The pattern and spiral structure of our previous BA/Dip HE has proved highly successful. So the revised FdA builds on these acknowledged strengths.  In particular it shares the same overall organisational and delivery structure of distance learning materials, local tutorial support, residential weekends, and periods of reflective practice supported by Training Ministers.  It also offers a similar coherence, coverage and spiral structure of learning, flexibility and provision for BA top up. There are, however, some key areas of change, as from our 2011 entry:

Fewer, longer, more integrated modules

Single integrated 20-credit modules replace the previous combination of 10-credit modules and 15-credit Developing Ministry modules. This has two practical benefits.  First, it helps ensure that the reflective praxis supported by the latter is more fully integrated with the theological ground covered in the former.  Training Ministers who previously just supported the Developing Ministry (D) modules are, correspondingly, now trained together with local tutors, bringing them into closer relation to the whole teaching programme. Similarly, local tutors are brought into closer relation with the reflective practice dimensions of the programme.  The second practical benefit is that the integrated modules reduce the complexity of engaging simultaneously with parallel modules covering the academic and formational/ministerial elements of the programme.  This benefits both students and staff in terms of administration, time-management and assessment load, without reducing the overall intellectual demands or syllabus coverage.

There is a deeper educational reason for opting for longer, more integrated modules: the learning environment.  Our students are largely mature students who bring a wealth of experience to their education and training.  Longer integrated modules provide scope for students to bring their own experience to bear upon these modules and to share their reflections with one another, the academic staff, their tutors, the members of their local learning group and their training ministers.  This provides a rich environment for mature formational development.

Local Learning Groups

Each module now includes two sessions of structured reflection with a local learning group drawn from the members of the student’s training church and/or members of the wider community.  The process of reflection in these sessions is related to the learning outcomes of the module, and feedback from these sessions may be incorporated into assignments.  This helps ensure that students engage their learning directly with the ministerial practices of community building, small-group pastoral care, theological dialogue and teaching.  It also strengthens the contextual element of the Course’s overall orientation.

These groups are convened and led by the student and offer an important context for the student to explore, assimilate, evaluate and develop their learning.  Students are guided on how to set up these groups and the content of the local learning group sessions.  However, these groups also provide an open learning environment which suits mature students.  This is one of the key contexts in which students are able to evaluate their own understanding of the material and experiment with ways of making it interesting and accessible to others.  Training ministers are not members of the local learning groups, but students are expected to keep them informed of the group’s progress.  Similarly, students are expected to take discoveries from these groups back into their tutorials for further development.

Flexible module format

Modules are accessed online via STeTSlearn – a MOODLE based platform. We use a good variety of media, allowing for different learning styles.

Overview of the FdA Modules

1A  – Theological Foundations: Living Theology  This module introduces Christian theology as a lived tradition.  It explores the interrelationship of different sources of theology: scripture, tradition, experience (including corporate worship and prayer), praxis, and reason.  It introduces basic principles of biblical interpretation with specific reference to Hebrew Bible narrative.  As the first module it introduces students to basic study skills, and to the learning activities and context of the FdA as a whole.  This involves establishing a local learning group, a training agreement with a Training Minister, participation in public worship and other church activities. 

 1B  – Theological Anthropology: Pastoral & Personal Foundations  This module helps students orientate themselves theologically, socially and personally, as they enter training for ministry and mission.  It includes a suite of tools – theological reflection, social analysis, and personal review – to help students enhance their understanding of their own, and others’, identity and vocation. The module is grounded in theological understanding of human personhood, paying appropriate attention to theological anthropology, scripture and Christian individual and corporate experience, resisting over-individualistic accounts of human identity. 1B is intended to stimulate and equip theological reflection on students’ own life- and faith-stories, in the light of other people’s and God’s stories. 

1C  –   Introduction to Church History   This module introduces students to the historical study of Christianity.  Students are introduced to a timeline for the whole of Church history and study some major events in more detail.  The historical context of the later first century and early second century are examined as the background to a particular study of the Acts of the Apostles.  Students explore the historical contexts within which core theological ideas were developed or formulated and read some primary documents and interpret them against their historical context.  All students study the history and identity of their own denomination in depth. 

1D  –   Introduction to the Gospels, Christology and Soteriology  This module introduces students to the Synoptic Gospels, including an in depth study of one Gospel and to the two doctrines of Christology and Soteriology.   The historic development of both doctrines will be traced including an examination of the historic Creeds.  Issues surrounding modern understandings of both doctrines will be examined, particularly in the light of feminist, liberation and orthodox theology and modern understandings of the nature of sin. 

 1E        -  Christian Ministry and the Mission of God   This module examines the place of Christian ministry in God’s mission to the world.  In enables students to develop their own perspective on mission by evaluating contemporary missiologies and contextual understandings of mission.  It offers biblical, socio-historical, cultural-analytical and theological resources for this and scope for dialogue with the nine key mission themes identified by the Edinburgh2010 process.  The module both surveys broad topics, such as theologies of mission, the agents of mission, and the contexts and cultures within which mission takes place, and requires closer investigation of local mission practice and study of particular mission theologians and missiological themes.

1F -  Growing Together in Christ   This module will introduce students to some of the principal Christian traditions of personal and corporate spirituality, concentrating on some major biblical, historical and liturgical foundations, as well as on contemporary patterns. It will examine the range of prayer in the Bible, noting the significance of the Psalms, shifts of focus and form in the New Testament, and the trinitarian nature of Christian prayer. It will encourage the development of a personal Prayer Diary. Students will also be introduced to the forms and contents of corporate liturgical and non-liturgical worship, and to the theologies, liturgies and practices of Eucharist and Baptism in their own church traditions. 

 2A  – Preaching Scripture   This module will enable students to develop their understanding of the nature of the exegetical task involved preparation for preaching, as well as developing their skills in the art of preaching itself. This is a task which requires some understanding of the nature of the biblical and scriptural text, and of the task of exegesis. Accordingly, equal time will be devoted to the study of one major Old Testament text and one major New Testament text, alongside careful investigations of the nature of Scripture and the task of proclamation.

 2B  – Placement Module   This module provides students with an extended (supervised) experience in an unfamiliar context. It gives students an opportunity to bring together theological reflection skills and understandings with their ability to engage with and analyse complex situations and contexts. It makes use of qualitative methods to observe and analyse the behaviour of groups, drawing from ethnography and social psychology, so that the unfamiliar situation in which students are placed can be sufficiently well understood to draw into meaningful conversation with theological perspectives.  The resulting insights are intended to help students to discern God’s coming kingdom wherever they are deployed in ministry.

2C  – Church in a Changing World: Historical and Contemporary Ecclesiology   This module considers the church from three perspectives: (a) the church as a whole, (b) the church as made up of particular churches regionally and denominationally and (c) analysis and reflection on the experience of participating in the life of the church.  It builds on the historical study of the church in Module 1C, and aims to develop students’ theological and practical understanding of the church.  It covers four main topics: (1) origins and development, (2) the changing church, (3) systematic, pastoral and missional theologies of the church, and (4) church structure and organisation.  It is a key module for the students’ ministerial training and supports students’ supervised training in local churches and informs their engagement with the policies and expectations of their sponsoring churches.

 2D  - Christian Understandings of God   This module explores a variety of ways in which God has been conceived, imagined, and experienced within Christian tradition, and how language about God and to God may be understood and evaluated. There is a focus on God as Trinity and as personal agent . It engages particularly with contemporary debates about God in the light of both scientific discourse and post-modern critiques. It requires students to experience and reflect on ways in which doctrines of God may be articulated and embodied in the mission, and practices, of the church.

 2E  – Theological Ethics for Christian Ministry & Mission   This module has as its central motif the notion that Christians are called to be certain sorts of people in the world. Because of their distinctiveness, because they are formed by specific stories found in the Bible and tradition, Christians respond to the moral issues of the 21^st Century in particular ways: this module will engage with some of these issues (beginning-and-end-of-life issues, sexuality, and the care of creation), analysing both Christian-specific and non-Christian-specific responses to them. All students will preach on an ethical issue during the module.

 2E/F     –  Preparing for Public Ministry  [10 Credit]   This module is designed to help students make the transition from their STETS training to the next phase of their ministry, whether as deacons, probationers or ministers.  It enables them to review their current attainments in relation to nationally agreed standards, to review their vocational development and to identify their further developmental needs.  It provides them with essential information about the transitional liturgies that they will be participating in and helps them to anticipate other practicalities associated with moving into a new ministerial role.  It also offers appropriate biblical and spiritual resources to enable students to anticipate these changes thoughtfully and prayerfully.

Overview of the BA (Hons) Modules

3A  – Christian theology, pastoral care and ritual in the human lifecycle   This module looks theologically, liturgically and pastorally at different stages of the human life cycle. It uses Christian rites of passage – Baptism, Marriage and Funerals – as a framework to investigate how pastoral needs change through life and may be addressed in part by rites of passage. It begins with an exploration of the concepts of rite and ritual, examining their role, and the question of who is included or excluded in ritual. The Christian rites will be examined theologically (in the case of Baptism, building on the students’ previous studies in module 1F)  and their relevance in the contemporary context will be investigated. Alternatives to Christian rites will be considered and students will be invited to reflect critically on the implications of devising new, potentially hybrid rituals to address pastoral needs at different stages of the human life cycle. The stages of Birth, Middle Age, Aging and Death will be investigated theologically with opportunities for the student to reflect on their own experience and on ministerial practice.

3B  –   Leadership in the Christian Church   This module introduces students to critical reflection on patterns of leadership in the Church with particular attention to the task of leading collaborative ministry.   The module is grounded in a theological understanding of anthropology and ecclesiology and will introduce students to current thinking on organisational theory and leadership.  All students will analyse their own preferred team role and leadership styles and conduct a research project evaluating the leadership style demonstrated in a specific situation. 

 3C  – The Creative Arts and Christian Ministry and Mission   An exploration of potential areas of engagement between, on the one hand, Christian belief and practice and, on the other hand, the creative arts. The module is designed for those training for, or already practitioners in, Christian ministry and mission to enable them to draw appropriately on the arts in expressing, exploring, shaping, nourishing and critiquing faith. It considers how engagement with the arts might help to nourish and extend theological wisdom, and, in some cases, re-articulate and re-conceive it. As well as investigating a range of theoretical perspectives, the module is grounded in a wide variety of case studies, encouraging habits of informed theological and aesthetic reflection. 

 3D  – Theology for Public Life   This module considers the role of theology in public life in 21st century society. It has a focus on micro- and macro-level questions, being concerned with the local, the national and the international. Through studying this module, students will be better able to articulate theological responses and contributions to public debate on issues including, but not limited to, the role of religion in public life, war, and distributive justice. Students will engage with a number of key theoretical and practical areas of inquiry, and will be encouraged to ground their responses to their studies in their ongoing formational development as Christian ministers. This module will consider how the Church can play a role in public theology, and encourage students to evaluate the effectiveness of contemporary theological perspectives in engaging with the public square.

3E  –  Project Module   The Project Module is designed to give students an opportunity to investigate a topic of study of their own choice, relevant to the Church’s ministry and mission. As befits HE Level 6 study, the module is intended to encourage autonomous study, with limited supervision. It aims to establish good habits of self-directed learning, transferable to future or actual practice of ministry.