This course offers an opportunity to deepen spiritual life in personal, interpersonal, communal, and cosmic dimensions. It will focus on engaging contemplative practices from across the inter-spiritual tradition as well as study the teachings of mystics, privileging those who lived engaged in the pursuit of collective justice. Participants will have a chance to explore the nature of spiritual formation while discerning which practices, resources, and attitudes are appropriate for sustaining vitality, rootedness, and creativity in their personal life, faith, leadership, academic, and social justice work.

One of the foundational education commitments that undergirds this course is the assertion that all knowledge is contextual. In the various settings of ministry and social transformation, context plays an important role in shaping our work, our approaches to that work, our understandings of our own role in that work, and the meaning we make of it. At its core, this course seeks to ground our theological explorations in a deeper understanding of our own social contexts, as we develop facility in translating from one context to another and engaging across difference. Focusing in particular on the case of race, this course is designed as a path for exploring and understanding the ways that race in all of its intersections operates as a social fiction and lived experience in ourselves and in the communities we serve. Making use of historical, theoretical and theological lenses, we will engage in selfexploration, deep formation, readings, dialogue, and experiences with artists and activists as we build our capacity to address issues of prejudice, power, and privilege while cultivating cultural humility and cross-cultural competency.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to different methods used to interpret texts. Students will learn and develop skills of closely reading texts, analyzing historical and contemporary contexts, and thinking critically through issues. This class will introduce students a wide range of sacred and secular texts. Students will learn to apply rhetorical strategies to construct interpretations that promote inclusivity, social consciousness, social justice, and speak to the current social and political contexts. This is an introductory level course and requires no prerequisite.

This course introduces students to theories of ethical discernment, behavior, and formation in Christian traditions. The course prioritizes ecological wellbeing as an ethical demand of Christian living and will use case studies about human relationships with our other-than-human kindred to practice the ethical theories studied.

Transformational leadership entails a dynamic relationship between the leader and the community of which the leader is a part. It entails developing strategies that enhance the probability of achieving shared goals and visions. Essential to transformational leadership is the inspiration that lifts one from commonplace existence to living beyond the norm. In the quest for a more just and compassionate world, transformational leadership challenges dominant systems and other forms of oppression. This course will explore various expressions of transformational leadership, including those resulting from prophetic imagination and social entrepreneurship. Any student enrolled in a degree and/or certificate program at the Graduate Theological is eligible to enroll in this course. [Auditors with Faculty Permission]

Theology concerns words, wordings, the Word, or speech about the divine. In the 11th century, Anselm of Canterbury defined theology as “faith seeking understanding.” This course invites a continuation of that perennial human quest, and especially in Christian faith traditions. We will explore and learn from both the wisdom and shortcomings of those who have preceded us in trying to give meaningful and responsible expression to theological topics. We will likewise engage in contemporary forms of that same quest as we attend carefully to the contribution theological ideas can make to social change and transformation. (Lectures, small groups, short papers, and a “credo project.”)

We live in a world of day-to-day experience that is largely of our own making; technologies, buildings, products, institutions, services, brands, and experiences all clamor for our attention. Every one of them has been created by someone with intention, by design. The question we must ask is whether it was designed well, equitably, justly, beautifully, or not. Design thinking is a framework for skilled human-centered design practice that can be applied to any kind of artifact, including organizations, ventures, services, and products intended to drive positive social change. You will be introduced to design thinking, its origins and theoretical underpinnings, and the specific discipline known as design for social impact. You will learn by collaborating on a creative challenge drawn from your own experience. You will learn to see the world through a design lens and begin to explore a theological understanding of creative praxis as integral to spiritual formation. [Auditors excluded]

This course asks key questions about the work of spiritual care and caring—what is care and what does it means for leaders to care for individuals and organizations. We will explore the character of care, models of caring, and strategies and skills for offering care in particular contexts. This course presumes that effective leaders and flourishing mission-oriented organizations require tangible skills for providing care. Students will be invited to trace the unique needs embedded in particular dynamics and patterns of contemporary cultures through different contexts of care: personal, communal, systemic, and cosmic. This course is suitable for those who are preparing for congregational leadership and those in private, public, and not-for-profit service.

This course is a hands-on experiential learning journey designed to encourage, empower, and equip participants to imagine both congregational ministry and organizational leadership through the lens of social entrepreneurship. This course is intended for both emerging and established leaders and will help them to design, plan, and implement social business models as they advance their congregational and/or organizational mission and vision. The course will be structured like a startup incubator/accelerator, equipping students with the tools and frameworks to enable the adaptive strategic planning necessary for leading ventures. A priority of this course will be tending to the impacts of personal identity and leadership formation to effectively grow healthy cultures of belonging within teams, in tandem with the creative solutions to social problems through igniting vibrant ventures.

This course provides an introductory overview of the History of Christianity focused on the diversity of ways in which Christians have worked to effect social change for the common good in times of society, economic, political, environmental, and religious change from the 2nd century to the present. It is designed for students in the stackable curriculum. This course satisfies PSR History requirements for MAST, MA and MDiv students and is designed with attention to what denominations may expect of those seeking ordination or other authorized leadership. Students looking for a course focused primarily on Church institutional developments or historical theology should consider other options. The class is a mostly asynchronous online course with a variety of activities including video lectures, readings, written discussion forums, collaborative projects, and synchronous class discussions via Zoom. All course activity will take place on the GTU Moodle platform except for Zoom meetings and any collaborative meetings set up by student groups for their own use. Through participation in online activities, reading, written and oral discussions, listening to or reading presentations from the professor, exercises to deepen your understanding of the reading, and engaging in collaboration with your group on a research project resulting in an essay or a resource you and others can use later. You will be able to use these visits our human ancestors who practiced Christianity to think about how you will proceed with your own life work. Through these activities, students will also gain skills for the study and interpretation of history and the application of insights from historical study to the concerns of the present and future. The course will also hone skills in group collaboration, writing and speaking your thoughts in an organized way, finding substantive and useful information, and conceptualizing social structures and group processes.

The SAIL Project (Social Analysis for Innovative Leadership) is the capstone project for the Master of Arts in Social Transformation degree. Students choose either to write a thesis or to create an e-portfolio demonstrating effective engagement with the degree’s learning outcomes. Students meet with each other and the instructor three or four times over the course of the semester to share insights into strat-egies about their projects. [Faculty Consent required]

This is done independently with your advisor. Only MAST students should register for this course. MDIV students do not need to register for this course.