- Home | Contact Eden | Sitemap
At Eden, courses interact with Contextual Education. The contextual education component is unique to Eden. All the way through the Master of Divinity education program — every semester — students are involved in ministry contexts.
“The world looks diferente desde aquí (different from here).” We quote these words often in Contextual Education at Eden. How we look at God and the world are very different depending upon where we are standing while doing the looking: in a bleak parking lot in East Saint Louis, Illinois, a well-heeled West Saint Louis County congregation on Sunday morning, a dartball game in a church basement, a bedside or graveside or a Central American barrio.
Students in the Master of Divinity (M.Div.) degree program do Contextual Education all the way through the program. This is far more than most seminaries require. But there is a reason: doing ministry and reflecting theologically on it are at the heart of education at Eden.
How it works
Contextual Education at Eden begins with 10 hours of work per week in a ministry setting, agency or congregation. This is the “work” of ministry: outside the classroom and in addition to a demanding schedule of study, reading and writing. Taking both M.Div. classes and Contextual Education at the same time requires the theological integration that makes Eden’s M.Div. program noteworthy.
- First-level M.Div. students in Contextual Education are typically assigned volunteer positions at local nursing homes, hospitals, nursery schools, community development agencies, food pantries and other church-related institutions.
- Second- and third-level students receive small stipends for their Contextual Education work in congregations across Saint Louis and in suburbs and small towns on both sides of the Mississippi.
These contexts for ministry are invariably different from the churches and Christian
organizations the students have known before — both because of the infinite variety of Christian expression and because M.Div. study forms the students to look at their Contextual Education settings with new eyes.
Ministry Seminars
Students are nurtured and led in their reflection on context by supervisors, peers and parishioners in their Contextual Education settings, and by teachers and classmates in bi-weekly Ministry Seminars back at Eden. In Ministry Seminar, classroom and Contextual Education setting are brought explicitly together around the themes of the M.Div. curriculum.
Life changing experience
Eden M.Div. graduates very often cite Contextual Education as the most significant part of their preparation for ministry. When you know “the world looks diferente desde aquí,” the world never looks the same again.