Youth and Campus Ministry Track

Our Youth and Campus Ministry Track focuses on preparing graduate students in theology who can support and empower young people in a religious or spiritual setting.

Grounded in Ignatian Spirituality as a relevant resource for spiritual awareness, reflection, imagination, and accompaniment with others, this new track will inform, form, and transform graduate students who can more effectively walk with young people in a time of rising social division, unjust inequality, and social anxiety.

Graduate students will be prepared for rigorous and relevant theological reflection and ethical analysis of issues related to young people who are increasingly unaffiliated with religious traditions and communities, demonstrating a preference for moral relativism, and finding it more difficult to navigate the path toward a personal sense of meaning and purpose, independence, an adult faith, and moral wisdom.

This track is intentionally interdisciplinary, resulting from opportunities to collaborate with the Psychology and Counseling departments at Xavier, so graduate students can better understand and respond to the stages of development inherent in adolescence and young adulthood.

Through the integration of theoretical and practical dimensions of human development, the search for meaning, identity, and belonging, as well as the intellectual, moral, and spiritual wisdom to be gleaned from the Christian tradition, this track reflects our program's unique capacity to prepare graduate students for future work in youth and campus ministries.  

"In order to best accompany students on their journey of faith, ask meaningful guiding questions, and facilitate experiences that make one think about the world and themselves in a new, broader way, I too need to be at constant work in educating myself and broadening my own perspective." -Spencer Liechty, graduate student, (Graduate Profiles)

 

Course Curriculum:

Foundational Courses:

• THEO 503 Liberating Bible
• THEO 555 Key Turning Points in Christian History
• THEO 624 Theological Imagination: Approaches to the Sacred
• THEO 547 Ethics in a Time of Planetary Crisis

Youth/Campus Ministry Track Courses:

• THEO 631: Theo/Ethics in Ministry
• THEO Elective in Spirituality
• Course in Counseling or Psychology
• Internship in youth ministry/ Theo 715
• Two THEO Electives + Dossier OR One Elective + Thesis