March 12 2014
A partnership between the Unification Theological Seminary, National Headquarters and Community Leaders is building ongoing education classes available online for pastors and ministry leaders. This month, the program is launching its first course, Growing Your Church instructed by Dr. Demetrius Carolina, an accomplished spiritual leader, educator and social activist living in Staten Island, New York.
Dr. Carolina tailors each class to the types of situations that pastors share about their local ministries. The online course consists of six weekly sessions, including an initial orientation session to familiarize students with the online classroom and course syllabus. It is designed as a live online classroom experience, where participants can interact with each other and the instructor.
“The beauty of this is that we’re able to inherit from the incredibly robust educational platform of UTS and extract classes that are not only doable in terms of our busy schedules, but also immediately applicable to the local ministries,” says Demian Dunkley, Director of Evangelism, about the program.
In this first course, Growing Your Church, participants will learn how to understand their target population–inside and outside the church, how to support and empower the diverse people of their church, the basics of building a strong ministry team, how to manage and generate resources, and creating a vision for growth. “This course covers not only the concept of outreach but how to prepare your church for the growth that you’re looking for,” explains Demian.
The program is an opportunity for ministry leaders from all across the nation and beyond to connect and empower each other. Jaga Gavin, working with the UTS team to develop these courses, says, “I firmly believe that we have incredibly gifted leaders and our role in supporting them is simply fueling the fire. The more access they have to tools, educational opportunities, and best practices from their fellow leaders, the bigger that fire will grow and the further it will spread.”
“This is about offering support for professional improvement not only to our current pastoral leadership but we hope this can be the beginning of a clear pathway for young Unificationists who are interested in ministry,” says Demian.
The program is encouraging feedback so that through this partnership all can benefit and improve the experience for each subsequent class. “We are hoping to receive a lot of feedback about the entire experience. Then we can make the necessary adjustments and offer an even better educational experience to others in the future,” says Jaga.
Based on an extensive survey of ministry leaders, future courses may include topics such as Preaching, Pastoral Care, Teaching the Divine Principle for diverse audiences, Apologetics and so on. The Growing Your Church course will also be repeating as well. The pace of coursework will be such to encourage participants to stay engaged with the education while having time to apply the tools they have gained and prepare for the next course.