.

The MRE features four distinctive program aspects that when taken together offer a unique educational experience. These four aspects, discussed more fully below are: 1. Situated learning, 2. Spiritual formation, 3. Cohort learning, and 4. Over the shoulder learning. We’ve been doing learning these ways for over ten years now, and we think the results speak for themselves (Link to student testimonials). We hope you’ll come learn with us.

1. Situated learning: We think learning to lead is best done by actually leading. So, we want students to learn in the “situation,” or location, where opportunities to lead already exist. Students are required, therefore, to have signed consent forms to do projects in their ministry setting. Each course features a major assignment that begins in the student’s context. This is because we believe the living God is at work in the details of congregational experience. So, the congregation is not a place simply to apply our theology, but the congregation is actually a source for doing theology. We discover God sometimes in ways we don’t expect by attending closely to the details of congregational life.
2. Spiritual formation: Central to leading and joining in the mission of God is the pursuit of a God-centered identity. In the MRE, embracing our God-centered identity is considered job #1. Woven throughout the program from orientation to graduation, students are invited to attend to the presence and work of God in their lives, communities, and the world. Students share common commitments, such as prayer, attentiveness, hospitality, and simplicity by crafting a rule of life that contains spiritual rhythms which open them up more fully to the life of God. Students have frequent conversation points through the program with a spiritual director and fellow students, ensuring that the pursuit of a God-centered identity is not done alone.
3. Cohort learning: Students journey throughout the program with the same peers from the beginning to the end. At graduation, we consistently hear that the relationships made have deepened their time in the program in profound ways. Before any online learning occurs, students spend time together at orientation and for their first course, and they continue learning together both online and in person for the remainder of the program. This deepens the learning, as students do not have to continuously meet new peers and build new trust with each course. Students learn by observing others who are in a variety of different ministry contexts and navigate challenging theological and spiritual waters together, supporting one another in ministry throughout the program and beyond.
4. Over the shoulder learning: While students primarily learn within their ministry contexts, they also travel to various locations together near the beginning of each semester in order to learn from other communities participating in the mission of God. In places such as Portland, OR, Durham, NC, and Nashville, TN students encounter new ideas and possibilities, and their imaginations are opened to the new work of God in their own contexts. These weeks are also a rich time of sharing life together through meals, conversations, worship, spiritual practices, reflection, and rest.

• God-centered identity. 

  A missional leader, helping groups discern and join the mission of God, leads from a God-centered identity. Their identity in ministry comes first, not from their role, but their practice of the presence of God.

  • Understands God’s life as a community and the life of the missional leader as a participation in this reality.
  • Cultivates practices in a community of discernment that foster an ongoing sense of participating in God’s life.
  • Demonstrates an awareness of how a God-centered identity is crucial for the work of change necessary for congregations in the midst of change.
• Cultivating an ecology of the Word in missional communities.

  Missional leaders help communities discern the calling of God on their common life by attending to the Word of God.

  • An awareness of the main themes of the biblical testimonies in both Old and New Testaments.
  • Basic competencies in various reading strategies, e.g. historical-critical, literary, rhetorical, lectio divina, dwelling in the word.
  • An ability to pursue various reading approaches related to missional hermeneutics.
  • Ability to use Scripture in helping groups form vocational identity in God’s mission.
  • Prepare communities for articulating what it is they think God has called them to in God’s mission from a biblical perspective.
• Interpreting missional communities in light of the global story of Christianity.

  Missional leaders invite others into the ongoing story of God. As both bearers of the tradition and interpreters of the present moment in light of the life and purposes of God, missional leaders help their communities find faithful and relevant ways of embodying the mission of God.

  • Able to locate self and ecclesial tradition in relation to the larger story of Christianity, both historically and geographically.
  • Understands the mission of God in light of both the life of the Triune God and the coming future of God. (Trinity and eschatology).
  • Able to lead congregations in theological practices—that is, pursuing together the presence of a living God.
  • Embody God’s reconciling purposes for all of creation, both individually and communally.
• Interpreting and engaging local cultures in light of the mission of God toward the goal of missional innovation.

  Missional leaders interpret and engage their contexts culturally. They work toward the understanding of the gospel in a new cultural context and help communities embody those meanings in culturally appropriate ways.

  • Exhibiting a proficiency in basic ethnographic skills: thick description through interviews, journaling, and empathetic observation.
  • Capacity to interpret missional communities from cultural perspectives.
  • Demonstrate an awareness of how the gospel corresponds to the reality of a plurality of cultures.
  • Ability to lead groups through processes of cultural change.
  • Ability to help a missional community narrate the meaning of its life as an ongoing participation in the story of God.
• Inviting and enabling others to participate in God’s mission.

  Missional leaders help others find their place in God’s mission in relation to both the church and the world.

  • Ability to lead groups in discernment.
  • Leading through processes of action, reflection, and articulation.
  • Helping groups understand change and processes of change as they relate to God’s identity in mission.