Introducing Ministry and Fostering Integration: Teaching the Bookends of the Masters of Divinity Program

Abstract. The challenge of integrating knowledge, practice and vocational identity is a persistent challenge to theological educators. Cahalan describes how teaching two book‐end courses in the M.Div. curriculum have opened up possibilities for integration as a process and a goal of the entire curriculum. In the course, Introduction to Pastoral Ministry, students explore six questions in relationship to ministry: who, what, where, when, how and why. In the culminating Integration Seminar, students demonstrate their capacity for thinking theologically about a particular pastoral situation. Through both written and oral presentation, students’ ministerial identity and authority are shaped and challenged as they gain proficiency in drawing what they know from and into what they do in the practice of ministry. Integration is also a strategy for theological educators who strive to take seriously the experiences students come with, the settings to which they will go, and what they most need from the M.Div. degree to gain solid footing in practice while also engaging lifelong learning. This essay is reprinted from Dorothy Bass and Craig Dykstra, eds., For Life Abundant (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008).