Atlantic School of Theology focuses on youth

New diploma program dedicated to teaching skills in youth ministry

The Atlantic School of Theology is located in the south end of Halifax but offers programs via distance education. (Photo: Dane Butler)

The Atlantic School of Theology (AST) is offering a new diploma program in youth ministry.

This diploma, meant to be taken on a part-time basis, provides education in Christian scripture, theory and practice on how to engage young people in the faith community.

Students who come into the program have been doing youth work in their own parishes, says Tanya Moxley, the director of the diploma program.  The program seeks to train youth ministers who will mold future leaders of the church and future leaders of the community.

"They're doing [youth work] because they think it's really important, but they're not bible people," Moxley says. "They feel a bit like they're thrashing around with the theology part, so a number of them are coming specifically for that, to get the bible foundations."

Ensuring students receive education in scripture is one thing that sets AST's diploma program apart from the other youth ministry programs in the region: St. Francis Xavier University offers a certificate program, and workshops are sometimes offered at the Tatamagouche Centre.

Another major difference in the AST program is the school provides distance education options.

Units can be taken on campus but none of the current students in the program, which launched in September, are taking the program in Halifax. Of the five students currently enrolled two are in Newfoundland, one is in New Brunswick, one is in Prince Edward Island and the other is in Bridgewater, N.S.

There are four more applications being processed to begin the diploma program.

Church struggles to engage the youth

The debate surrounding how the church can engage youth has been around for many years. Moxley has her own experience in youth work, and remembers her own days as a youth in the Anglican Church.

When she was in her late teens she remembers saying, in response to church members saying youth are the future of the church, "You're not going to have a future of the church if you don't pay attention to the young who are in the church right now."

This is an attitude important to youth ministry, one that Moxley expects the program will help foster.

"You're never going to get 50 people in your youth group unless you do something that works for the five you've got."

In an attempt to forge positive attitudes the program has flexible requirements. There are required courses but electives are not limited, if a student has an idea they are passionate about, or a special event or workshop they want to attend outside the program, it would receive consideration as a unit of study.

There's no reason to limit the creativity of the students when they will need to be creative to do quality youth work. "You get people who are involved in all kinds of neat stuff and who are at all ages and stages in their life and really read things differently," says Moxley.

There had been a similar program at AST many years ago. In 2007 the school started thinking about bringing the program back.

In 2008 AST consulted widely with the school's founding churches, the Anglican, Catholic and United churches. The founding churches were all beginning to focus on youth ministry and providing leadership for youth work.

"What they wanted from us was a programme that would be flexible and ecumenically structured, and would provide both training and a credential for their leaders of youth," writes Rev. Rob Fennell, an assistant professor of historical and systematic theology at AST, in an email.

Moxley hopes the new diploma will continue to garner interest and as it does more students can be admitted. Moxley says the program will be able to accommodate 25 to 30 students.

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