Dubuque Seminary professor directs students in missional Christianity
Amanda Benckhuysen
Training students in missional leadership at University of Dubuque Theological Seminary now includes a new Master of Arts in Missional Christianity degree, and Rev. Dr. Amanda Benckhuysen is heading up the program to ensure theology is explored in the way faith is lived out.
“We already have so many mission … and leadership courses as part of our overall curriculum,” Benckhuysen said. So when the seminary said it needed to revise the master’s program in a way that serves the broader Christian community, this just seemed to be a natural fit, she said.
A member of the Dubuque Seminary faculty since 2008, Benckhuysen also serves as assistant professor of Old Testament. She is a minister in the Christian Reformed Church in North America and holds a doctorate from the University of Toronto.
Her passion for mission goes deep; her previous roles include serving as a campus pastor at the University of Michigan. She said that ministry focused on asking: What is God doing here at the university and how can we participate in that and encourage the broader Christian community to be open to working in that ministry for the sake of the mission of God?
Benckhuysen also worked in a new church development in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the focus included proclaiming the gospel to those who had not heard it before, she said.
Benckhuysen said she came to Dubuque Seminary because she felt “things were happening here.” There was a keen awareness of the change in culture and in seminary education. “There is an understanding that things are changing and we need to change with it,” she said.
The addition of its new master’s degree is among the changes the seminary has recognized as necessary for training church leaders for the larger culture. Its focus on mission and missional leadership was in response to larger discussions taking place at the seminary about the decline of church membership, the loss of the hegemony of Christianity in our culture and the question of what God is calling us to do and be in the midst of these changes, Benckhuysen said.
Through the degree, students are trained for a broad range of ministries, including community development, youth ministry, campus ministry and urban missions. There is a strong biblical and theological foundation, plus a chance to engage in ministry in a particular mission context, she said.
“You have an opportunity to do fieldwork that is not necessarily rooted in an established church,” Benckhuysen said. “You can get a taste of where God might be calling you.”
A component of the program, the master’s project, calls on students to explore “from a Biblical and theological perspective a particular issue or a particular mission or ministry, and to reflect on that quite deeply,” she said. “You could come out of here with a really focused and strong sense, and a ministry plan for a particular plan of service.”
Benckhuysen hopes Dubuque seminarians will come away with the realization that “the Bible and orthodox Christian faith can provide valuable resources for Christians today in terms of engaging the issues that we face in our own world.”
“Learning how to be faithful Christians today, in part, means going back and looking at what is the tradition we are coming from and learning how to appropriate those resources for the particular context,” she said.
“Ultimately my hope is that those who leave here will be salt and light to the earth,” Benckhuysen said, “that they will be the presence of God to those around them” and “that people will see and hear Jesus through them.”
