Refreshing our MA programme
Refreshing our MA programme
Photo: Students, including the first African Christianity cohort, celebrating graduation
Our postgraduate courses bring students together in an intentionally intercultural MA programme.
by James Butler,
Over the last 12 years CMS has offered an MA with a focus on pioneering and mission.
Four years ago Harvey Kwiyani joined the team and we introduced an African Christianity route through the MA, picking up particular questions and perspectives from an African Diaspora perspective. Our first African Christianity cohort graduated last December.
This year we introduced an Asian Christianity route through the MA, with the arrival of Nuam Hatzaw on our teaching team.
We have found the diversity in teaching team, in students, and in perspectives we are paying attention to has been deeply enriching and forming for all of us, staff and students alike. Spending time together, listening to one another, and learning together broadens our perspectives, deepens our theology, and refreshes our practice.
We have heard from many students how learning together has been the highlight of the course, how through the MA they are getting a taste of ‘the church of the future’ and learning to work across ethnicity and tradition in ways which are going to be increasingly the reality across the UK.
In light of these experiences and reflections we have sought to refresh our MA in a way which puts listening and learning together across the different streams at the heart of the programme.
In our new iteration, we will still be exploring the same themes, scholars, perspectives and theologies, but now all three streams – the pioneer, African and Asian – will journey together through the whole MA, building those relationships which we have heard are so enriching, and which will hopefully carry on in their mission, ministry and pioneering.
Our vision for the MA is one in which a diversity of perspectives are heard and learnt together. The mantra that “everyone has a piece of the wisdom” has always been important to us and this refreshed MA enables that to be experienced in a deeper way.
In practice it means that more of the modules will be studied together, and rather than have particular modules which focus on the different perspectives of the streams, it will be within the modules themselves where we both come together to learn from each other, and have opportunities to work and learn in our specific streams.
Our vision of the MA continues to be a space where we explore contextual mission and which is practically focused while learning with global voices.
By building on our rich history of global mission and pioneering, and being attentive to the vibrant and diverse expression of Christianity worldwide, we are excited about how our refreshed MA offers, not just the training and thinking for church in the UK in the 21st century, but also begins to model what that might be like while learning together.
Find out more about open days or how to apply.
