Dear Prospective Student:

We want your seminary experience to prepare you for real world ministry. When you enroll in one of our eleven degree programs, you will be launched on a journey of growth unlike any you’ve encountered before.

Starting this fall, every student in every degree program will create an Integrative Portfolio into which to place the insights that cause you to say, “I don’t want to lose that!” At the end of your seminary journey, you will then pull together a wide variety of peak learning experiences, reflect on them, and integrate them into a final project. That project will involve responding to a real life case study.

Here at Bethel Seminary, we’re trying to do away with degree programs that look and feel like a collection of unrelated silos with no clear connection to each other.

• We want you to explore pathways between what you learn in the Bible, history, and ­theology and your pilgrimage of personal and spiritual growth.
• We want you to record and reflect on multiple “Aha!” moments in transformational ­leadership practices because they are embedded in your own sense of calling.
• We believe that you should document how your own life has been transformed by applying what you’ve seen modeled in the lives of Esther, Moses, Deborah, Daniel, Priscilla, or Paul.
In other words, the joy of completing a degree program goes far beyond taking enough courses to qualify for graduation. We’ve designed the Integrative Portfolio to heighten the impact of seminary upon a lifetime of ministry.

Feedback from pastors and lay people urge us to prepare graduates who make a difference in the workplaces of our world as well as in the worship places of our churches. That’s because church people want leadership that empowers them to serve effectively where they work and live. So our leadership courses are annually upgraded with best practices from business, education, faith-based organizations, and government. Each year research findings from the lives of Bethel Seminary students are incorporated into our course work to ensure that spiritual and formation teachings are relevant to ways you grow into maturity. The foundation for the entire curriculum is grounded in biblical studies, theological insights, and historical realities.

We invite you to take a journey whose pathway incorporates multiple resources that enable you to become whole and holy with capacities to advance God’s kingdom.

Read the pages that follow and listen for God’s voice. We hope you hear the leading that says, “Go to Bethel!”