YL 500 – Mentoring Experience for Youth Ministry Leadership
Before enrolling in their fifth class in the program, students will be expected to enroll and participate in this online mutual mentoring community with other students who have matriculated.  Though largely facilitated through the Internet, this experience will also be catalyzed by each face-to-face course encounter in which the student participates. Students will be expected to offer both support and challenge on behalf of each other’s personal and spiritual growth through reading assignments, active discussions, and integration projects over a twelve-month period.  Course entry points take place in both January and July. (This 2 credit hour course meets a Program Core curriculum requirement within the MA in Youth Ministry Leadership.)
FACULTY: Roger Vezeau

YL 507 - Thinking Theologically in Youth Ministry
Case studies, personal experiences, modern ministry practices and the rich learning environment of the National Youth Workers' Convention will be integrated with reading, writing and discussion to cultivate students' skills in theological reflection and integration.  This class will be taught on location each year during the final NYWC of the fall season and will require students to also register for the NYWC. (3 credits) FACULTY: Dr. Dave Rahn    
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Theological Faithfulness

YL 510 - Leadership Movements in Youth Ministry
Students will investigate the history of youth ministry in order to discover and evaluate leadership models and their effects.  Using theories and methods drawn from history, theology, cultural studies, and the social sciences they will learn to explain how and why changes occur in the lives of young people and through them, in the church and in society.  They will also learn to identify and evaluate the unintended consequences that accompany every youth ministry leadership decision.  In addition, students will employ these interpretive skills to evaluate specific youth ministry leadership decisions and predict their consequences. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Tom Bergler 
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Theological Faithfulness

YL 515 - Theology of Discipleship Evangelism
Students will develop a Biblical and theological foundation of relational youth evangelism.  The course will include a critique of modern youth evangelism techniques based on theological premises and psycho-social developmental issues.  Students will also learn and evaluate Youth for Christ’s 3Story Evangelism^® approach to doing discipleship evangelism. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Phil Collins    
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Theological Faithfulness

YL 517 - Christological Foundations for Youth Ministry
This course is designed to help students develop a biblical theology of youth ministry centered on the person of Christ. With one eye on Jesus’ 1st century context and the other eye on the 21st century context of youth ministry, students will discern Christological patterns for life and ministry. Case studies and literature from the fields of theology and youth ministry will be used to help students lead youth ministries that live out the presence of Christ in their respective contexts. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Dave Livermore      
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Theological Faithfulness

YL 520 – Theology of the Church for Youth Ministry
Assumptions about the practice of youth ministry and its relationship to the mission of God in the world are examined in this course. Particular attention will be given to a comparison of Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings about the nature of the Church and deriving implications for contemporary youth ministry. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Dave Rahn
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Theological Faithfulness

YL 525 - Qualitative Research in Youth Ministry
Students will develop a foundation for qualitative inquiry of youth ministry-related subjects, focusing primarily on the principles, methods, and skills that comprise strong research. Taking advantage of the unique environment provided at the National Youth Workers’ Convention, this course combines independent study and a vibrant classroom experience with the “laboratory” of a Convention to develop these foundational skills in research design, collection, and analysis. The final design, implementation, and report of a small research and writing project will serve as demonstration of the students’ learning.  (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Terry Linhart
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Professional Leadership & Expertise

YL 527 – Communication Strategies for Youth Ministry Leadership
Communication is one of the essential facets of effective leadership, whether that communication comes through the medium of visual media, a printed message or the spoken word, and the wide-ranging contexts and tools of communication require leaders who are competent in these skills. Students in this course will focus primarily on the sorts of communication skills that will be required for teaching and preaching in the context of youth ministry. While significant attention will be given to communication theory, the focus will be on praxis, allowing students a laboratory for exploring and experimenting with various types of communication. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Duffy Robbins
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Professional Leadership & Expertise

YL 535 - Assessment Strategies in Youth Ministry
Students will review various approaches to assessment in order to understand appropriate assessment methods in various contexts as well as the strategic and organizational benefits that emerge from ongoing assessment and evaluation.  Students will thoroughly explore case studies in order to understand how to contextualize the key principles and develop an assessment program for their current settings. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Kara Powell   
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Professional Leadership & Expertise

YL 545 – Collaboration Strategies for Youth Ministry
Vision-casting, consulting, cooperative learning, conflict management and negotiation skills are all explored in this course. Students will consider their own context as they construct their skills around servant leadership values to develop an overall approach to youth ministry coalition building and collaboration. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Dave Rahn
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Professional Leadership & Expertise
LOCATION: YS National Youth Workers Convention, Nashville

YL 550 - Cultural Influences on Youth Ministry
Media, family relationships, economics, post-modernity, politics, consumerism, etc. influence both adolescents and those who work with them. This course will guide students in examining a variety of those influences, evaluating both the positive and negative factors, and strategizing to build a culturally savvy ministry. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Dan Lambert 
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Adolescent Specialization

YL 555 - Urban Social Context and Youth Ministry
This course will allow students to examine the ways in which social structures and institutions—such as class, family, community, and power—and social problems—such as crime and abuse—influence the lives of youth in urban communities.  Students will also explore the scriptures to discern how to apply ministry-as-service to youth and families in urban communities. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. René Rochester      
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Adolescent Specialization

YL 557 - Ministry to At-Risk Youth
This course is designed to enable students to develop a ministry model for work with troubled youth. Students are expected to be familiar with literature on the culture of troubled youth, reaching troubled youth for Christ, and effective youth ministry strategies.  Particular attention will be given to developing a holistic Christian approach for effective intervention, making it useful for those serving in churches, parachurch ministries and within secular social service agencies.  Small group Bible study teaching methods and mentoring will be emphasized and practiced. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Scott Larson 
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Adolescent Specialization

YL 565 - Issues in Adolescent Development
Adolescence may be the most chaotic, complex and crucial of our developmental stages with its multiple facets of change occurring simultaneously. The stakes are high with identity formation at the heart of all that is happening. Understanding this developmental reality is critical for those who work with teenagers. This course will explore the “so what” of adolescent development from a number of perspectives including its ministry implications, parenting implications and faith development implications.  It is assumed that students will have a basic understanding of developmental theory so that issues related to the cognitive, moral, emotional, physiological, social and faith journeys can be integrated holistically and produce developmentally appropriate ministry strategies. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Steve Gerali 
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Adolescent Specialization

YL 570 – Counseling for Youth and Family Ministry
This class will expose students to a Family Systems model for counseling teens and families, different than other approaches to counseling within the context of student ministries. In addition to exploring the Hebrew concepts of counseling and how Job's friends responded to a crisis, topics will include ways of equipping volunteers for counseling; ideas to empower our students towards peer counseling; and how to build a long term model of counseling rather than just a reactive approach to putting out "adolescent fires." This class will offer lecture, discussion, movie segments, research, Scriptural integration and some role plays. (3 credit)
FACULTY: Dr. David Olshine
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Adolescent Specialization

YL 650 – Culmination Research Project for Youth Ministry Leadership
The culmination research project is a way for students to demonstrate their graduate competency while making a distinct contribution to youth ministry’s body of knowledge. Coming at the end of their program, students will secure from among the Youth Ministry Leadership faculty a sponsor whose research interests match their own and who is willing to provide largely on-line support around the design, implementation, analysis, and written summary of an original project. It is intended that the culmination research project will be of publishable quality and that a faculty-student co-authored article will be the result. (2 credits)
FACULTY: Various

YL 651 – Culmination Research Project for Youth Ministry Leadership
The culmination research project is a way for students to demonstrate their graduate competency while making a distinct contribution to youth ministry’s body of knowledge. Coming at the end of their program, students will secure from among the Youth Ministry Leadership faculty a sponsor whose research interests match their own and who is willing to provide largely on-line support around the design, implementation, analysis, and written summary of an original project. It is intended that the culmination research project will be of publishable quality and that a faculty-student co-authored article will be the result.  (2 credits) (continued from YL 650)
FACULTY: Various

YM 527 – Sociology of Adolescence
A study of the development of the stage of adolescence in Western society and the current influences that shape its constitution.  Includes an opportunity to use empirical research methods to explore the social patterns of adolescents in a particular community. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Steve Gerali 
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Adolescent Specialization

YM 557 - Student Leadership in Youth Ministry
Students will survey modern ministry practices to discern operational definitions of student leadership.  They will subsequently explore related biblical principles, relevant historical events, issues in adolescent psycho-social development, and Link Institute research in order to formulate a plan for the development of effective student leadership in youth ministry. (3 credits)
FACULTY: Dr. Dave Rahn    
CURRICULAR EMPHASIS: Professional Leadership & Expertise
 

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