Class Descriptions
The Urban Youth Ministry Certificate consists of five courses taken at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary's CUME campus. These five classes can be taken in any order, although the suggested order is below. If you want more information about the overall certificate then click here. If you are looking for a schedule or registration and application forms then click here and if you are looking for the syllabi then click here.
Course One (SW501/YM689) Theology and Models of Urban Youth Ministry: An Overview
This course introduces students to adolescent development in the urban context and a proper response. This entails a look at urban families and social services, the streets and gangs, hip-hop and thug culture—the five primary social systems within which youth develop their own identities. From this emphasis will be placed on the personal lives of youth leaders and students themselves. Principles of relating (The Four Basic Questions) and building youth ministries (the Ten Stages) will be discussed.
Course Two (SW502/YM695) Effective Relationships: Healing & Growth in Youth Ministry
This second course deals with the needs and hurts of young people before attending to the needs and hurts of students in the class and youth leaders in general. After dealing with the therapeutic aspects of the Gospel and Christian ministry, it suggests a positive assets-approach be kept in proper balance.
Course Three (SW503/YMXXX) Urban Systems as They Affect Youth
This third course examines systems that have been introduced in the first course, studying family systems and social services, the school system and its failures, the criminal justice system and DYS, medical, housing, and employment systems. Reference will be made, of course to the five primary social systems surrounding youth including gangs and the streets. These systems are the context for youth ministry and demand systems thinking and a knowledge of resources.
Course Four (SW504/YMXXX) Building Urban Youth Programs
Various models of urban youth programs: church and para-church will be examined. Principles, such as the Ten Stages, suggested in the first course will be further developed. Field trips would great enhance this course; certainly various program leaders should be called in as visiting presenters. Emphasis should be put on the reasoned process by which a model of youth ministry should be developed in different contexts and situations.
Course Five (SW505/YM801) Strategy & Management of Youth Programs
This tested and tried course is more than its name. It should distill the principles such programs as the DeVoss Family Urban Training, 100 Black Men of America, Proactive Leadership in the 21st Century, and others have developed. It is a challenge to effective leadership and management. Even more, it’s a workshop discovering personal strengths and values, a reasonable and achievable personal future with creative life management using obstacles to good advantage. It also begins the process of a future, specific youth ministry “business plan.”
Wild Card Classes
We also offer several classes that are outside this five class certificate. If you have previously taken one of these five classes, but not on certificate level, you may still obtain the certificate by taking a wild card class at the certificate level. This way you will have taken five classes on the certificate level. Such classes include
Adolescent Spirituality: Faith Development in a Post-Modern World.
The course begins with an analysis of various religious styles, adolescent development and culture. Secular and Christian spirituality will be compared before examining the nature of conversion and spiritual growth from several ecclesiastical perspectives. We hope to provide you with unique insights regarding the nature of worship and spiritual direction—especially from the perspective of the historical, liturgical churches.