D.Min degree

[Jufarius87]

What is it for? No, seriously....

It usually cant net you a job teaching, and a church usually wont pay you more just because you can call yourself doctor.... so.... why? Is it just a way for ministers to obtain the title/stay intellectually focused?

[studyordie]

It's a practical degree, very much not a Ph.D. and the only proff I've had with an M.Div. lacked the background of the rest of his peers. My seminary has a D.Min. program and I've seen it work for people and not work for people. The people it works for are self-motivated ministers who would be educating themselves regardless of their enrollment in a program. Example: a friend of mine whose D.Min. project sends ministers to the Holy Land to give them a less "American" perspective on the violence in Palestine just got a Lily grant for a one-year sabbatical. I'm guessing the D.Min. and the great project did not hurt his application. It doesn't work for ministers who simply do it because their church is paying for it and it's a week off work. Example: another friend of mine taught a one-week D.Min. course a few weeks back in which all but one of the students freely admitted they had not read a page of the pre-class reading. Having had a one week course at the Master's level before, you don't get much out of it if you haven't done any of your reading. Other programs require students to move take classes full-time for one calendar year and then do their projects, I would guess that that is a better approach than the one-week class format my school has adopted.

[Jufarius87]

yeesh, you'd think people who'd already gone through an M.Div program would have more academic discipline then that....

The Holy Land program sounds pretty interesting, I guess the D.Min is the kind of program that you get what you put into it.