Global Leadership
MAGL 5315 (3-3-0) Leadership Practicum (S-L)
The course consists of supervised practical training experience in a challenging work environment under the guidance of mentoring relationships provided by a proficient veteran in the field and an academic advisor. Students improve leadership skills in field experience that stretches and tests their abilities. Students learn to identify and utilize personal strengths effectively and to manage weaknesses in real-life settings. This course contains a field-based service-learning component.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Online.
MAGL 5316 (3-3-0) Global Leadership Practicum (S-L)
(INCS 4316)
Travel abroad and intercultural exercises place students in challenging cross-cultural situations where it is necessary to demonstrate skills in managing different customs, norms and expectations produced by inter-cultural encounter. Students exercise global leadership by enhancing understanding among people of vastly different cultural backgrounds and by adding value to the lives of the people they meet. There will be a service-learning dimension to the course, where students will engage in activities beneficial to the society visited and report on what they learned from their service. Special attention will be given to developing effective strategies for enhancing understanding among people of vastly different cultural backgrounds. This class relates intimately to the DBU mission of integrating faith and learning, since missiology in its essence analyzes from a broad interdisciplinary perspective how to improve our efforts as believing Christians to proclaim Christ to all peoples. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course. This course contains a field-based service-learning component.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Summer.
MAGL 5321 (3-3-0) Sharing Gospel Faith
In this course students learn skills in personal evangelism by sharing testimony of a personal experience with Jesus Christ as Savior and by communicating the essentials of the Christian gospel. Strategies for how to engage people in gospel conversation and how to promote dialogue about faith issues are considered. Programs for teaching others how to share faith, and principles for interacting with persons with a different cultural background or worldview are reviewed. The class also analyzes and compares methods for evangelism in small groups, church-based evangelism, and mass evangelism.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Alternate Fall.
MAGL 5326 (3-3-0) Urban Community Development
This course examines the social and spiritual needs of marginalized urban dwellers. Students consider successful ministry models to address those needs, and to provide support in developing communities that seek transformation into a more healthy and wholesome environment for its constituents. Special attention is given to positive strategies to communicate the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ while assisting people to address the special needs that inhibit efforts to achieve a better personal lifestyle.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Alternate Spring.
MAGL 5330 (3-3-0) Introduction to Missiology
(INCS 4330)
An introductory study of the theory and practice of Christian missions, analyzing how the gospel is best communicated in specific cross-cultural situations. The course challenges students to consider how they can share Christian faith with those who have no prior access to the gospel. The course content includes biblical foundations for missions, theology of missions, history of missions, dynamics of cross-cultural adaptation and communication, encountering world religions, discovering more effective missions strategies, and contemporary issues in missions practice. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000- level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Fall, Spring, Online.
MAGL 5331 (3-3-0) Cross-Cultural Living and Ministry
(INCS 4331)
The course provides orientation to people who will work in international or ethnically diverse settings where personal adaptation to a different language and culture is required. The course focuses on acquiring insights and skills for cultural adaptation, language acquisition, and contextualization of lifestyle, communication practices, and gospel witness. Students are involved in cross-cultural exercise to learn how to relate positively to those of other cultures and worldviews. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Fall, Summer, Online.
MAGL 5332 (3-3-0) Strategies for Missionary Work
(INCS 4332)
An in-depth study of strategies and tactics for missionary work; reviews the history of strategic approaches in missions, culminating with current strategies for reaching unreached people groups (UPGs); includes overview of the development and nature of the UPG paradigm. Students use current case studies, existing strategy plans, and contacts with field-based missions teams to develop a thorough understanding of the UPG approach to missions. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Spring.
MAGL 5333 (3-3-0) Local Church on Mission
(INCS 4333)
The class will provide practical steps in developing a missional church devoted to sharing the gospel in positive terms within its own community, in its region, nation, and world. Leadership tools will be provided for church workers to lead their church to have a local and a global agenda. The course will examine best practices of churches who are engaging the unbelieving world. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Alternate Fall.
MAGL 5334 (3-3-0) Chronological Bible Storying
(INCS 4334)
The course helps students learn to communicate more effectively to non-literate oral learners by using stories and narratives to communicate an essential Christian message. Students will understand that most of the world’s population does not learn by literate, but by oral methods, so that our communication style must reflect their preferred manner of learning. Worldview issues determine the precise choices of key Bible stories so that the Christian message can engage their cultural understandings at deep levels. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Spring.
MAGL 5335 (3-3-0) Biographies of Outstanding Missionaries
(INCS 4335)
The course consists of reading biographies of inspiring examples of Christian living and ministry from the history of missions. Students will read biographies from the early church, from medieval missions, from the modern missionary movement, and from recent missionary leaders. These personal models for kingdom work are instructive in learning personal habits that can achieve greatness in servant leadership and provide case studies by which missiological principles and strategies may be deduced. This class relates intimately to the DBU mission of integrating faith and learning, since the class considers how good examples of lives lived to honor God have contributed significantly to human good and have achieved significance in very different settings all around the world. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Spring.
MAGL 5336 (3-3-0) Current Trends in Missions
(INCS 4336)
The course considers important contemporary developments in global Christian missions. A review of approaches, strategies, methods, and problems will lead to suggestions about best practice and relevant applications in concrete settings. Since this is a special topics course covering trends in missions that change with new issues of globalization, mission movements, and current events, the special topics may vary and the course may be repeated for credit when content changes. Grade replacement for special topics courses may only be accomplished under special topics courses with the same topic and content. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Fall, Spring.
MAGL 5340 (3-3-0) Integrating Faith and Cultures
(INCS 4340)
The purpose of the course is to analyze how Christian faith intersects with cultures—whether one’s own or other cultures. Biblical, missiological, and cross-cultural principles are applied to provide perspectives, guidelines, and methods for ministry in the global marketplace. The course seeks to combine global professional expertise with strategies for inter-cultural communication of the Christian message. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Fall.
MAGL 5341 (3-3-0) Global Christianity
(INCS 4341)
The course reviews recent and best thinking on the advance of world evangelization by reviewing the biblical basis for missions, the history of worldwide expansion of Christianity, cultural adaptation and competencies required for work among remote peoples, and missionary strategies. Students read from an anthology of top missiological thinking by evangelicals prepared by the US Center for World Mission. Students learn where missions has taken Christianity today and where global evangelization efforts should be going. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Fall.
MAGL 5342 (3-3-0) Ethnography, Cultures and Worldviews
(INCS 4342)
The course introduces students to applied ethnography, where they will learn the essentials of how to conduct interviews with persons from a different cultural identity to ascertain customs, values, and worldview understandings. Students learn to “read” a culture and to understand its way of viewing reality. Principles from social sciences such as sociology, anthropology, and demographics enrich the methodology used to analyze how people from a different cultural background think, feel, act, and relate to one another. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Alternate Spring, Online.
MAGL 5343 (3-3-0) Understanding Islam
(INCS 4343)
The course is an introductory examination of Islamic faith and practice, designed for those with little previous understanding of Islamic culture and its doctrinal beliefs. Students will learn to describe the principal features of Islamic religious beliefs and to identify differences between sects and groups within Islam. They will analyze Islamic influence upon Middle Eastern culture and consider how this fast-growing religion will influence the shape of global geopolitics in the future. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Spring.
MAGL 5344 (3-3-0) Strategies for Urban Ministries
The course provides tools to engage the urban setting around the globe as metropolis, inner city, and suburban area. Students learn skills for civic and personal transformation that grow out of Christian ministry and witness. Biblical models for addressing the needs of urban dwellers and sociological analysis of the changing urban panorama provide the background for examining creative strategies and consideration of effective models where churches make a difference in the city. Students will acquire a biblical framework for urban ministries, learn about the structure of cities, understand communities and cultures, identify the basics of strategic planning for non-profits, and the process of design for a ministry project.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Alternate Fall.
MAGL 5345 (3-3-0) Business as Mission (S-L)
(ENTR 4345)
Business as Mission (BAM) represents a movement of entrepreneurs and business leaders uniting with missionaries and missions strategists to utilize their business acumen to take the good news of Jesus into the world. BAM businesses hold a dual emphasis of strategic and sustainable business practices along with the witness of God’s love and grace through the relationships built in the marketplace. This course plots the history of BAM, the principles and practice of BAM, considers case studies and assesses examples of BAM in developing best practices, and the strategic role that BAM plays in making disciples of all nations. This 5000-level course is cross-listed with a 4000-level course and includes specific graduate course requirements which reflect appropriate deeper learning experiences and rigor in the higher-level course. This course contains a field-based service-learning component.
Requisites:
Offered: Alternate Spring.
MAGL 6312 (3-3-0) The Urban Church in Transition
This course helps students to understand dynamics of contemporary urban ministry within traditional urban churches. Students learn about transition models that have proven successful in leading traditional churches in urban settings to adjust to the contemporary urban environment. Students develop skills to assess congregational health in urban settings, study barriers that confront church leaders who attempt church growth and church planting in urban settings, consider barriers to achieve congregational transition in urban communities, and understand spiritual and community strategies to restore health to urban congregations.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Alternate Spring.
MAGL 6313 (3-3-0) Developing Neighborhood Churches in Urban Settings
This course will explore a biblical, historical, socio-cultural, and missiological framework of urban spaces and God’s work/actions in order to imagine and develop local congregations rooted in urban neighborhoods. Urban spaces are the places where neighborhoods are built in order to provide the environment to build relationships and develop the trust needed to re- weave the social and spiritual fabric of communities. In the midst of constant and massive changes in society, the Spirit of God is at work both in the church and in the neighborhood. Students use missional church strategies to imagine what the church might look like and learn to discern what God is doing in order to fulfill the missionary mandate of making disciples in urban communities.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Alternate Fall.
MAGL 6322 (3-3-0) Transformational Church Life
The course examines examples of healthy and vibrant spiritual life in growing churches, where members experience personal transformation, healthy community, and minister to their broader community in transformational ministry strategies. The class analyzes the kind of discipleship, personal lifestyle for members and relational realities that best promote transformation, growth, and church planting. Principles for church growth are analyzed in the light of a missional approach that measures influence of the church in its broader witness to the community and its capacity to reproduce new members and congregations, as well as internal measurements of the well-being of its members.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Alternate Spring.
MAGL 6323 (3-3-0) Small Group Disciple-Making
Small group ministries allow gospel seekers and new believers to understand the Christian gospel and to learn how to live a kingdom lifestyle as disciples. The range of small group ministry models—from a traditional Sunday School approach to a cell group network or house church—will be analyzed and compared. Students are challenged to learn dynamics of healthy small group communication, to learn how to reach out to lost people, to assist new believers in becoming mature disciples, to lead Bible study, to promote community, and to develop leaders who can contribute to Christian ministry in the small group context.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Alternate Fall.
MAGL 6324 (3-3-0) Church Multiplication Methods
Churches can grow faster and reach more people by starting new churches and groups. The course reviews strategies for church growth, for saturation church planting, for missionary or kingdom expansion, and for prompting church planting movement to achieve rapid multiplication of churches. The course examines methods and models for promoting growth through reproducing leaders, creating new ministries, and incorporating new people. The course specifically looks at successful examples of how churches can reproduce themselves by planting new churches.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Alternate Summer.
MAGL 6325 (3-3-0) Starting New Churches
The foundational challenges for church planters are always spiritual and relational, yet starting new churches, especially in the USA, requires demographic research into the local community, vision casting, careful planning and goal which leads up to a launch date, and defines incremental steps for the early stage of development of the church. This course reviews the planning process, teaches skills set for essential tasks such as raising financial support, enlisting a core group, team building with leaders, doing promotion in the local community, and managing the launch date for a new church.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Alternate Fall.