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Since 1973, when Doug and Judy Hall first began teaching classes in urban ministry, EGC has enjoyed a partnership in urban ministry training with Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. In 1976, EGC assisted the seminary in launching the Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME), guided by its founder and director, Dr. Eldin Villafañe. After nearly 35 years, CUME stands as one of the oldest and largest urban ministry focused theological seminaries in this country. A September 12, 2010 article in The Boston Globe describes CUME as a school that is “nationally recognized for its work in minority clergy education.”¹

In addition to the full array of classes in English, the school offers courses in Spanish, French Creole (for Haitian students), and Portuguese (for Brazilians), including a full-track Master’s program in Spanish and Doctor of Ministry degrees in English and Spanish. In the 2010-2011 fall semester, there are 280 students enrolled. This year, the Masters programs at CUME include degrees in youth ministry, urban ministry, educational ministries, counseling, and a Master of Divinity with an urban emphasis.

In addition to their Masters Degree and Doctor of Ministry Degree programs, CUME offers a diploma program for those who might not immediately qualify for Masters Degree admissions. The diploma program is a good fit for the urban ministry practitioner who may be active in ministry, but has never completed a college education. Edwin Hernandez, a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Latino Religion at Notre Dame, calls these practitioners “religious entrepreneurs,” and notes that “by virtue of their charisma, their ability to speak, their devotion to religious life, their ability to harness the attention of small groups, they start a church.”²

One of the brilliant ideas behind CUME is what some call the action-reflection model. Rev. Ralph Kee, animator of the Greater Boston Church Planting Collaborative and an instructor at CUME this year, points out that for some young people who aspire to ministry, their denomination requires that for each jump in position or leadership or authority, one first has to get another degree. “It’s not that you don’t want people to continue their education,” Ralph says, “but I would rather see them get it while they are doing it.” Experience and education work best hand in hand. “That is the whole idea behind CUME,” he says. “It is not to take people out of ministry or to postpone ministry, so much as to help people in ministry.”

Writing in 1995, the late Dr. Bruce Jackson, former assistant dean of CUME and assistant professor of Christian Education and Urban Ministry, explained it this way: “At CUME, students are actively engaged in ministry while they are involved in classroom experiences. The material they learn is tested in their ministry, and the experiences of ministry become the substance for examination and reflection in the classroom. This is one of the major differences between CUME and residential seminary programs. Residential seminary training focuses, by and large, on ‘pre-service’ training for ministry; CUME emphasizes ‘in-service’ training.” And today, 15 years later, this model continues to work.³

One of the ways in which CUME has attempted to foster this action-reflection model is in its Mentored Ministry Program. This program is required for the Master of Divinity degree. “By engaging in a mentoring relationship with a more experienced minister, the student grasps the opportunity to develop gifts and learn what the mentor is already learning,” the handbook reads. The mentors’ “wisdom, experience, counsel and guidance… contribute not just to the students’ seminary education, but also to the Shalom of the city by God’s grace.” And one stated goal is to “engage students in theological reflection in which Scripture, tradition, culture and personal experience are holistically integrated.”⁴

Because of our close relationship, EGC often benefits from the help of eager mentored ministry interns. Sometimes these men and women go on to become EGC staff. One of the latest interns is Hanno van der Bijl, who studied at Gordon-Conwell’s main campus  in Hamilton, lives in Boston, and has a heart for urban ministry.

In the spring of 2010, during his last semester at seminary, Hanno served with Dr. Bobby Bose, the Global Urban Ministries Education Coordinator for the Vitality Project at EGC. Dr. Bose has a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. The Global Urban Ministries Network (GUMNet) is an international peer-to-peer network and learning team of urban ministry practitioners. “It was great to be able to see the world from Dr. Bose’s perspective and to go to major conferences with him. I saw things I would not otherwise have seen,” Hanno says. During his internship, in addition to attending regular EGC staff meetings, meetings of GUMNet, and monthly prayer gatherings of pastors in Boston, Hanno joined Dr. Bose at conferences as far away as Dallas in preparation for next month’s Cape Town 2010: The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. “In talking to him,” Hanno says, “it became evident that I had a lot of blind spots I did not realize, as a white western male. So to have those opened up to me was valuable, and he did it very graciously as well.” It was also instructive to watch how Dr. Bose interacted with his colleagues, Hanno says. Dr. Bose, who is from Kolkata, India, grew to be a close friend whom Hanno thought of as “a normal guy.” Hanno was then surprised to see other white church leaders at some of these conferences treating Dr. Bose with some awkwardness.

Conversations with Dr. Bose were very enlightening, he says. “I knew, for example, that India was very diverse, but he was able to highlight tensions in India and in the Indian church—deep-seated cultural differences to be aware of. I need to be careful not to miss some of these things.” Overall, Hanno says that because of his mentored ministry experience, he is better prepared for missions in a global context.

Following graduation, Hanno stayed involved at EGC, and is now serving as a research intern with the Vitality Project. He just finished compling a research paper on, interestingly enough, Boston’s options for ministry training. Next month, Hanno and Dr. Bose head out for Cape Town to join 4,000 leaders from more than 200 countries to work together to understand the critical issues surrounding the Lord’s call to world evangelization. The conference is global networking at its best. The fact that Hanno is going is the fruit of a partnership in ministerial training at its best.

by Steve Daman

[published in Inside EGC, September-October, 2010]

Endnotes:
^1. Wangsness, Lisa. “Seminary reaches out to Hispanic ministers.” The Boston Globe, 12 September 2010. <http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/09/12/s_hamilton_seminary_reaches_out_to_hispanic_ministers/>
^2. Wangsness, Globe
^3. Villafañe, Eldin, Douglas Hall, Efrain Agosto, and Bruce W. Jackson. Seek the peace of the city: reflections on urban ministry. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans. 1995. p.123.
^4. CUME Mentored Ministry Manual, p. 3. http://www.gordonconwell.edu/sites/default/files/CUME%20Mentored%20Ministry%20Manual.