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When the training and mentoring program began in 1996 at Denver Seminary, Charlene Canady heard about it and thought, it’s about time! Her husband, Dan, had been enrolled at Denver Seminary for a few years in the 1980s while they simultaneously pastored and led worship. Though years of pastoring, homeschooling their five children, and prison Keep Reading
What is Training and Mentoring at Denver Seminary?
Our Training and Mentoring curriculum is an integral part of each student’s experience. It focuses on developing you as a life-long learner so that you walk out of Denver Seminary with a greater capacity to discern, develop, manage and reflect on your own unique learning experiences. This curriculum creates a personalized, mentored path to shape you in two primary ways: deeper character and professional skill development.
Denver Seminary is known for Training and Mentoring because it produces graduates that stand out in a crowd.
Student Experience
Seminary is about growing in knowledge and a sense of mission, but it’s also about character development and learning to live life with God for the sake of Christ and others. Sometimes, what a student needs in these areas can’t be addressed in another class. Thus, Training and Mentoring offers each student the challenge of writing a personalized curriculum each semester, enacting it in the contexts of your life and reflecting alongside others.
Students who feel the tug to be more like Christ in his humility, faithfulness or compassion will be challenged to create a learning plan to address these formation needs. A student who feels deficient in a professional skill such as becoming a clear communicator, training disciples, or leading and managing teams will utilize a professional context and develop practices to challenge his or her strengths and abilities.
Training and Mentoring involves several semesters of discerning, developing, managing and reflecting on individual learning goals. It is done in relationship with a self-selected mentor who serves as a whole-life guide and in collaboration with a professor who serves as the student’s Mentoring Professor. Each student creates learning practices which create space for God to work in his or her life relationally, cognitively and experientially.
The reflective nature of Training and Mentoring challenges students to grow in self-awareness as they seek to enter, or continue in, demanding fields of work. As a result of exploring faithful practices and integrating learning into the whole of your life, you’ll grow in dynamic learning skills which help you to adapt to new situations and to be more fully formed into the image of Christ both in your days in seminary and beyond.
Mentor Experience
Thank you for considering a commitment to mentor one of our students. No matter how old we are, we all need mentors in life. Mentors provide us with “a brain to pick, an ear to listen and a push in the right direction.” If you’ve been invited to be a student’s mentor it is because they see you as someone who is supportive, challenging, and inspiring.
As part of our gratitude for your commitment, we offer you a couple of “mentor perks” – a Seminary library card and the ability to audit residential courses for a small registration fee. (Course audits are limited to space available, one per semester, and your student must be enrolled in a TM course during that semester.)
Mentors are busy, but they love to see students grow. You’ll spend ten hours during the semester with your student mentee. You’ll be supported by our online mentor orientation as you get started and in your student’s first and last self-directed semesters, you’ll even get to meet their professor so that you know you are part of a mentor team! More information about how to mentor a student is offered through online materials your student will provide.
As you speak into your student’s life in personal and practical ways, your relationship will help them think holistically as they discern, develop, manage and reflect on their unique life and service that lasts beyond seminary. The discernment, intentionality and reflection between a student and mentor encourages growth – in both of you!
Mentoring a student in our MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling? Get more information from our Personal Formation team. Mentoring an MDiv or any other Master’s degree student? Contact the Training and Mentoring office to learn more.