TEACHING TOWARD THE PRACTICE OF MINISTRY TODAY

Over the past decade, I have worked with colleagues on a longitudinal study of learning ministry. Called the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project, it is centered on following a cohort of fifty graduates from ten seminaries as they transition into ministry careers.2 Pastoral leadership today, we argue, requires collaboration, risk, discernment, judgment, and resilience, among other things. It requires, we think, something like what Craig Dykstra has called “pastoral imagination.”3 What is pastoral imagination? Dykstra's concept encompasses multiple intelligences which, when tutored in the day‐to‐day practice of ministry, yield the ability to perceive the fullness or holy depth of a person, a moment, or a situation. We have extended this understanding by drawing upon the notion of phronesis, which is practical knowledge and judgment derived from experience in practice over time. Through connecting phronesis with the gifts and work of the Holy Spirit, we argue, pastoral imagination emerges as an integrative, embodied, and relational capacity.4