Students who want to make the city their classroom as well as their mission field are invited to roll up their sleeves and join a new master’s program at Fresno Pacific University.
Classes for the M.A. in Community Leadership & Transformation begin in the fall of 2016. The program, part of Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary, is looking for young adults who work for or want to work for community-benefit organizations or engaged churches. “Ours is a regionally focused degree, we’re trying to recruit Valley leaders,” said Program Director Randy White, D.Min., associate professor of community transformation and executive director of the seminary’s Center for Community Transformation.
Poverty is everywhere, but has its own face in the Valley:
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Fresno is second in the nation in areas of concentrated poverty—neighborhoods where 40 percent or more of residents live below the federal poverty line. In some schools, for example, all children enrolled qualify for free lunches.
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The region is in the center of the migrant worker stream, which creates issues in education and may cause chaos in the lives of children. Gangs, drug cartels and human trafficking have polluted the stream, preying on the most vulnerable.
Experiential learning
Community leadership and transformation students will learn by experience. “All the core courses I teach are in the city, not on campus,” White said.
Much of the learning will be done by observing community transformation agencies in practice, talking with directors and debriefing the modules. Practitioners become professors and students go beyond merely exploring ideas to activating them. “Our classroom is the city, its neighborhoods and districts,” White said.
Many of those experiences will connect with the Valley’s growing social enterprise movement, where churches and other entities start and support businesses that serve communities and offer jobs and training to those who may have trouble gaining employment. Here the academic program plugs into the real-life work of the Center for Community Transformation. CCT promotes activities that go beyond traditional charity to empower traditionally powerless people and help them take control of their lives and communities. One of the most successful has been the Spark Tank, which over the past three years has provided more than $50,000 to start-ups and small businesses pursuing both a social and financial bottom line. “We integrate CCT and community resources into the way education is delivered,” White said.
In addition to requiring fewer units—48, making it the seminary’s most accessible, and least expensive, degree—coursework includes public policy, advocacy, the theology of transformation and focused connections with marriage and family therapy faculty.
Addressing a trend
The approach also follows a trend in seminary education: new students tend to be older and experienced in ministry, either already involved in urban churches and agencies or looking to upgrade their skills. They are balancing professional and personal responsibilities and want to see immediate practical benefits to their education. “The modern seminary student is not full-time anymore,” White said. “They want their faith to be relevant.”
Increasing that relevance for FPU students will be relationships with doctoral candidates from Bakke Graduate University, who will also come to Fresno from around the world and share. “It elevates the conversation,” said White, formerly a Bakke faculty member.
Even though the first graduates are a couple of years away, White has endorsements from 15 leaders in a variety of agencies who have shown interest in hiring them. “Community leadership and transformation—it can work in a lot of worlds,” White said.
Randy White talks about the master’s program at vimeo.com/161056077
Courses, career opportunities and application materials at fresno.edu/programs-majors/biblical-seminary/community-leadership-transformation