BUSI 801 - Pastoral Perspectives on Business
This course gives further instruction regarding the specific business issues that will be faced in pastoral ministry. These include accountability, benevolence/outreach, board meetings, budgeting, business meetings, facilities, fundraising, human resource issues, salaries, and tithes and offerings.
CMIN 801 - Advanced Church Ministries
This course reviews the relationships between pastors and various church ministries. The main areas of ministry being addressed are: Children, youth, worship/music, singles, Christian education, small groups, missions, senior adults, prayer, and outreach.
CMIN 802 - Critical Issues for Pastors in Ministry
This course addresses some of the major social issues facing ministry today including religion, racism, sexual identity, politics, relativism, death penalty, stem cell research, abortion, assisted suicide, and immigration.
CMIN 803 - Personal and Spiritual Wellness
This course equips pastors to achieve and maintain balance in their social, physical, emotional, mental, environmental, intellectual, vocational, spiritual, financial, and relational lives.
COMM 701 - Preaching to 21st Century Audiences
This course prepares pastors to be better presenters of the Word of God in any setting. The topics to be addressed include defining biblical preaching, rules for effective communication, how to choose a topic, how to study, structuring the message, storytelling, using visual illustrations, connecting the listeners to the message, coming to a conclusion, and inviting responses.
COMM 702 - World Religions and Cults
This course will study the beliefs of the major non-Christian religions of the world including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Islam. Emphasis is placed on each tradition's analysis of the basic human problem and the solution that it offers to the problem. Attention is also paid to new, emergent religious movements and cults.
COUN 801 - Pastoral Perspectives on Counseling
This course addresses specific challenges pastors face in counseling. These include when to commit to counseling, length of time for counseling, type of counseling being offered, different issues faced in counseling, when to refer to a professional counselor, using the Bible in counseling, offering hope, personal responsibility, giving advice and homework, and how to properly close a counseling session or season.
LEAD 801 - Pastoral Leadership
This course offers pastors a deeper understanding of what church leadership is and how it should be lived out in a ministry setting. The content of this course includes defining pastoral leadership, Jesus' example of leadership, discipleship/mentoring, vision-casting, goal setting, team building, strategic planning, leading change, learning from mistakes, and servanthood (leading by example).
READ 701 - Readings in Contemporary Christianity
This course studies three textbooks to examine differing viewpoints of various theological and practical issues. The student will be required to read the texts and to write a five page paper on each that discusses key points of the book and how it applies to life and ministry situations.
RESEARCH 801 - Doctoral Research Project - (9 hours)
The research project incorporates everything that has been learned throughout the DMin program. The student is required to plan a major event/outreach and clearly incorporate five principles from each class. Furthermore, the student must explain why they did what they did, as well as whether or not it was effective. Finally, the student will be required to video record the event (raw data, not over-produced) so that the WCBCS Doctoral Consortium will be able to watch the event to get an overall sense of the event and its effectiveness.