The Alliance for Ministry Education
The Alliance for Ministry Education is a partnership between Nazarene Bible College (NBC) and participating district training centers (DTCs) who work together to provide college-level ministry training at the district level. This training is designed to produce effective ministers and allows persons to fulfill the educational requirements for ordination in the Church of the Nazarene.
The Alliance is:
- district-sponsored training centers that provide instruction to students in a classroom setting or through structures which best meet the educational needs of the students.
- support from NBC to member DTCs that includes instructional design and methodology, curricular expertise, and programmatic development.
- organizational and instructional consultation shared among the members of the Alliance.
- the use of the Student Academic Portfolio (see Section II) through which students may be granted NBC college credit for work completed at a DTC.
There are currently 14 districts which have an Alliance with NBC and are teaching courses in English. The Alliance has one member, The Seminario Teológico Nazareno of Los Angeles which teaches entirely in Spanish.
The Seminario Teológico Nazareno held their 2019 Graduation at the Los Angeles First Church of the Nazarene, with three graduating students and approximately 100 in attendance on Saturday, June 29, 2019.
The Seminario Teológico Nazareno (STN) was started in the 1980’s to prepare Hispanic pastors and workers from the four Nazarene Districts of Los Angeles, Anaheim, Western Latin American and Southern California. The Seminario has approximately 40 Spanish speaking students attending classes every week. These students are pursuing all the courses required for ordination but are doing it at a university level. That is because for decades, the Seminario has been a member of the Alliance for Ministry Education.
When an STN student enrolls at Nazarene Bible College, in the degree program, that student has the option of submitting her or his STN course work through a portfolio to NBC for evaluation. If a portfolio course is accepted by NBC, those course credits are applied to the student's official NBC transcript, the STN student can be accepted as an NBC student, and can continue studying until they have completed a Bachelor’s degree with NBC. So far historically, three of the eleven graduates from NBC’s Hispanic Pastoral Ministries Bachelor’s degree program came from the Seminario Teológico Nazareno.
Three students graduated Saturday: Aura Carrillo, José Carrillo and Martha Valencia. NBC Board of Trustees member, Rev. Moisés Champo, is a long-time member of the STN faculty. Rev. Ramiro Juárez, the Rector of STN, is also an adjunct professor for the NBC HPM program. Rev. Tim McKeithen gave the Commencement address at the STN Graduation.
Los Angeles First Church of the Nazarene was founded by Phineas F. Bresee in October, 1895. It was intended to be a group of people who would minister to the poor living in the streets of Los Angeles. It is the first congregation of the Church of the Nazarene, existing more than a decade before the denomination’s founding.
By: Mrs. Cheryl A. Graves, NBC Director of the Alliance for Ministry Education program and Prof. Tim McKeithen, NBC Faculty and Program Director for the Hispanic Pastoral Ministries degree.
Published: 07/08/2019
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