Designed for practitioners and organizational leaders seeking more effective ways to represent Jesus in postcolonial cultures shaped by the major religions, this cohort will strengthen participants’ leadership capacity by drawing on scholarship in the arenas of biblical theology, missiology, spiritual formation, and leadership theory, then offering the opportunity to apply this knowledge to a critical research project in their own context. The cohort model also lends itself to students building a community of mutual support and formation as they move through the program together.

Utilizing insights from hermeneutics and anthropology, participants will develop their capacity to reflect on the biblical, missiological, and historical foundations of their own faith and its expression as well as reflect on what it means to interact in transformational ways with members of other faiths and form Jesus-centered communities with them. Attention will be given to spiritual formation and the relational aspects of servant leadership needed to facilitate local theologizing, meaningful discipleship, and community formation within the existing cultural context.

Students will learn the skills necessary to do a literature review and research design, and their work will culminate in a contextualized applied research dissertation.