Youth and Young Adult Ministry Specialization

This specialization equips students to understand the religious, spiritual, cultural, economic and developmental contexts for youth and young adults. Pastors, youth ministers and community youth workers will learn to construct spaces for adolescent and young adult faith, joining with them in establishing practices for lifelong faith.

Requirements

An integrative project or paper (normally completed in conjunction with the final course for the specialization) is required. No specialization-specific field education is required. The specialization requires the completion of four pertinent courses from the lists below, selected in consultation with the specialization coordinator and your faculty advisor.

Please note: If PT-610 is chosen, it cannot also be used to meet the M.Div. spirituality course requirement.

Choose two options from this group:

• ED-505: Ministry with/for/by Youth
• ED-510: Adolescent World
• ED-615: Ministry with Young Adults: Intimacy, Vocation and Community
• ED-630: Intergenerational and Children’s Ministry
• ED-680: Creating Learning Environments

Choose one option from this group:

• ME-580: Mission of the Church in a Multicultural Society
• PC-613: Theories of the Development of the Self and of the Life Cycle
• PC-771: Grief Care & Counseling plus PC-785: Counseling Interventions with Troubled Youth
• PT-540: Doing Our Own Work
• PT-610: Spiritual Formation and Social Change
• WO-625: Sacraments and Ordinances of Initiation and Eucharist

Choose one option from this group:

• CE-640: Ethics of Sex
• CE-720C: Contemporary Moral Issues: Human Trafficking
• CH-642: Christianity and Social Issues in the U.S.A.
• CH-767: The Social Gospel Movement
• CT/SR-733: The Nones: Spiritual and Belief Beyond Religion
• HB-781: Gender, Race, and Ecology in the Hebrew Bible
• NT/SR-630: Gender in Ancient Religion

Coordinator

Timothy Van Meter