The CMC Vicarage is a required 4-year internship at a local congregation and under the mentorship of a pastor during which students grow personally, spiritually, and professionally as pastoral and missionary leaders.
Every semester students submit a personal growth plan, a spiritual formation plan, and a professional development plan in which they articulate goals related to ministry activities such as preaching, teaching, visiting, administration, etc. Then they carry out these activities and journal their progress throughout the semester.
The CMC Vicarage is also specifically designed to help students acquire missionary habits and skills. So every semester they also create goals related to mission activities such as language and cultural learning, community awareness and ministry, mission awareness and leadership, and reaching the unchurched. About half-way through the program students take specific courses that prepare them to study their communities, plan, and then launch a new ministry that crosses a significant cultural barrier into a non-Anglo or heavily multi-cultural milieu, and reaches the lost outside of the church in the surrounding community. Students then launch their new ministries, revising and creating new goals that they work to accomplish every semester and submitting end of the semester progress reports. This new culture-crossing ministry start serves as the capstone project of the CMC. The plan, progress reports, and a final reflection paper are included in the student’s final vicarage portfolio, along with several other artifacts from their time in the CMC.
Vicarage Year One – Personal Formation
- Yearly Bible, focused prayer and personal devotions.
- Pastoral mentoring and observation, work with mentor pastor.
- Leadership Development.
- Preparation for new ministry launch.
Vicarage Year Two – Pastoral Functions
- Involvement in the local congregation with the goal of preaching, teaching, and team building in service to the existing strategic plan of the congregation.
- The student is to grow in all 14 function areas of ministry and mission, developing as both a pastor and a missionary to the surrounding community.
- Leadership Development.
- Preparation for new ministry launch.
Vicarage Year Three – Mission Church Planting/New Ministry Launch
- Entrepreneurial church plant or new ministry launched from a host congregation utilizing a committed launch team to cross cultures and reach the lost with the Gospel. This is the capstone project of this program and is to be a significant undertaking and robust part of the vicarage.
- Leadership Development.
Vicarage Year Four – Leadership/Team Building
- Community outreach and internal team building continues.
- Careful and intentional leadership identification, training, and development are key.
- The goal of each student is to have a team that will continue to grow the new start into a viable church and/or enduring ministry that crosses cultures and reaches the lost.
- Leadership Development continues.