Centre for Rural Community Leadership and Ministry
Leadership Training Programs
This page is currently under construction. Please check back soon for more information!
On-Line Courses | Intensive Courses | Residential 12-Week Courses
OUR STM IN RURAL MINISTRY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IS GETTING UNDERWAY!
It's offered cohort-style, meaning that you go through the training and graduate with a group of five to ten other committed clergy or professional church workers. It's taught in 3 one-week intensives each year--so you can stay in your place of ministry and let its questions inform your reading and research.
Check out our "STM" page where you will find full application forms and the program handbook. But contact us right away if you are interested so that you get the latest info.
On-Line Courses
Intensive Courses
- FOUNDATIONS FOR RURAL MINISTRY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT-- Description: This is a graduate course for those who have a basic degree in theology. It will introduce students to the cohort model of study, build relationships and establish protocols. It will introduce students to theological and theoretical models of rural ministry and community development. Students will examine some of the challenges and possibilities inherent to interdisciplinary work. They will engage in a demographic project in their own setting and will explore possibilities for their own research trajectory in this program.
As a result of this course students will be able to:
- Identify the theological and sociological model(s) for relating rural churches to their communities that are most appropriate for their own context.
- Map some of the social demographics of their church and communities.
- Be able to choose appropriate tools for interdisciplinary work and research in their field setting.
- Identify the core questions from their own context that will guide their study and research.
Prof: C. Harder. All day, Nov 10-14, 2008. To register, contact one of the seminaries of the Saskatoon Theological Union.
- SASL 282 FOOD, FAITH AND RURAL COMMUNITY -- Description: Everyone eats -- and eating is an act with moral, theological, political and social ramifications. This course will explore the philosophical assumptions underlying our food production system in the light of theological guidance from our Christian tradition about the purpose of human life, the place of community, and our relationship to the land. It will critically examine the causes of the current farm crisis and the decline of rural communities. Exposing the myths which inform current food production and consumption practices will open the way to envisioning alternative models based on Christian perspectives and values. (N. Wiebe and C. Harder). DATES: This course is conducted as a split intensive with the class meeting for 3 Friday aft/eve and Saturday periods: Feb 6-7; Mar 13-14; and April 10-11, 2009. To register contact one of the seminaries of the Saskatoon Theological Union.
- REVITALIZING RURAL MINISTRIES: FROM SURVIVAL TO SUSTAINABILITY-- Description: This course will examine the theological significance of land in relation to the contemporary quest for community and a sense of place in the rural Canadian context. It will focus specifically on developing pastoral strategies and using congregational and community-based resources, as recommended in Alive and Kicking: Revitalizing Rural Ministries, with particular emphasis on the final and seventh lens on Sustainability. Alternative models of mission strategy and ministry as outlined in this lens will be discussed and studied, i.e. the cooperative parish and cluster models, as viable options for helping local Canadian rural congregations in decline make the paradigmatic shift from survival and maintenance to mission and sustainability. To register, contact one of the seminaries of the Saskatoon Theological Union.