Missional Anabaptist Leadership equips pastors and congregational leaders through a variety of learning opportunities at different levels of rigor and engagement. The most appropriate level of study for each group or individual learner — informal continuing education, curriculum packages, undergraduate classes, and seminary studies — is based on ministry experience, level of education, ministry setting, personal interests, time constraints, and long-term goals.
Discovery Course
Discovery is an eight-session, 50-day process that will help you connect in a new way with God and his plans for your life. In the weekly sessions, you join with others in a guided journey of discovery. Through various tools, you learn more about yourself, your giftings, your personality, your emotions, and your relational skills, and then you create a plan to grow.
Discovery helps you:
Encounter God in a fresh and intimate way.
Confirm gifts you have received from the Spirit.
Learn more about your personality and how you relate to others.
Review life experiences and discover your passion for serving others.
Clarify your unique life purpose as a follower of Jesus.
Develop a growth plan that helps you move toward the future God intends for you.
Engage in a mentoring relationship that will support your growth over the next two years.
Discovery guides the leaders to the completion of a two-year growth plan. With the aid of a mentor, each leader puts their plan into action.
Empowering Leaders through Mentoring
Empowering Leaders through Mentoring, a seminar on mentoring, either in conjunction with the Discovery Course, or as a stand-alone seminar, provides a half day of instruction and practice for current and new mentors. Mentors help clarify life purpose, set goals, sharpen growth plans, provide a model, offer encouragement, and provide prayer. Mentors leave the session equipped to begin serving as a mentor for another person.
Getting into the Balcony
Getting into the Balcony: a ladder and toolbox for formative congregational assessments provides an assortment of tools that aids leaders to empower congregations. Regular assessments of overall ministry and congregational health stimulates discernment about what God is calling and sending congregations to be and do. Getting into the Balcony gives leaders and congregations a new vantage point from which they can reflect on the identity, purpose, and future of the congregation, as well as how they function as a community. When done with intentional prayer, dwelling in scripture, discernment, and reflection, these formative assessments become "holy conversations" as the congregation seeks to listen to God and respond in obedience.
Explore the Core
Explore the Core helps leaders guide congregations into an Anabaptist expression of faith. The course examines the transformation Christians experience in Christ as the power and effects of sin are placed on the cross. Jesus is the center of Anabaptist faith and life. From this center, Anabaptists gain a greater understanding of God the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit. The study considers this new life in Christ from three vantage points: a way of seeing the world through the kingdom of God, a way of reading the Bible through Jesus, and a way of living a Christian life as disciples. The 13-week video curriculum has an extensive teacher' manual for those teachers who choose to design their own classes rather than use the video instruction sessions.
Formal Study Programs
STEP: Study and Training for Effective Pastoral ministry, a part-time, three-year program designed for pastoral leaders — or those exploring a call to ministry — but who do not have college or Bible school training. Students earn 30 undergraduate credit hours and receive an undergraduate Certificate in Pastoral Ministry from Eastern Mennonite University (EMU).
Gateway Classes: a series of four undergraduate courses offered through EMU on a two-year cycle that focus on Anabaptist identity formation. Gateway courses can be taken for college credit or for non-credit.
Preaching Institute: an in-service training program from EMU for those who want to improve their preaching skills.
Seminary Classes: Eastern Mennonite Seminary, Lancaster Campus, offers a complete masters of divinity degree through part time study.
