Ignatian Foundations for Mission and Ministry

Course Description

In this course, students are introduced to the spiritual, intellectual, professional and ethical foundations of mission and ministry in the Roman Catholic Church. The student is invited to appropriate a spirituality for service and professional guidelines for ministry and mission within a theological framework, thereby beginning the process of articulating a personal vision that is grounded in Scripture, Tradition, and experiences of vocation and/or ministry.

Course Objectives

The course is taught in two concurrent modules: spiritual conversation and lecture/ discussion. The spiritual conversation component is rooted in sapiential reading and reflection, and teaches a method of active listening and communal discernment for mission/ministry. The mode of learning is reflective participation. The lecture/discussion component introduces various skills of leadership, conflict resolution, cross-cultural communication, and professional ethics, along with biblical, historical and theological foundations for thinking about mission and ministry in the Church. The mode of learning here depends on the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm.

Active learning assumes that students have developed a disciplined approach to reading reflectively and critically. Students are expected to take notes on key ideas as they read and develop some mode of personal appropriation of assigned texts (e.g. keeping a journal, forming a study group, developing an artistic portfolio….) in preparation for the final paper. One approach to reading is included in this syllabus, and reflection and appropriation questions sometimes accompany the readings.

Course Schedule

A detailed course schedule is available for download.