Thursday, January 31, 2013

Envisioning Year D related D.Min. projects

I mentioned a while back that the new D.Min. cohort is forming at Dubuque Seminary just now. I'm not leading this cohort, and project proposals for this group will be some three years off yet. Nevertheless, I can well imagine any number of D.Min. projects that would involve the implementation of Year D.

E.g., can you imagine administering Bible Content exams to a congregation before and after using Year D texts for a year of worship planning, preaching, and Bible Study? What might be the impact on biblical literacy? Can you imagine designing and administering a fresh Bible content exam that ensures or provides greater exposure to Year D texts? Or can you imagine developing the first Sunday school curriculum (whether focussed on a particular age group or intergenerational) based on Year D texts? That would be cool. Can you imagine a hymn-focussed project aimed at unearthing old hymn texts that key off these passages? My hunch is they would likely date from times when these texts were in favor and had more currency in the lingua franca of generations passed. What about coordinating a presbytery or conference-wide study of multiple congregations using Year D? Thinking ever farther afield, imagine a project that would consider the use of Year D in international congregations, something that would reflect the evident interest of users of Year D in far-flung reaches of the global church.

Who knows? Perhaps even those currently in D.Min. programs, wherever they may be, if they are searching for a project idea, may wish to consider something along these lines. 

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