ORG350: Mentored Ministry & Leadership Course Online

Course Description

While much of learning is often centered around courses and content, the goal of this course is to center learning around a mentoring relationship with someone with significant experience and expertise. The goal of this course is to be more mentoring relationship focused and less content focused. To achieve this goal students taking this course will be able to choose one of three options:

City Vision Online Mentoring. You can choose a mentor from City Vision’s list of mentors (see below). You will meet with your mentor via Zoom or another video conferencing tool.
Local Mentoring (current work context). You can choose a mentor based at your work or ministry location. The goal is that you would interact with a mentor who will direct, encourage and evaluate their activities as you minister and work in real life situations. To choose this option, you must send in a signed mentor agreement for two weeks before the term starts. If you select a local mentor, you should let them know that mentoring they will not be paid. To receive academic credit, City Vision will assign you a faculty member to do the grading for the course.
Local Mentoring (new internship). Select this option if you do not currently have a work or ministry context, but you still would like to have local mentoring and an internship experience. To choose this option, you must send in a signed mentor internship agreement for two weeks before the term starts. If you do not yet identified an internship, you can enroll in ORG201 Job & Internship Search Strategies (1 credit) to help you find an internship.

Resources to Review before Taking this Course

Students planning to take this course should:

Watch City Vision’s How to Find a Mentor video playlist.
Review the City Vision University Mentoring Manual
Book Selection. Before taking this course, you must identify two books that you will read as described in the Mentoring Goals Worksheet. You may find it helpful to review book recommendations on this page or you can select the books on your own or with the help of your mentor.

Course Prerequisites
Before taking this course students must:

Have completed at least 12 credits with City Vision.
Be working or volunteering in a context related to your degree or have identified an internship site with a signed agreement from your mentor emailed to support@cityvision.edu two weeks before the term starts.
You must have at least a 3.5 resident GPA or be working in executive leadership (C-Level or VP Level) in a nonprofit or ministry. Students with a GPA between 3.0 and 3.5 may request an exception to this rule by emailing support@cityvision.edu explaining your goals of mentoring.

This course may be taken up to three times in an undergraduate program (as ORG350, ORG351 and ORG352).

Course Outcomes

After completing this course, you will be able to:

Develop a mentoring plan of how mentoring in this course will help you achieve your growth goals.
Reflect on your meetings with your mentor and work environment toward your mentoring goals in this course.
Apply the material from reading two books to help you achieve your mentoring goals.
Integrate your growth from mentoring meetings, readings in this course and reflections on your work experience in a final paper synthesizing your growth toward your mentoring goals.

ORG350 Syllabus

Course Materials & Tuition

Tuition	$800.00
Books (students self-select 2 books, estimated cost)	$50.00
Total Cost of Course	$850.00

Considerations for Selecting a Mentor

In considering the type of mentor you might want to select, you should consider what your primary goals and mentoring models you might want to consider. The following are some options:

Leadership Competency Based Mentoring. In this type of mentoring, you focus your mentoring on developing your leadership or ministry competencies. Often this can involve working with your mentor and some type of leadership or ministry competency list to identify and develop areas where you want to grow (see this example).

Spiritual Formation Based Mentoring. In this type of mentoring, the focus is primarily on the internal work of spiritual formation. This follows more of a pastoral mentoring model and may involve reading through books that help you grow spiritually, relationally and deepen your character.

Mentoring People of Color and Women in Leadership. One of the top recommendations to support women in leadership is to pair them with a more experienced female mentor. The same recommendations apply toward people of color in pairing them with a more experienced mentor of similar ethnicity. One helpful way to do this would be for the mentor and mentee to read through books together. This list of recommended books from City Vision may be a helpful starting point on potential books to read together.
Mentoring by Similar Ministry. Many students work in a ministry that shares a common history and philosophy of ministry with a larger movement. This might include Rescue Missions, the Salvation Army, Christian Community Development organizations, global relief ministries, international missions, church tradition, etc. It can be helpful to pursue mentoring by someone with more experience within your tradition. This list of recommended books from City Vision may be a helpful starting point on potential books to read together.
Mentoring by Position or Specific Skill. Many students may seek out mentors who have a particular skill they need to grow in or have a similar position to theirs. Examples might include: Executive Director, Development, Grant Writing, Nonprofit Programs, etc. The difference between this mentoring and taking a course on one of these topics is that 1) the student should be working in or aspiring to work in the area they are being mentored in, 2) mentoring provides a structure that a more experienced person in your field can help you advance.

City Vision Online Mentors

Students that choose the City Vision Online mentoring option described above may select from one of the following mentors through City Vision. Once you have identified your preferred mentor, email support@cityvision.edu to verify their availability (two weeks before the term starts). Note, while the below list includes those City Vision has identified for our mentoring program, students may request on the availability of any of our faculty (see list) for mentoring.

Dr. Terrell Carter

Mentoring Domains: Executive Director, Community Development, Black Church Leadership, Chief Diversity Officer, Mentoring

Jody Veler

Mentoring Domains: Executive Director, Community Development, Women in Leadership, Black Leadership, Government and Politics

Commissioner Jim Knaggs

Mentoring Domains: Salvation Army (former Western Territory Commander), Leadership, Executive Leadership, Nonprofit Management, Urban Ministry

Shawna Fitz

Mentoring Domains: Social Work & Economic Development, Project Management, Women and BIPOC in Tech

Colonel Dr. Janet Munn

Mentoring Domains: Women in Leadership, Cross-Cultural Ministry, Education Leadership, Salvation Army, Social Justice

Dr. Charles McElveen

Mentoring Domains: Nonprofit Program Development, Military Transition to Nonprofit Ministry, Executive Pastor, Christian Higher Education, Rescue Missions