Fall 2020/Online

Weekly Synchronous Requirement

IS500

Cormode

IS500: PRACTICES OF VOCATIONAL FORMATION (4 Units: 160 hours). Scott Cormode

DESCRIPTION: The purpose of this course is to form students for vocation. That formation includes spiritual formation and academic formation. Students will engage in spiritual disciplines and explore Christian practices necessary for vocation (especially listening, lament, and gratitude/generosity). The course emphasizes the need for students to learn “agility” – i.e. the ability to minister in Jesus’s name even in new and changing social circumstances. The implications of an unexpected pandemic create one such new and surprising situation.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

1. Students will engage scripture, tradition, and contemporary resources to provide theological interpretation of contextualized situations.
2. Students will consider the impact of their social-cultural context and heritage--including ethnic and racial identity, gender, theological environment, and other contextually-shaped identities--on their experience of vocation and their ability to be agile.
3. Students will articulate the implications of Christian practices and disciplines for their current and future spiritual and vocational formation.
4. Students will engage throughout the quarter inembodied spiritual exercises and other embedded learning activities and then reflect upon them in order to create specific steps to take to improve their future engagement of the practice
5. Integrative Studies courses seek to form students who demonstrate capacities to cultivate a theologically reflective practice of Christian discipleship / formation.

RELATIONSHIP TO PROGRAM LEARNING OUTCOMES: This course will provide students with further opportunity to develop and/or master skills in integrating theological and missiological content with life experience and context through engaging a variety of spiritual practices related to the practice of worship, which is consistent with the SOT/SIS PLO “Students will have demonstrated capacities to cultivate a theologically reflective practice of Christian discipleship.” (MDiv, MAT, MATM, MAICS). The emphasis on integration in this course provides an introduction to the MAICS learning outcome related to critical thinking and integration (MAICS). This course may also contribute to various learning outcomes in the MAGL related to integrating theology and praxis in ministry and mission, and related to spiritual formation (MAGL).

COURSE FORMAT: This is an online course with a weekly face-to-face meeting (via Zoom) between the students and the professor.

REQUIRED READING: Approximately 900 pp. of required reading

Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill, Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (IVP, 2018) ISBN: 0830845410 (Cost: $20.00)

All other reading will be in article form and will be available through the course Canvas page.

There are four workgroups for this course. They are aligned so that students may take the course from any time zone in the world. Students will sign up for one workgroup that will meet via BlueJeans each week of the quarter:

Group A: Tuesdays from 9-10am (Pacific time)

Group B: Tuesdays from 1-2pm (Pacific time)

Group C: Tuesdays from 7-8pm (Pacific time)

Group D: Wednesdays from 6-7am (Pacific time)

Assignments

1. Class Preparation: including approximately 900 pages of reading [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1, #2, #3, and #4] [52 hours].
2. Thirty hours of class contact, including class meetings and viewing of video resources. [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1, #2, #3, and #4] [30 hours] If instructors want to use online forums, then that work will fall under this assignment.

3. Daily Disciplines: students will engage in daily disciplines (e.g. gratitude, prayer, lament) throughout the quarter. Students will keep a journal so that they can reflect on these disciplines in their final portfolio and perhaps include some of them in their Rule of Life. (This task will be graded as part of the final portfolio.) [This assignment is related to learning outcome #4] [15 hours]
4. Weekly Writing: students will write 500 to 750-word papers each week [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1, #2, #3, and #4] [30 hours]
   1. In some papers, the students will construct a coherent, theologically-reflective response to a contextualized situation (Three papers, 30% of final grade) [This assignment is related to learning outcome #1]
   2. In other papers, the students will reflect on their own history, experiences, and commitments (20% of final grade) [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #2, #3, and #4]

5. Interview and Case Study: students will interview a layperson (who is neither employed in religious nor educational work) about their work and then write up a case study describing a situation that calls for a theologically reflective response. (The grade for this is incorporated into the weekly writing assignments) [This assignment relates to learning outcomes #1 and #2] [3 hours]

6. Option: Weekly Quizzes: students will have weekly quizzes on the reading and video assignments [This assignment is related to learning outcome #1] [Hours included in the class contact total]
7. Final Portfolio: including re-written response papers and a final integrative paper responding to one of three contextualized cases. (40% of grade) [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1, #2, #3, and #4] [30 hours]
   1. Papers creating a theologically-reflective response to a contextualized situation – rewritten in light of comments from the TA and/or the professor (the grades on these rewritten papers can replace the grades on the first iteration of the papers)
   2. Rule of Life describing the habits that the student will cultivate in order to embody her/his commitments to spiritual formation
   3. Journal on Daily Disciplines (graded for completion)
   4. Financial Plan for Funding Seminary Education (graded for completion)
   5. Final Integrative Paper: There are two options for the final paper, likely depending on the degree program of the student

• A 2000-word paper responding to one of three contextualized cases. The paper must (a) address the situation by (b) using multiple sources from the course (including practices and sources from Bible, Theology, and History) so that (c) the whole of the paper is greater than the sum of its parts.
• A 4000-word academic paper explaining the theological meaning and historical roots of one of three practices (either lament, vocation, or generosity). The paper should engage multiple references from long list of recommended readings that the professor will provide on each of these topics.

ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT: Include the following or adapt this language to fit the nature of the course assignments: This course includes fieldwork and embodied assignments of various kinds. If you have a disability, chronic illness, or other condition that makes these activities inaccessible for you, please let the instructor know. Together, you can figure out some alternative ways of completing the assignments that will preserve the learning objectives while making the coursework accessible.

PREREQUISITES: None. Required first course.

RELATIONSHIP TO CURRICULUM: Meets a core integration requirement in the 120 MDiv and the 80 MAT, 80 MATM, 80 MAICS Programs (Fall 2015).

FINAL EXAMINATION: None

NOTE: This ECD is a reliable guide to the course design but is subject to modification. Textbook prices are set by publishers and are subject to change. Copyright 2019 Fuller Theological Seminary.