OVERVIEW OF THE PROGRAM

The Master of Divinity is a professional degree for persons preparing for service in ministry and church leadership, social services, a variety of chaplaincy settings, or other forms of ministry.

The program fosters students’ understanding of church and ministry in the contemporary world and students’ ability to work meaningfully and creatively in a vocation of religious leadership. It increases students’ knowledge and strengthens their ability to integrate their understanding of the various disciplines of theology and ministry with their experience of God, the church, and the world. Students completing the Master of Divinity degree at Candler will be able to:

• Demonstrate critical knowledge of and communicate effectively about significant Christian texts, traditions, theologies, and practices.

• Engage critically and creatively with a diverse church and world, with particular attention to ethnic, racial, cultural, religious, theological, and gender differences.

• Articulate an understanding of their religious identity and cultivate ongoing practices of spiritual growth that promote health and well-being.

• Reflect upon, re-imagine, and exercise practices of leadership and ministry to address pressing issues in church and world.

• Develop and practice skills for forming and sustaining communities of learning, mutual support, and collaboration across difference.

Curricular Requirements

Students enrolling in the Master of Divinity program must complete two required first year courses, MDIV500. Learning Community (fall) and MDIV600. MDiv First Year Spring Seminar (spring) as well as courses in Biblical Studies, History of Christianity, Systematic Theology, Ethics, Religion and Society, World Religions, Practical Theology, and Contextual Education. Students will also enroll in elective courses and must enroll in at least one course designated as Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and/or Global Contexts (REGG).

Contextual Education

Contextual Education combines academic instruction with opportunities for formation in ministry and leadership in congregations, campus ministries, social service agencies, hospital and other clinical or chaplaincy settings, or in other ministry settings. Candler’s distinctive commitment to contextual theology and theological education is formalized through the four-semester sequence of Contextual Education I (500-Level) and Contextual Education II (600-Level), required for all MDiv students.

First Year Experience

Candler’s Master of Divinity program is uniquely characterized by the First Year Experience. Beginning in fall New Student Orientation, all MDiv students in their first fall semester will enroll in MDiv500. Learning Community. The course will meet in person on campus for all students during New Student Orientation week and then continue with weekly on campus meetings for students on the residential plan and online for students on the hybrid plan. The course is designed to form students in practices and methods of theological inquiry and discourse while keeping them in conversation with their deepest purposes for pursuing theological education. It will accompany them in the work of discernment around fundamental questions of identity, community, and vocation. The course also provides an opportunity to cultivate relationships with peers as well as with faculty and other mentors who will be essential learning partners during the first fall semester and beyond.

In the Spring semester of the first year, which for students who matriculate in spring will be their first semester and for students who matriculated in fall will be their second semester, students enroll in MDiv600. MDiv First Year Spring Seminar. Spring Seminars are integrative, theologically interdisciplinary, thematically focused first-year courses taught by faculty from different curricular areas. Each of these courses is designed to foster interdisciplinary engagement and extended conversation around a particular theme that matters for theological education—themes such as discipleship, justice, mission, prayer, migration, story, and creation. This course serves as a curricular center of gravity, cultivating small learning communities that support and nurture theological formation while allowing students, including those who enter the MDiv program for the first time in a Spring semester, to explore their own motivating questions.

First year students also participate in required extra-curricular advising group meetings led by a faculty advisor during their first fall semester. Details about these meetings are provided around the time of New Student Orientation for the student’s first fall semester.