Studying Ministry Abroad
Student blogs while traveling on International Ministry Study Grants
The Divinity School’s International Ministry Study Grant program, funded by matching gifts from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and the Baptist Theological Union, was established to offer a number of our MDiv students the opportunity to study ministry in another cultural context. Through this program, we hope to enlarge our students’ awareness of lived Christianity in its global variety and vitality, to challenge their theological and practical knowledge by exposing them to other theological methods and models of ministry, and to tune their ability to read any context—even the more “familiar” ones in which they might ultimately be called to minister—deeply, faithfully, and creatively.
In the first three years of the grant’s existence, we sent seven students abroad, to study:
- Christianity’s ecumenical cooperation in North India
- The indigenous training of pastors in congregational “Bible schools” in Kenya
- Christian responses to religious violence and persecution and Christian practice in the presence of the religious “other” in India (two students)
- A village model of ministry—“pastor as cultivator of culture”—in Slovakia
- The impact of short-term missions trips on participants and hosts as well, in Ghana
- Biblical interpretation among various South African Christian communities
Two students are abroad in the summer of 2011, studying:
- Reconciliation in Bosnia
- Youth empowerment in Kenya
The students are encouraged to write up their reflections and two blogs can be found here:
- Jimmy Hoke's travel to South Africa in 2010
- Andrew Packman’s travel to Bosnia in 2011
We are deeply grateful to the Carpenter Foundation and the Baptist Theological Union for making this program possible.
