Exploring, Engaging, Equipping
M.Div.
Master of Divinity
Elements of the Program
The program of ministry preparation offered at Montreal Diocesan
Theological College in collaboration with the Montreal School of
Theology is oriented to the cultivation of ministerial character or
pastoral identity. Its aim is not to anticipate all possible future
scenarios in which a graduate may be called upon to function, but to
help students develop skills and habits that will make them apt for
leadership and able to enter any particular context grounded in
prayer and disposed to act with intelligence, wisdom and integrity.
There are four trajectories in our program of pastoral formation.
Although each trajectory consists of a distinct set of projects and
expectations, none can be isolated from the others. They are all in
play at every stage in the student’s progress
Intelligence
The first element
or trajectory is the cultivation of theological intelligence. A
pastoral leader must be able to gather the church in worship and
equip it for mission. This work of gathering and sending requires a
leader who can proclaim the gospel of God’s grace with confidence as
well as sensitivity to the particular context. Hence it requires
someone with the skills that will enable him/her to build upon a
solid foundational knowledge of the church’s scriptures and of its
great tradition. A theologically informed priest or pastor will know
what the church has proclaimed in the past as good news and why it
has been received as good news. He/she will know how the gospel has
been celebrated and put into practice, as well as how it has been
and may be distorted. A theologically intelligent pastor will also
be critically familiar with the cultural context in which he/she
lives and will have a vision of how the church’s mission can be
actualized in a way that speaks to that culture and thus opens it to
the purifying and liberating grace of God.
Wisdom
A second element
of the program is the cultivation of practical wisdom. Knowing how
to act appropriately in a particular situation of pastoral
opportunity is a virtue that is developed over time by entering
intentionally into pastoral situations and reflecting critically on
one’s responses. Practical wisdom is exercised on the basis of
background knowledge, which is to say that while it is an informed
practice, or praxis, it is not a recitation of what one knows. The
relevant knowledge is acquired largely through experience. That
experience will include familiarity with the church, its
institutions and customs, as well as with the world ; but it will
also include the learned habit of empathic listening and of
intuiting the latent dynamisms that are operative in a given
situation, namely, the psychological, social, economic, moral and
political factors at work. The pastor who has this virtue will
necessarily be engaged
in an ongoing work of becoming critically self-aware and thus able
to differentiate her/his own needs and aspirations from those of
others also implicated in the pastoral situation.
Spirituality
A third trajectory
of the program is the cultivation of a spiritual life. Pastoral
leaders not only preside at the church’s services of public worship,
they also witness to the activity of the Spirit guiding, judging and
renewing the spirits of God’s people. A minister who exercises this
form of leadership will be a person of prayer, accustomed to waiting
on God, blessing God and interceding for God’s people. This habit of
prayer is sustained by a virtue which may be described as godliness
or piety. The godliness of the pastor is the capacity to give
his/her religious feelings and aspirations as well as those of
others a truly worshipful form by integrating them within a larger
living framework of response to God—a response that allows for an
adequate expression of the church’s consciousness of God’s
transcendence, glory, freedom and mercy. Since pastoral leaders are
responsible not only for their own piety but for the church’s, they
need to be grounded in the church’s corporate prayer and informed
about its development and norms. They also need to be able to ensure
that different temperaments and gifts are honoured and given room
for appropriate expression within the community.
Integrity
The final element
of
the program is the cultivation of integrity. The work of integration
is necessitated by the inevitable tensions among the various demands
of ministry—tensions that may well be intensified in a program of
theological education in which they are called into play all at
once. There are the tensions between theory and practice, between
mind and heart and between practice (action) and prayer
(contemplation). A minister who is well-informed theologically but
insensitive to people or arrogant will not have a ministerial
character, nor, for that matter, an important foundation for the
articulation of a well-rounded theology. Similarly, a person with
good people skills but no sense of how to preside liturgically will
be lacking with respect to an important dimension of pastoral
identity. It is important, therefore, that priests/pastors develop
an awareness of their own vocational predilections and inhibitions,
not only in order to hone the skills they do possess, but also to
recognize where challenges may lie to their personal growth into
mature Christian witness and service.
Each of the trajectories outlined corresponds roughly to a part of the
program. The academic component of the program is designed to help
the student develop theological intelligence.
The field placement
is critical to the success of the second trajectory, as are courses
in the
In Ministry Year . The third trajectory, that is, the cultivation of a spiritual life,
is less formalized than the others. In all years of the program,
however, students are expected (a) to take part in the liturgical
life of the college by attending and leading the daily office and by
attending and serving the Eucharist ; (b) to attend the college’s
annual orientation retreat and the winter term quiet day ; and (c)
to seek out a spiritual director. There is also a required course on
Patterns in Spirituality. Finally, the integrative project is met,
in part, by the Ministry Seminars and the four-part Integrative
Paper.
M.Div.
The M.Div. program
is integrated with the Bachelor of Theology program of
the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University.
Students must
have a first degree to be admitted to the 60-credit B.Th. program
which, combined with the In Ministry Year, amounts to a three-year
course of full-time study leading to the M.Div. degree.
Other Programs