Missional Leadership Focus

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In our new missional era, congregations must learn to establish habits and practices for attending to God’s presence and work in the world. Drawing from faculty expertise in reading contexts and leading congregations through change, this program cultivates leadership practices that can equip congregations to recognize, discern, and participate in God’s mission.

- Dr. Scott Hagley, W. Don McClure Associate Professor of World Mission and Evangelism

JOIN THE NEXT Missional Leadership COHORT

The next cohort is anticipated to begin in June 2025.

The Doctor of Ministry Missional Leadership Focus seeks to form pastors to lead congregations in discerning their participation in God’s mission within specific contexts. The D.Min. program allows you to step out of your ministry context to sift through new information and ideas, then step back in to discover how and why that learning matters. At the end of your course work, you will design and implement a project that engages your ministry context in conversation with your work in the classroom.

Reflecting on What God is Up To
Brenda Henry is excited about reflecting on what is God is up to and how God is challenging us to engage with our congregations and our communities.
Cohort Model Benefits
D.Min. Missional Leadership student Jeff Sims reflects on the cohort model and how it shapes him as a pastor to advance the practice of pastoral care.

Distinctives

The Missional Leadership Focus includes:

  • Cohort Mentors A distinctive aspect of this D.Min. program is the use of cohort mentors, who will companion the cohort throughout the program and help  students maintain a global and contextual focus as they clarify corresponding research questions. Each cohort mentor will lead at least one online workshop between courses, providing integrative discussions and coaching on research. Each professor teaching a seminar will lead the Friday morning session to help the students bring the work of that course into conversation with the program goals and their own research agendas.
  • Research Questions Students in the Doctor of Ministry program's Missional Leadership Focus are required to develop a guiding research question and learn research methodologies appropriate to that question early in the program. This research question will guide each student’s work between courses and will serve to further shape, clarify, and focus the relationship between course work and each student’s ministry context.

Courses May Include

  • Theology of Missional Congregations
  • Research Methodology
  • Pastor as Adaptive Change Leader
  • Rethinking Church: Ecclesiology
  • Practicing Communal Discernment
  • Plunging into the Neighborhood
  • Proclamation and Ritual
  • Leadership in the Midst of Conflict and Change

Listen to Learn More

Missional leadership, the gospel notion of mission and its distortion, the importance of place, relationship and neighborliness, and the gifts and challenges that the pandemic has offered the church are the focus of this episode of the Doing It Different podcast. Porsha Williams Gates explores the Missional Leadership Focus in the Doctor of Ministry Program with DMin student the Rev. Laura Strauss '09 and Dr. Scott Hagley.

Listen to Episode 10.

LEARN MORE ABOUT PITTSBURGH SEMINARY’S D.MIN. PROGRAM

Connect with the Doctor of Ministry Office to learn more about our next Missional Leadership cohort. We'd love to have you join us! Apply now to reserve your space in a future focus. Financial aid and scholarships are available for those who qualify.

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