Educational Goals of the M.Div. Program

The excellent graduate of the United Master of Divinity program:

• knows, understands, and can appropriate for contemporary contexts the Christian tradition in its biblical origins and subsequent major lines of development to its present global diversity of expression;
• understands the nature and dynamics of the contexts in which he or she, and the faith communities he or she leads, are called to minister;
• knows herself or himself as a particular person with gifts and yet limits, with global connections and yet a particular location, with her or his own call and yet accountability to a larger community, with her or his own ministerial-theological identity and authority and yet a shared ministry, with a lifelong need for learning, and with a spiritual life which she or he is equipped to nurture;
• is able to analyze and evaluate faith traditions, contexts, and self, as well as the resources available for ministry in those contexts;
• is able, out of the integration of faith traditions, contexts, and self, to construct a theology that - with and for the faith community of which she or he is a member - meaningfully names God’s presence and leading in the context; and, out of that theology; and
• is able to shape a pattern of community leadership that is adaptive, collaborative, pastoral, and transforming as it invites the faith community of which she or he is a member to become a more theologically astute, pastoral, and transforming presence in its context.