Intercultural Studies (Missions)
INCS 4302 (3-1-2) Practicum in Intercultural Studies (Missions) (S-L)
(CHST 4302; RELI 3382)
Internship training program to be supervised by a professor and an official in the local church or church-related institution. This course contains a field-based service-learning component.
Requisites: Intercultural Studies (Missions) major or minor, junior or senior status.
Offered: Fall, Spring, Online.
INCS 4316 (3-3-0) Global Leadership Practicum (S-L)
(MAGL 5316)
This course places students in a challenging cross-cultural situation where it is necessary to show ability in managing different customs, norms, and expectations produced by inter-cultural encounter. Special attention will be given to developing effective strategies for enhancing understanding among people of vastly different cultural backgrounds. This course contains a field-based service-learning component.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Periodically.
INCS 4330 (3-3-0) Introduction to Missiology
(MAGL 5330)
This course is an intercultural exercise in learning how to personally engage a new population with the good news of the gospel, the course focuses on the role of the individual who serves others in a cross-cultural environment and analyzes issues of cultural adaptation, language acquisition, and contextualization of gospel witness. Helpful insights are given to improve inter-cultural skills because of the multicultural nature of modern society and most local church settings.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Fall, Online.
INCS 4331 (3-3-0) Cross-Cultural Living and Ministry
(MAGL 5331)
The course provides orientation to people who will work in international or ethnically diverse settings where personal adaptation to a different language and culture is required. The course focuses on acquiring insights and skills for cultural adaptation, language acquisition, and contextualization of lifestyle, communication practices, and gospel witness. Students are involved in cross-cultural exercise to learn how to relate positively to those of other cultures and worldviews.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Spring, Online.
INCS 4332 (3-3-0) Strategies for Missionary Work
(MAGL 5332)
As in-depth study of strategies and tactics for modern missionary work will be the goal for the classroom. Interaction within the classroom will bring discussion of strategic approaches in missions, culminating with current strategies for reaching unreached people groups (UPGs). The class will include an overview of the development and nature of the UPG paradigm and how it challenges evangelical believers to seek models of ministry that will reach these people with the gospel of Christ. The students will use case studies, existing strategy approaches, and interaction with field-based mission teams and personnel to develop a thorough understanding of the mission endeavor and relevant approaches.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Spring.
INCS 4333 (3-3-0) Local Church on Mission
(MAGL 5333)
The class will provide practical steps in developing a missional church devoted to sharing the gospel in positive terms within its own community, in its region, nation and world. Leadership tools will be provided for church workers to lead their church to have a local and a global agenda. The course will examine best practices of churches who are engaging the unbelieving world.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Fall (even years).
INCS 4334 (3-3-0) Chronological Bible Storying
(MAGL 5334)
The course helps students learn to communicate more effectively to non-literate oral learners by using stories and narratives to communicate an essential Christian message. Students will come to understand that most of the world’s population does not learn by literate, but by oral methods so that our communication style must reflect their preferred manner of learning. Worldview issues determine the precise choices of key Bible stories so that the Christian message can engage their cultural understanding at deep levels.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Spring, Online.
INCS 4335 (3-3-0) Biographies of Outstanding Missionaries
(MAGL 5335)
The course consists of reading biographies of inspiring examples of Christian living and ministry from the history of missions. Biographies from the early church, medieval missions, the modern missionary movement, and recent missionary leaders are read. These personal models for kingdom work are instructive in learning personal habits that can achieve greatness in servant leadership and provide case studies by which missiological principles and strategies may be arrived at inductively. The class considers how examples of lives lived to honor God have made significant contributions in very different settings around the world.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Spring.
INCS 4336 (3-3-0) Current Trends in Missions
(MAGL 5336)
The course considers important contemporary developments in global Christian missions. A review of approaches, strategies, methods, and problems will lead to suggestions about best practice and relevant applications in concrete settings. May be repeated for credit when content changes.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Fall, Spring.
INCS 4340 (3-3-0) Integrating Faith and Cultures
(MAGL 5340)
The purpose of this course is to analyze how Christian faith intersects with cultures, whether one’s own or other cultures. Biblical, missiological, and cross-cultural principles are applied to provide perspectives, guidelines, and methods for ministry in the global marketplace. The course seeks to combine global professional expertise with strategies for intercultural communication of the Christian message.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Fall.
INCS 4341 (3-3-0) Global Christianity
(MAGL 5341)
The course reviews recent and best thinking on the advance of world evangelization by reviewing the biblical basis for missions, the history of worldwide expansion of Christianity, cultural adaptation and competencies required for work among remote peoples, and missionary strategies. Students read from an anthology of top missiological thinking by evangelicals prepared by the US Center for World Mission. Students learn where missions has taken Christianity today and where global evangelization efforts should be going.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Fall.
INCS 4342 (3-3-0) Ethnography, Cultures, and Worldviews
(MAGL 5342)
The course introduces students to applied ethnography, where they will learn the essentials of how to conduct interviews with persons from a different cultural identity to ascertain customs, values, and worldview understandings. Students learn to “read” a culture and to understand its way of viewing reality. Principles from social sciences such as sociology, anthropology, and demographics enrich the methodology used to analyze how people from a different cultural background think, feel, act, and relate to one another.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Spring (odd years), Online.
INCS 4343 (3-3-0) Understanding Islam
(MAGL 5343)
This course is an introductory examination of Islamic faith and practice, designed for those with little previous understanding of Islamic culture and its doctrinal beliefs. Students will learn to describe the principle features of Islamic religious beliefs and to identify differences between sects and groups within Islam. They will analyze Islamic influence upon Middle Eastern culture and consider how this fast-growing religion will influence the shape of global geopolitics in the future.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Spring, Online.
INCS 4345 (3-3-0) Christianity in a Pluralistic World
(RELI 4345; THEO 5345)
This course introduces a Christian understanding of, and a response to, a pluralistic world utilizing biblical truths.
Requisites: RELI 2304.
Offered: Fall, Online.
INCS 4360 (3-3-0) Special Topics in Intercultural Studies
This course examines and critically evaluates specified areas of interest related to Intercultural Studies (Missions). Students will engage current issues through the exploration of designated topics that might be time-sensitive to the life and ministry of the student. This course may be repeated for credit when the content of the Special Topics course changes. If a grade for a particular Special Topics course must be changed, the student must repeat the course with the same topic and content.
Requisites: None.
Offered: Periodically.