Courses

• STH TC 842: Urban Ministry Models for the 21st Century: Creative Ministry in Context
  This course will examine urban new church starts and congregational restarts that engage in ministry in their settings. Participants will learn tools and methods for contextual analysis and explore models of leadership for 21st century ministry. Most course sessions will occur at urban congregations throughout New England. One particular area of focus will be ways in which global migration has impacted ministry in these settings.
• STH TC 844: Classics in Christian Spirituality
  This course serves as an introduction to the study of Christian spirituality through in-depth reading of selected classics in Christian spirituality as well as secondary source scholarship in the discipline. We will delve into texts by early monastics and visionary medieval mystics; look anew at Protestant hymns and poetry; go deeper into Ignatian discernment; and engage the spiritualities of Latin American liberation theologians and African American women. This interdisciplinary seminar opens up reflection on spirituality and theology; spirituality and history; spirituality, gender, race, and ethnicity; spirituality, poetics, and autobiography; spirituality and ministry; and spiritual practice. Students are encouraged to integrate the material with an eye toward their own spiritual lives and vocations. The course will integrate music, art, and poetry to offer a fuller engagement with spiritual classics.
• STH TC 845: Parish Preaching
  The central, crucial role of preaching in a parish setting involves engagement with other congregational ministries and with the needs and resources of the larger community. This course is intended as a second level, advanced preaching course, with emphasis on the context of preaching. The course offers multiple opportunities to develop and preach sermons. Attention is given both to regular Sunday preaching and also to particular sermons for various occasions: special events, Stewardship Sunday, funerals and weddings, Advent and Lent, national observances (Fourth of July, Mothers' Day, New Year's, Thanksgiving, other), denominational requirements, and civic addresses. The interactive engagement of the preaching ministry with parish ministry as a whole is the focus of the course.
• STH TC 847: Faith and Film
  This course uses the medium of film as an avenue for reflection upon the meaning and truth of the central doctrines of the Christian church as expressed in the historic Apostle's Creed. The course uses a broad cross-section of film genres to open up new and creative windows for understanding and communicating the Christian faith in contemporary culture and also assists the student in thinking critically about film from a Christian theological perspective.
• STH TC 849: Narrative Sermons
  In this course, students will learn approaches to preaching narratively. By the end of the course, students will also begin to integrate their homiletical practice with their own emerging narrative theology of preaching.
• STH TC 851: Preaching and Worship in the African-American Traditions
  Study of the preaching, prayer, and music in African-American churches.
• STH TC 852: Spirituality and Leadership
  Changing times in church and society challenge our understandings about and practices of leadership. This course will examine the nexus of leadership and spirituality. We will examine theories about leadership, both secular and church-based, focus particularly on the systemic nature of leadership. We will also consider the importance of the 'being' of the leader, not just the 'doing'. The quality of a leader's life and work can be significantly enhanced by being supported with spiritual practices. Those spiritual practices may involve the leader as well as individuals and groups with whom the leader engages. Students will be given opportunity to reflect on biblical models of leadership, to explore a leadership in a contemporary setting, as well as to learn, experience, and practice spiritual disciplines for leaders and those with whom they lead.
• STH TC 854: Leadership in Times of Change
  Although it sounds like an oxymoron, change is a constant, whether in the context of the individual, the family, the local church, the university, the nation, or the world. How a leader defines, understands and deals with change, both personally and in the leadership setting, is important both for the leader and those in the organization or group. Leadership for change may emerge from anywhere in the group/organization. Exploring theories and practices from both secular and church-based resources, students will seek to deal with these questions such as: What is the nature of change? How does our understanding of God shape our understanding of change? How does our understanding of change shape our understanding of God? Are there healthy ways to lead in times of transition and change? Are there leadership patterns and practices that are counterproductive in times of transition and change?
• STH TC 857: Spiritual Resources and Disciplines
  An introduction to Christian spiritual practices and traditions. The course explores topics such as prayer, lectio divina, discernment, spiritual guidance, justice, and hospitality, with attention to the importance of spiritual practice as the ground of ministry in diverse contexts. Students will develop their own Rule of Life as part of the work of the course.
• STH TC 861: Theologies of Church Music
  The Church, throughout its history, has sought to clarify its relationship to culture. In particular, is the Church to accommodate its worship to culture or avoid adoption of cultural forms? The relationship of culture and worship will be explored in this course from the angle of the historical Church's use of music. How have the Church's theologians defined the role of music in the Church? What are the most appropriate musical forms for use in the Church? These issues will be examined with an eye to discussing and evaluating contemporary Christian musical expressions.
• STH TC 862: The Liturgical Year
  The historical development of a Christian calendar of both weekly and annual cycles. Descriptions of related liturgical and catechetical customs and contemporary calendar revision.
• STH TC 863: Reading and Writing Rites of Passage
  An examination of historical, theological, and pastoral aspects of the occasional offices that address life's passages and crises: birth, adolescence, Christian marriage, sickness and death, and Christian burial. An ecumenical and international approach will be taken in studying both historic and contemporary rites.
• STH TC 867: The Gospel and Popular Culture
  This course places the Christian gospel into dialogue with a variety of expressions of North American popular culture (film, television, art, music, entertainment, sports, etc.) in an effort to understand the complex relationship between the two. The course takes up at with this dialogue against the wider background of the study of religion and popular culture and by exploring the nature of self and transcendence, morality and the spiritual quest as those are constructed and configured within popular culture. The course asks to what extent contemporary expressions of Christian worship, preaching, Ministry, evangelism, and spirituality might better engage popular culture and to what extent these expressions already reflected the values, patterns, and practices of popular culture.
• STH TC 868: Worship in the Anglican and Wesleyan Traditions
  A study of the historical, theological, liturgical, and sociocultural influences which have shaped the worship patterns of the major American denominations claiming a Wesleyan heritage.
• STH TC 869: Prophetic Preaching, Pastoral Ministry, and Social Change
  This course is designed to help students wrestle with several central issues around prophetic preaching in contemporary Christian churches: the relationships of prophetic preaching to the gospel, to the Bible, to the social-political context, and to pastoral ministry generally. Since the course is designed to be a seminar, students will be expected to wrestle with these issues not only in class but also through a sermon and a public message. By the end of the course, students should be able to develop their own vision for prophetic preaching in a way that integrates the above concerns by moving from a specific Biblical text to a sermon as well as a public message in light of a situation. Pre-requisite TC715 Intro to Preaching or its equivalent.
• STH TC 871: Spiritual Foundations for Peace Building
  Through reading and reflection on biographies and autobiographies of national and international peace-builders, students will look at how the cultural contexts and spiritual practices of the peace-builder influenced their peace- building work. The focus will be on peace-builders beginning in the 20th century with Gandhi, King, Chavez, Day, Deming, and others. Students will also explore their own contexts and how those contexts impact their perspectives on both spiritual formation and confliction transformation.
• STH TC 872: Animals, Theology and Healing
  Explores various dimensions of divine/human/animal interactions, but with a focus upon healing relationships. The course ranges across the areas of theology, spirituality, liturgy, pastoral care, history, psychology, mind/body medicine (stress reduction), and public policy. While Christian theologies of creation and stewardship/ecology are central, the approaches of other religions and their practices will also be examined for purposes of comparison (and perhaps dialogue).
• STH TC 878: Sabbath: Theory and Practice
  Team taught by a Jewish rabbi and a Christian practical theologian, this course invites students to delve into Jewish and Christian traditions on Sabbath, an important spiritual practice with many layers of theological meaning. We will explore classic texts on Sabbath, including texts from the Bible, the Talmud, and the Mishnah, as well as historical and contemporary Christian writing on the Sabbath or the Lord's Day. Topics to include discussion of motifs of "maaseh breisheet" (creation) and "yetziat mitzrayim" (exodus), blessing and sanctifying, cessation of work, preparation for Sabbath, Sabbath consciousness, and imitatio dei. We also will explore Christian theologies of the Lord's Day, including the meaning of Sabbath in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. This is a course in spirituality and practical theology. We will be studying and engaging in the practice of Sabbath keeping as we closely read classic and contemporary texts, and in this way exploring what the practice of Sabbath embodies and enacts theologically. We also will focus attention on questions of Sabbath keeping and spiritual formation, relationships between Sabbath keeping and pastoral excellence, and implications of Sabbath for social justice.
• STH TC 880: Preaching Apocalyptic Texts
  This seminar course helps students gain competence in exegetical and homiletical methods that aid preaching apocalyptic texts in the New Testament. It does so by helping students understand the literary matrix of first-century apocalyptic literature. Pre-requisite TC715 Intro to Preaching or its equivalent.
• STH TC 890: New Church Development
  The planting and birthing of new congregations requires careful planning, innovative leadership, organizational savvy, a strong spiritual base, and endless creativity. This course is a study in the theology and practice of starting new congregations and covers such topics as contextual worship, organizational development, finance and facilities, exegeting a community, and creative community outreach. Coursework includes specific congregational development research projects.

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