Uniqueness of the McCormick DMin
The Doctor of Ministry at McCormick Theological Seminary is designed for leaders navigating real-world ministry amid complexity, disruption, and deep social change. The program engages the most pressing challenges facing ministry today—organizational leadership, cultural complexity, communal trauma, and public witness—while grounding all learning in the student’s own context and call.
Culturally Attentive: McCormick’s DMin is shaped by a commitment to culturally attentive and justice-centered theological education. Students engage cross-cultural and intercultural frameworks that prepare them to lead in an increasingly diverse religious and social landscape. The program honors students’ racial, cultural, and ecclesial identities while equipping leaders to examine power, inequity, and systemic harm—and to respond with faithful, healing-centered practice.
Contextual and Practice-Based: Your ministry context is not a case study—it is the classroom. Academic inquiry is intentionally integrated with your professional setting, bringing theological reflection into direct conversation with lived ministry challenges. The doctoral project is rooted in your place of ministry, developed in partnership with a congregation or agency, and oriented toward meaningful transformation within that context and its surrounding community.
Peer-Centered Learning: While each student follows an individualized academic pathway, learning happens in community. Students engage alongside peers from diverse ministry, cultural, and professional backgrounds, drawing on shared wisdom, critical dialogue, and collective reflection. This peer-based model strengthens leadership formation while expanding perspective across differences.
Transformative and Justice-Oriented: Students enter the program with distinct vocational questions and ministry challenges. To meet those needs, the DMin offers a range of electives and interdisciplinary approaches that may include parish revitalization, pastoral and communal care, organizational change, public theology, and justice-driven leadership. Across core and elective coursework, students engage complex ministry issues through sociological, psychological, organizational, political, economic, historical, theological, and biblical lenses—cultivating adaptive leaders prepared to accompany communities toward repair, resilience, and hope.
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McCormick is accredited by the Association of Theological Schools of the United States and Canada.