Christian Education

The MA in Christian Education, which is co-taught with the Department of Theology & Religious Studies http://www.kcl.ac.uk/trs, will challenge, inspire and refresh anyone, from ministers and ordinands to laity and members of faith-based organisations, engaged in Christian educational ministry. It is part of a new modular degree programme providing intellectual frameworks and practical insights for Christian mission and ministry.

The programme offers the opportunity to explore the educational dimension of faith formation, mission and church policy. The theology of education, grounded in the Gospels' designation of Jesus as 'teacher', is a relatively under-explored dimension of Christian life. It focuses on education provision in local Christian communities, Christian and secular schools, and the interface of the church and the public sphere, combining a focus on practical issues with a concern for the theological underpinnings of practice.

The MA in Christian Education connects cutting-edge academic research with contemporary issues of Christian life and ministry. Programme participants will have the opportunity to reflect on their own professional responsibilities in the light of innovative practice and the ongoing debate surrounding the Christian theology of education.

There are purely historical and theological MAs available in other universities, and there are vocational courses in seminaries and training colleges, but this programme presents a significant alternative. It will do justice to the complexity of academic debates but it will always relate them to the practical and the present. Drawing on the expertise of the Department of Theology & Religious Studies and the Department of Education & Professional Studies, this programme exemplifies the strengths of King's as both a leading research university and a centre for professional training. It promises a level of interdisciplinary excitement and pastoral engagement that would be hard to match elsewhere.

Students take two compulsory modules: Educational Issues in Christian Ministry, and Theology in Practice. The latter links all the programmes on the King's Theology & Ministry MA programme. They aim to equip students with theological tools that will help them to analyse the styles and the purposes of Christian educational ministry. With these tools (including disciplines of social science with their empirical research methodologies, historical enquiry, and scriptural interpretation) students will be in a position to articulate a theology of educational ministry, and to formulate methodologies for understanding and interpreting their contexts and their actions as ministers.

In addition to the dissertation, students will then take two further modules from:

• Ministry and the Bible;
• Church, Mission & Society;
• Contemporary Ministry and Apologetics;
• Pastoral Use of the Bible;
• Patterns in Contemporary Ecclesiology;
• Patterns in Youth Ministry;
• Reformation, Revival and Revolution: Models of Ministry 1547 - 2000;
• Theology, Church & Worship;
• Theology, Politics & Faith-Based Organisations.