Content

Practices of Ministry explores a number of foundational and everyday disciplines of reflective practice in Christian ministry. It thus seeks both to inculcate and to connect basic skills for pastoral, missional and representative ministry in parish and other settings. The practices include: local demographic study to enable basic cultural exegesis; mission auditing to survey and enable relationship between congregational and wider community dynamics; verbatim, a skill that will herald and/or consolidate experience of CPE, embedding it as a habitual discipline; ritual survey to enable liturgical critique related to pastoral and missional practices in wider ministry. As such, the unit nurtures integration from across disciplines in the fourth area of the academic theological curriculum, as well as making explicit and direct connection with supervised theological fieldwork (STFE). Offered at u/g level 1 and as a p/g elective, it forms part of the core cluster of units that TCTS requires of candidates for ordination and other public ecclesial ministries.

Unit code: DA8600T

Unit status: Archived (New unit)

Points: 24.0

Unit level: Postgraduate Foundational

Unit discipline: Mission and Ministry

Delivery Mode: Face to Face

Proposing College: Trinity College Theological School

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Learning outcomes

1.

Analyse congregational and wider community dynamics;

2.

Enable critical reflection on ministerial experience, with reference to both i. individual persons and ii. social-political and cultural settings;

3.

Recognise and employ basic tools and foundational practices of ministry;

4.

Articulate a representative understanding of ordained and other kinds of (aka lay) public ministry.

5.

Develop analysis of context into apt liturgical and other ministerial resources

6.

Give clear expression to integrated perspectives on ministry that engage together liturgical, missional and pastoral concerns.

Pedagogy

Lectures, student presentation, guided discussion, modelling of tasks, on-line resources

Indicative Bibliography

  • Alan Billings, Secular Lives, Sacred Hearts (London: SPCK, 2004)
  • Stephen Burns, Pastoral Theology for Public Ministry (New York: Seabury, 2015)
  • Stephen Burns, *Worship in Contex*t (Peterborough: Epworth, 2006)
  • Stephen Burns and Clive Pearson, eds, Home and Away (Eugene: W&S, 2013)
  • Pamela Cooper-White and Michael Cooper-White, Practices of Ministry (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014)
  • Tim Ling et al, Developing Faithful Ministers (London: SCM, 2012)
  • Paul Mayes, Spirituality in Ministerial Formation (Lampeter: UWP, 2009)
  • Stephen Pattison, A Critique of Pastoral Care (London: SCM, [3] 2000)
  • Andrew Stoddart, Advancing Practical Theology (London: SCM, 2014)

Assessment

Type Description Word count Weight (%)
Reflection

Demographic study 3000 words

3000 50.0
Essay

Verbatim 1500 words

1500 25.0
Reflection

Ritual survey 1500 words

1500 25.0
Approvals

Unit approved for the University of Divinity by John Capper on 19 Oct, 2016

Unit record last updated: 2021-09-28 16:05:52 +1000