 Good afternoon and welcome to all the alumni who are joining us today. This is the first Thursday conversation of the 22-23 academic year. My name is Janine Bertie Johnson and I serve as alumni director along with roles as in campus ministries and admissions and advancement. Just a couple of housekeeping details before we get started. If you would be willing to introduce yourself in the chat make sure you send it to all attendees and not just to the panelists so we you can see who else is here and then if you have any technical concerns along the way you can send a chat message to the AMBS host. If you have a comment or question for our speakers we ask that you please use the Q&A function that's at the bottom of your screen and I'll be watching for those questions and comments and after the first the beginning questions we'll turn to those. Please note that the webinar including the questions is being recorded. Today we're going to change our normal approach to third Thursdays and instead of having just one guest we'll be having two. Our focus will be on a new program rather than on the work of individual faculty members. You've probably seen the news that AMBS has approved has been approved to offer a doctor of ministry degree. Joel Gingrich-Langenacker and Daniel Schrock who are both alumni of AMBS have been selected as co-directors of the program and they're joining me today to share everything alumni might want to know about that. We'll start with several questions I've prepared for them and then we'll have time for your questions. So Dan and Joel we're going to start with each of you introducing yourselves and your roles at AMBS. Hello everyone I'm Dan Schrock and I am I've been teaching at AMBS for about a decade and mostly what I teach are the spiritual direction courses. Yeah hi everybody I'm Joel and I'm the Dean of Lifelong Learning at AMBS so I've been overseeing continuing education and pre-seminary kinds of programs non-degree largely and yeah now doing this degree program in addition. Thank you Janet we've got a message that the chat has been disabled if you could open that up that will allow people to introduce themselves. Thank you. So Joel and Dan there have been conversations on and off for several years about the possibility of AMBS offering a D-MEN program and I'm wondering what were the factors in the last year that led to AMBS submitting a proposal to ATS our accrediting body to start this degree program? Yeah well we've actually been working at a pretty steady pace for about the last three years on this and I think it's safe to say that this work has been building our sense of readiness our excitement about the program and there's been a lot a lot to think about a lot to prepare over the last several years we've been increasingly noticing that anabaptist thought and values on leadership on the topic of leadership specifically are pretty distinctive and needed in the church and world and so I think we've we've felt like having such a degree having a doctor or ministry that focuses on leadership is something we can contribute in a way that maybe we hadn't been thinking in the same way before. As you might remember we conducted a market survey in late 2020 I think it was and from it we learned that there was a lot of interest in a doctor of ministry in leadership specifically and then last summer summer of 2021 so a little more than a year ago we did some extensive deep listening through a formal listening project where we checked in with interviewed at length church leaders including denominational leaders conference leaders as well as several other pastors and we just heard repeatedly the need to up our focus on leadership for future leaders later that summer we invited a group of those folks to campus well actually it was all through zoom but to be part of a consultation with us and we heard a lot of things about how due to COVID polarization rising secularization those kinds of things current leaders are going to need new leadership skills and it's also been the case that AMBS has a strategic plan that is calling for us to reach and about just friendly prospective students who might be outside the Mennonite realm and so of course we welcome and want Mennonite students and our own alumni and in addition I'm offering a doctor of ministry as a way to reach beyond the Mennonite world to offer an anabaptist's credential for leaders who who might have been educated in other denominational contexts so all of those things kind of have been contributing to our thinking about this the what what I would add here is I think there is a growing awareness in our churches and I mean in our congregations and conferences and so forth that while a master's degree is enough to get started in ministry it may not always be enough to sustain someone in the long run my observation is that around midlife a lot of leaders feel an itch for more training tailored to their specific context simply put they want to become more competent and we think this degree will help to do that. Thanks tell us what it means that this is a competency-based model how is that different from traditional D-min degrees and what are the strengths and limitations of a competency-based model? Yeah so in a nutshell here are three points competency-based education identifies the desired results so those are the competencies determines the acceptable evidence how will you know competency when you see it what will count as evidence and that would be the assessment and then plans the learning experience so how will you have experiences and knowledge building opportunities that will lead to acceptable evidence that shows competence so that those are kind of three steps or three pieces of competency-based education um it's also really important to think about who does those things who identifies the desired results in a competency-based program and one way that that is somewhat different from a lot of traditional programs is the involvement of the outside bodies groups that have some knowledge and wide experience in the field and might be employers or in our case conference ministers, denominational leaders, others who attend to the work of ministry and so they help to set and identify the competencies they help the school. Another at the second level of determining acceptable evidence again you'd have inputs we will have and have had inputs from um denominational conference leaders on as to what counts as evidence of competence so rather than it being you know like test-based or research paper-based competencies evidence will be other kinds of things and then the planning of the learning experiences again here we involve not only faculty in making assignments but students in determining what it is we want to have as a way to get to these forms of evidence of competence. I've learned over time that competency-based education means a lot of different things in different educational contexts so nursing programs or technology programs and theological education programs will not all mean exactly the same thing when they use that term but I think one thing that we can say about all competency-based programs is that rather than focusing on what classes are offered or what classes students will take the guiding focus is on what specific competencies students will gain by completing the program. In fact many competency-based programs have no classes some have a few but even when classes are involved the focus is always on what are the knowledge and experiences that are needed to gain competency rather than on moving through a set of courses. Our program has five competencies and in order to graduate from the program students will need to demonstrate mastery in all five competency areas along with completing a research project. Another thing that makes competency-based programs different from many traditional programs is that in competency-based programs the academy alone doesn't try to answer the question of what defines competence so I talked about that a little bit earlier that the educators reach out to those who employ the graduates or in our case like I said those in churchwide ministry to ask for help in understanding how competencies should be defined and how we would know it when we've seen it. Something else we can say is that in competency-based theological education specifically and this may or may not be true in other sectors the learning is context-based so one's ministry setting is a major component of the learning program and the experience. The learning program is job embedded the work site is a key learning site you could say that the ministry site is the classroom a student will not be admitted into our demon program without a ministry context in which to practice ministry. Another thing we can say about competency-based theological education is that it follows a practice model of continuous reflection on learning and experience so that would be to say that throughout the program learners will engage in regular reflection on how what they experience in their ministries relates to what they're learning in books or articles or seminars or other media maybe in a class maybe in a short course how that learning it relates to their experience what they gain as theoretical knowledge how that might shape their ministry in new and different ways so this continuous loop of theory to practice to reflection on practice to theory to reflection is a key feature of conference-based theological education in particular also and this is the last thing I'll say about this for this time because I know that and this is a lot to absorb but conference-based theological education is mentoring based so faculty mentors and professional mentors walk alongside learners for the duration of the program it's called longitudinal mentoring over three years it'll really allow the mentors to observe growth over time and for learners to be deeply known and therefore appropriately challenged and guided the mentoring piece is very key the demon that the doctor of ministry that I did a long time ago was a conventional degree I took the required number of courses I researched and wrote a final project and then I graduated it was a pretty straightforward kind of thing so the this doctor of ministry is as dual has said in quite good detail a very different than traditional education that most of us are used to it's going to look a little different and it will feel perhaps significantly different for the people who are in the program kind of the heart of this is as dual has already hinted what is it that you need or that you want in order to become a more competent leader so you can't walk into this program directly from a master's degree you have to have some experience as a ministry of some kind whether that's a pastor or a chaplain or what have you and the sort of the baseline query is at this point in your development as a ministering person in a leadership role what do you need to become even better and then the whole program is kind of built around that central question within some parameters that we've already set up that is the five competencies which by the way if you don't know them are anabaptist leadership intercultural leadership teaching leadership change leadership and resilient leadership thank you you've been at a conference all this week on competency based education and I'm wondering what is something new that you've learned this week that you hope to incorporate into AMBS's D men program maybe I should begin this one first um well I'm still thinking about that questions you mean I'm still learning and wrapping my head around the subtle but significant ways that this form of education um how it operates and what it's trying to do however I will say that I'm beginning to realize that for the last decade in my teaching I have already been unknowingly doing a lot of what we call competency based education I just didn't have the language for it and probably I'm kind of doing a hybrid sort of conventional model of teaching and CBE model of teaching but I'm intrigued by the possibilities of becoming a little bit more conscious and thoughtful about doing competency based education yeah well I'm I'm fortunate to be on the grounds of this conference that is just full of energy and ideas and um it's hard to it's hard to pick one thing I've learned because I've learned a lot but one thing that stands out is the concept um that I learned this morning which is that when you're doing assessment it's super important to set up as um what you call evidence that you know I mentioned a minute ago that determining what will count as evidence of competence that when you're setting up those things that you're mirroring what happens in the real world so um rather than using a test a written test for example to determine whether or not someone has achieved some aspect of competence in an area you would use something that is already part of the profession so maybe it's how does the leadership of this particular congregational event reflect um an anabaptist mode of leadership or how does it reflect intercultural competence as this this particular meeting or worship service in the congregation might be used as an example of a way to think about evidence how does it show evidence of competence so you see what I'm saying like rather than just kind of asking somebody to write about that we would be looking for them to actually demonstrate it there'll be written reflections all throughout this program not to minimize the value of writing but the importance of also having regular demonstrations in the ministry setting of competence as a way of doing assessment so they call it authenticity because I think it's it's true to the field the things that you would be doing to be assessed are true to the field that you're in so that's one thing sounds like a very rich experience that you're having um the two of you have been selected as co-directors of this program and I'm wondering if you would say a little bit more about the unique gifts that each of you brings to this role and why are you excited to work together it might be easier for us each to say what the other one brings to this role but I that's not the question so Dan go for it oh no I'm going to talk about you not me that's actually fine with me you can say what the other person brings that you're excited about yeah yeah yeah I'm going to talk about jewel uh so jewel has a phd leadership that used a competency model so she knows competency education really well she also knows lots of wonderful things about AMBS that have allowed us to launch this degree a lot faster than we could have otherwise if we were just coming in new into the AMBS community and environment and besides she's just an all-around competent person nice Dan is an all-around competent person actually and I am just blown away by everything he brings to this program he has many years of pastoral ministry experience spiritual direction experience walking alongside not just any directees but many many pastors and other leaders and he also has teaching experience a depth of teaching experience and I know from working with him over these last 10 years that people really appreciate his extraordinary competence in all three of those areas and so I just feel like he's super well suited to serve in this role well we are definitely excited that the two of you are working at this together would you take a little bit of time to explain the basic outline of the program and how long it takes and what will students experience I know you can't predict what everything students will experience but just in general what are your hopes for how people would move through this program do you want me to take a stab at that Dan or were you hoping to go ahead Joel well I'll get started and then you can fill in the gaps so students will come to campus once per year for a week the rest of their done their work will be done in their ministry settings and online when we come together the first thing that will happen will students will be introduced to competency based education what is it and how does it work and how can this function for you for the next three years and then asked in that first class that will begin on campus and then finish be completed over the course of the semester online and in that class they'll be asked to develop a competency development plan so we're serious about this competency development plan so serious that it's it's the content of the first course in many ways and will honor the importance of that work by granting three credit hours when the plan is finished when an approved competency development plan is finished then that that is the credit that's given so that continues to the end of April then the second semester students will choose one of the five competencies to focus on develop a syllabus using a syllabus template that we have to develop the learning plan as we as I mentioned earlier you know that third step the learning plan what will be the resources that they will use what will be the readings they will do what will be the experiences they will have to develop evidence to show competence in that competency area now um we've defined some of those things already and there are readings that are defined and there are few experiences that are defined but students will have input into quite a lot of input into what what those resources and experiences will be so um that's just to kick it off Dan you want to take it from here well the idea is sure the idea is to come back then every January for three years so there will be a course one course that you take on campus every January I'll be teaching the first one and Jules teaching the second one in the second year and Dave Boshart our president will be doing the third one another thing perhaps to say is that we hope you finish this in three years you can have as long as six years to finish it I think I've got that number right but my sense is that most people because of their most people who are interested in this degree because of their age and stage of life might actually prefer to finish it in three years because the number of years of ministry is getting shorter you know if you're 55 well maybe you've got uh 10 to 12 years of ministry left who knows if you are 61 well that's a lot shorter so you might be motivated to uh really get this done in three years rather than stretching it out to six even though that's an option if someone is interested in the D-Men program what are some discernment questions to help them decide whether or not to apply to AMBS's program I'll go ahead on this one the if I were I'm going to answer I'm going to respond to this Janine uh as if I were the person uh trying to discern this so I might ask questions like the following now that I've been doing ministry for a while out there in the church or the world what more do I want and notice I'm using the word want rather than need although you could use the word need as well what more do I want in order to keep doing this work what more do I want to know know what in what ways do I want to grow personally and spiritually so we're not just interested here in this program we're not interested just in head knowledge but in your development as a person in Christ so in what ways do I want to grow personally and spiritually and are there some other skills that I want to add to my toolbox a second uh group of questions would be is this the right doctor of ministry degree for what I want now there are a lot of doctor of ministry degrees in the United States and Canada at least 150 if not more so how good is the alignment between what I need to work in my context and what this particular degree could offer me and then uh the third question I basic question it would be I'd wait for a little bit to see if there are signs of confirmation so if I say yes I'm interested in this or I say no I'm not interested in this um signs of confirmation that I'm on a good path could include things like a lighter heart a deep inner feeling of yes that I've made the right decision here or that I'm making the right decision a sense that God is in this and so on and so forth yeah I think um a couple things that came to my mind were am I willing to be honest with myself and others about who I am as a ministering person um with mentors walking with us the whole entire way we um we become deeply known and so are we willing to be honest with ourselves and others and then this is very basic but question do I have time to devote to the program um one of the one of the things I've told a few people is do I have time to fill out the application in a careful and thoughtful way because the application is fairly demanding um as applications go and so um yeah how does that process feel how does it sit at this time and then Dan I think we were telling people is it around 12 hours a week they should expect to dedicate to the program so do I have 12 hours a week that I can carve out of my my life and perhaps my ministry site will um actually give me some time to work on some of these things that would be ideal to be able to have a few hours a week that are part of the job but um there will probably be you know enough writing and reflection and things that if you I don't think it's safe to assume that you can do all of this as part of your job it's it's better to think in terms of having about 12 weeks 12 hours a week to devote to what's needed well we're getting to the end of the questions that I prepared ahead of time so those of you who are part of the webinar please start adding the questions you want to hear about in the q&a so that we can get to those right after this next question here and that is when is the application deadline for the first cohort which starts this January and when will applicants know if they've been selected well the application deadline is November one that's coming up very quickly and um we will inform applicants as soon as possible after that we don't have a deadline yet for that but it'll be in November I would think I as it's been announced on the on the website as November 30th so I think we're trying to give ourselves plenty of time but maybe sooner than that I didn't know that till yesterday Dan okay I'm glad to know it we're learning as we go all right well we are ready for folks questions and until I see one pop up I'm going to ask you to share a little bit about uh some of the individual competencies so why resilient leadership what have you heard from church leaders that made that rise to the top of the priorities not the very top but one of the top five is what I mean well I was I was not part of the discernment process within AMBS that led to the formation of this degree so I have to answer uh respond to this one personally uh and I'm going to respond as a someone who had been a pastor for 30 years pastoring can be enormously difficult work I mean what do I know but it seems like it's got to be one of the most difficult jobs on the planet and there are any number of things in pastoral ministry or other forms of ministry that deflate you knock you down are very difficult so the the skill or the competency of resilience is about bouncing back up again what do I need how to keep going what do I want in order to recover maybe I need to uh rethink some of my spiritual practices just uh for example a lot of pastors I know do not observe the Sabbath that is a 24-hour period of rest and play and renewal every week I am constantly astonished at how many pastors don't do that well if we don't do it it takes a toll on us and if we do do it it builds our resiliency at least that's been my experience thanks anything you want to add jewel or should I go on to one of the questions coming from our alumni I think you can go on all right we have a question about the length of the program you mentioned the option of stretching the program to six years but is it also possible to add one year if it can't be completed in the three years can it be done in four years or does it I think the question is does it need to be either three or six thank you Charles for that question it does not need to be either three or six it three would be the pace that we recommend and that would happen probably most naturally in a sense but one of the things about competency-based education and I keep hearing this contrast at this conference I'm at competency-based versus time-based time bound so the idea is that you know sometimes we can't fit everything about becoming competent in an area into a neat and tidy time frame semesters aren't ideal for sorting that out and so we'll actually have a mechanism by which one can you know work on a competency for more than a semester it could be worked on for two semesters or three but of course you also want to be working on all the competencies so if you spend all your time and energy on one and it takes three semesters then that sets you back but you know let's say that you see something coming down the pike that would be very helpful in a change process and since change agency is one of the competencies you might not want to do that competency and complete it when in six months there's going to be this great opportunity to lead a specific change process in your setting that you know is coming and so we leave that one open you might be working toward it and the process itself becomes part of what you incorporate but we'd leave it open and not consider it finished until the time makes sense in your context and so that will create a situation where students may be able to finish everything in three years but it may be four or maybe five it may be six I will add that there will be a continuation fee for stretching it out so the three years is within the tuition stated tuition and then if it goes on into your four your five your six there will be continuation fees so hopefully that helps motivate people to do as much as they can within the timeframes that they have but let me just tell you I did a competency based PhD program as we discussed earlier and I took nine years David Bushhart did the same program and he took four so there you have it thanks and Doug is asking from a Canadian context what what are the restrictions and applying for this D men and and how might that be developing go ahead jewel you may know more about this than I sure um okay so the actual process of applying and you know everything that you go through for admissions is the same but the sticking point is that AMBS does not yet have a visa to allow international students to come in our doctoral program we of course have a visa or we when I say have a visa I mean be able to grant you know we can't have students come using the kind of visa that's needed for the doctoral program until we're approved by the US government and so we applied for that status several months ago and we're waiting but it's usually a very slow process and so we do not actually expect to have that status until after this cohort has begun did I say that clearly enough yeah I think so but we do hope to have official approval from the US government for the following years so that would be January of 2024 right you know there's a sense in which this is a very sad thing it would perhaps be a little bit easier to do this if we were located in Canada rather than the United States just for the from standpoint of visa restrictions it's a constant headache I'm not opposed to moving to Canada oh yeah I could I could deal with that well we are waiting to see if there are any other questions that come from the participants but while we wait I will go back to those competencies and ask you to speak about the change competency what what uh is describe that a little more fully and what what might people be working on thanks Doug I appreciate that welcome to Canada um well change leadership is pretty crucial so basically figuring out how one goes about effective change lasting change sustainable change change that is um suited to the context and isn't so drastic and dramatic that it undoes the mission of the organization that you're working for um so we have said about change leadership in alignment with anabaptist peace theology and biblical foundations for peace and justice competent change leaders inspire leadership in others and guide organizational culture and change in healthy ways um yeah Dan you can speak to this too oh I'm inclined to go to specific illustrations or a specific illustration let's suppose for example that you have a uh that you're in a congregation that is aging so you have a lot of people who are age 40 and up or even age 50 and up but hardly any children or any families with children young families young couples with children whether they have children or not actually young couple young people could be singles too so you're just there aren't very many there well it's rather in most congregations that's a rather obvious opportunity for change how do we uh entice welcome whatever verb you want to use younger persons what do we want to do to reinvent ourselves so pastoral leaders in such a context can be very crucial in helping the congregation as a whole to ask questions about change and what people are going to do another possibility here is or another example would be congregations that are trying to become more inter-culturally competent a number of congregations I know of are are attempting that and that is one of the most difficult transitions to make changes to making because it has to do with congregational culture and very personal things such as style of music and so forth so that can be another illustration of how change might be important but also hard and we're hoping that persons in this degree will be able to think and equip themselves a little bit more about how can I do this thank you so much for answering all these questions Dan and Jewel I'm not seeing more so we're going to bring this to a close but I also want to thank those of you who've joined us today for all of your support of AMBS I've said it many times but alumni truly are our most influential influential people in the church as people who might tag or shoulder tap a person who's interested in ministry or might might consider ministry in the future and also as donors and influencers of donors so thank you so much for your support of AMBS in those ways I also hope that you'll stay connected to the seminary through ongoing classes and church leadership center offerings remember that if you're an AMBS graduate there's a special audit rate that you can take advantage of and if you want to audit a class in the spring semester you can let me know that next month on November 17th our third Thursday conversation will feature Institute of Mennonite Studies managing editor David Kramer so hope all of you can join us again thank you so much also to Janet McGeary AMBS student who's been handling the the AV support and we are finished with today's third Thursday conversation and I hope you all have a great day