Missional Leadership Focus

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. Classes meet for two weeks in January and June for two years at Pittsburgh Seminary. This program is 36 credits and is to be completed in three years. Applications are accepted on a continual basis. Apply now to reserve your space in the next group.

Distinctives

The Missional Leadership Focus includes:

• Cohort Mentors A distinctive aspect of this program is the use of cohort mentors, who will companion the cohort throughout the program helping students maintain a global and contextual focus and clarify corresponding research questions. Each cohort mentor will lead at least one online workshop between courses, with the explicit aim of having integrative discussions and to providing 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 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 and clarify and focus the relationship between course work and each student’s ministry context.

Courses 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