Eastern Mennonite University

New course options

Current Online Courses

Fall 2010 online classes begin August 29. Spring 2011 online classes begin January 10. Start date for summer 2011 has not yet been decided.

Cost for online courses is $450 per credit hour.

A comprehensive list of all courses offered online is available.

To enroll complete the part-time online application for seminary studies or contact Don Yoder, director of admissions, by e-mailing or calling (540) 432-4257.

Fall 2010

BVOT 511 Old Testament: Text in Context

This is an introduction to the Old Testament literature. The approach gives major consideration to the ancient Near Eastern context: history, culture and religion. Other considerations include reading the Old Testament as literature and as the authoritative Word of God. Lectures, readings, inductive study questions and class discussion are used.

CM 501 Church in Mission

The ministries of Jesus, Paul, and the early church in the context of the Roman Empire will provide the foundation for considering wholistic, effective and authentic mission of the church in our globalized and unstable world. During this course, mission themes from Anabaptist theology and ecclesiology, as well as insights from cultural studies and history, will be considered and discussed by the participants who are learning from the local church and their own experiences in mission from a variety of locations around the world. Where appropriate, students will be given research assignments related to their context and complimentary to their ministries. This informed, vigorous, cross-cultural conversation is designed to give participants insight, skills, and motivation for participating in God’s mission through the church in the world with confidence and humility.

CM 615 Cross-Cultural Discipleship

Designed to be taken in conjunction with a mission or service assignment, students in "Cross-Cultural Discipleship" will learn as Jesus' disciples by participating in the biblical story as they follow Jesus in the world in mission and service. Extensive reading, personal reflections, on-line conversation with others in the class, on-site mentoring, and individual learning projects will enhance this experiential learning.

Students will explore the integrating theme of cross-cultural faith journeys in Scripture, focus on Jesus' teaching method, agenda and effects, learn with and from Jesus' disciples in first-century Judea, and from Paul's successes and failures in the Roman Empire. Discipleship as learning in public, participation in God's work in the world, sacrificial serving, missional exploration and experimentation, will be encouraged, practiced, facilitated and reflected upon during the course.

CTH 611 Prayer in the Christian Tradition

Prayer in the Christian Tradition takes us on a pilgrimage across time and place, and invites our careful attention as we listen in to persons praying within the believing community from Old Testament times to the present. Experience of prayer, class discussion, readings, and course assignments will assist us in our discovery of the formative and transformative nature of the relational dialogue God enters into with us, and we with God.

Spring 2011

CTE 713 Ethics and Nonviolence: Sermon on the Mount

This course in Christian Ethics takes a deep look at Jesus' teaching and the ethics of the New Testament through the lens of the Sermon on the Mount. Jewish backgrounds of that teaching, resonance in the rest of the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament, and the heritage of its understanding down through the centuries of the Christian church are focal themes of the course. Current applications in understandings of peacemaking at different levels conclude this study. Students will do inductive study of the Gospel texts, some review of Old Testament backgrounds, research on thinkers in Christian history who advanced our understanding of the message, and some evaluation and responses to current practices of peacemaking. The course emphasizes group interaction and direct approaches to the English text of the Scriptures.

Anabaptism Today

Why is there more interest in Anabaptism today than ever before in history? Is it perhaps because many are tired of church as usual? Or, because many realize that in our global community we must learn to live together without violence? Have others been drawn to the embodied discipleship, to the bold witness of the thousands of sixteenth-century Anabaptists who were willing to suffer for their faith? No doubt there are multiple reasons why Christians from various traditions are drawn to Anabaptism. Two theologians are largely responsible for putting Anabaptism on the 21 st Century theological map—John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas. This course will explore contemporary “Anabaptism” through the writings of these two influential theologians and through those who have been influenced by or are in dialogue with them on various issues.

Summer 2011

CM 663 Mennonite Faith and Polity

This course examines two aspects of Mennonite reality. First, what has it said and what is it saying about what it believes concerning the Christian faith; and second, how it structures itself in the light of those beliefs to carry out its ministry in the world .