FALLS CHURCH, Va. — Two Baptist seminaries — one a 10-year-old school in suburban Washington and the other a nearly century old institution in suburban Chicago — are partnering to offer a doctor of ministry degree with an emphasis on missional leadership.
The John Leland Center for Theological Studies, a seminary in Falls Church, Va., funded in part by Virginia Baptists, and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, a Lombard, Ill., school with ties to the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., will launch the joint degree in October 2011 with an anticipated 15 students.
“I’m excited about working with Northern on this degree,” said Mark Olson, president of the Leland Center. “Northern is theologically compatible with us — evangelical but not fundamentalist. Leland is pan-Baptist, drawing support from Virginia Baptists, Cooperative Fellowship Baptists, the historically African-American Baptist conventions.”
The Leland Center is housed in the Baptist World Alliance building in Falls Church.
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“We long to contribute to the wider ministry of preparing Christian leadership,” said Northern president Alistair Brown. “It is great to do that beyond our area, not in an unhealthy competition but by working well together.”
The new doctoral program is designed “for pastors to bring missional renewal in their congregations.” Though the term “missional” is defined in a variety of ways, it generally refers to Christian attempts to engage culture in a postmodern context.
The degree will include specialized classes in missional theology led by experts in the field, including David Fitch, associate professor of evangelical theology at Northern; Alan Roxburgh, a pastor and writer; Craig van Gelder, professor of congregational mission at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn.; and John Franke, professor of missional theology at Biblical Seminary in suburban Philadelphia.
“There’s really not a D.Min. program looking at ministry in a non-traditional way anywhere between Philadelphia and Charlotte [N.C.],” said Chris Backert, a Virginia Baptist pastor and director of Ecclesia, an international network of missional churches.
The Leland-Northern partnership emerged in part out of Backert’s work with Northern in developing missional emphases in the school’s master’s degrees. Because accrediting requirements place greater restrictions on theological master’s degrees than on doctor of ministry degree programs, Backert became convinced D.Min. programs offer more effective vehicles for training in missional leadership.
“Probably most masters programs are not designed for a world of post-Christendom,” said Backert. “They’re really designed for inherited established congregations or possibly for new churches with an inherited established mentality. For a lot of pastors, the D.Min. program is the place to engage post-Christian society, to grapple with how they take their church into that missional paradigm.”
Because of restrictions on master of divinity degrees, some pastors have opted out of it, but “they are the very people most interested and most equipped for missional leadership,” said JR Rozko, associate director of advancement at Northern.
Brown agreed that theological education must be contextual.
“I believe education must always be relevant to the context in which people minister, but context is not static — it’s constantly moving and changing. It is not surprising that as forces of secularism increase we are facing a much more missional context, not only in evangelism but also in bringing the whole of God’s kingdom to bear on life.”
“Having a missional focus in the D.C. area is a real plus,” said Olson. “Northern Virginia is like being in a continual international mission setting. We’re having to learn to take the gospel cross culturally.”
While Northern’s name will be on graduates’ diploma, classes will be offered on both the Falls Church and Lombard campuses. Unlike Northern, which offers D.Min. degrees with several emphases, this will be the first opportunity for Leland students to earn a D.Min. degree on its campus.
Olson said it would have been about five years before Leland could have considered adding a D.Min. degree to its offerings, due to financial constraints and to its current development of the master of arts in Christian leadership degree.
“We’re not big enough to develop two new programs at once,” he said.
Leland was founded in 2000 and initially held classes at Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church. Currently the school leases space in the headquarters building of the Baptist World Alliance.
Northern was established in 1913 in response to concerns about theological liberalism in the Northern Baptist Convention (now the American Baptist Churches). The seminary describes itself as having navigated a middle course between theological poles, championing “a more moderate evangelical position against both liberal and fundamentalist extremes.” The school is committed to gender and ethnic diversity.
Robert Dilday is managing editor of the Religious Herald.