Lecturer: Pr Mike Ngui
Venue: On Campus
Time: Friday, 9.00 am – 12.00 pm
3 units
Course Description
This course treats pastoral theology as a disciplined way of thinking and acting faithfully in the midst of real congregational life — not a collection of ministerial techniques, but a rigorous engagement with Scripture, theology, tradition, and contextual judgement. It is designed for emerging ministry practitioners across a range of roles, from small-group leaders and ministry workers to those preparing for formal pastoral responsibility.
Rationale
Ministry places Christians in situations where belief and lived experience do not sit neatly together. Grief, conflict, strained marriages, difficult decisions, institutional pressure — these arrive without warning and rarely with clear theological instructions attached. This course is designed to fill that gap. It forms students to read situations carefully, interpret them theologically, and respond with the kind of wisdom that can only come from integrating knowledge, formation, and practice.
Course Movement
The course follows a deliberate pedagogical sequence across six movements.
First, students are oriented to pastoral theology as a discipline — its nature, history, and commitments — and from within that frame generate ministry cases from their own experience. The course begins simultaneously with the discipline and with the world the student already inhabits.
Second, students learn a practical-theological method for interpreting ministry situations, giving them a structured way to move from careful observation through theological interpretation to pastoral judgment and response.
Third, the course builds biblical and theological foundations for pastoral ministry. Students learn to understand ministry as participation in the shepherding, reconciling, and pneumatological work of God — and as service of an eschatological telos: the formation of a kingdom-shaped people, the Bride of Christ, being prepared for union with him. Asian and Western theological voices are engaged as primary interlocutors throughout.
Fourth, the course turns to the formation of the minister. Students examine spirituality, prayer, contemplation, temptation, affections, habits, character, and spiritual disciplines — asking who the minister must be, not only what the minister must know. Vocation is addressed after formation, so that questions of calling are shaped by self-knowledge rather than abstraction.
Fifth, the course examines the major currents that shape ministry today, including therapeutic assumptions and leadership or management models. Students learn to discern what may be received, what must be resisted, and what requires careful adaptation — from a theologically grounded an personally examined standpoint, and in light of the eschatological telos established earlier in the course.
Finally, the course culminates in case-based work in concrete ministry arenas including marriage, family, ageing, death, and congregational care, with particular attention to the Malaysian or the student’s local pastoral context. The aim is to help students integrate theology, formation, and practice.
Course Arc
| Phase | Focus |
| Weeks 1–3: Foundations | Pastoral theology as a discipline; generating ministry cases; the practical-theological method; Old Testament ministry figures. |
| Weeks 4–6: Identity | Biblical and theological foundations; the eschatological telos; the interior life; formation through temptation and character |
| Week 7: Vocation | Calling after formation; Malaysian pressures on vocation |
| Weeks 8–9: Critical Evaluation | The therapeutic model; the managerial-church-growth model; the theological alternative |
| Weeks 10–12: Integration | Consolidation; case-labs (marriage, family, ageing, death); the Theology of Ministry statement |
Learning Objectives
By the end of the course, students should be able
- Read and analyse ministry situations theologically, moving from observation through interpretation and normative judgement to pastoral response, using a practical-theological framework.
- Explain the biblical and theological foundations of pastoral ministry: ministry as participation in the shepherding, reconciling, and pneumatological work of God, and as service of the Church’s formation as the Bride of Christ.
- Engage Asian and Majority World theological voices as primary conversation partners alongside the Western pastoral tradition.
- Reflect critically on your own interior life and vocation: spirituality, formation, temptation, discipline, and calling, as part of faithful pastoral practice rather than separate from it, attentive to the specific demands of the Malaysian ecclesial context.
- Evaluate the theological assumptions in therapeutic, managerial, and church-growth models, discerning what may be received, resisted, or adapted, and develop theologically responsible pastoral responses to concrete situations in the Malaysian context.
- Write a coherent personal Theology of Ministry that draws together Scripture, theological reflection, formation, contextual practice, and an account of the Church’s ultimate purpose.
Assessment Philosophy
Assessment in this course mirrors its pedagogical movement: from weekly engagement with assigned texts, through case-based analytical work, to a culminating piece of integrative theological writing.
A weekly reading-engagement component ensures students arrive at each session having read and thought about the assigned material, building a running record of reflection that feeds into later assignments. Case-based assignments ask students to apply the practical-theological method to genuinely unresolved situations from their own ministry context. A mid-course critical reflection asks students to evaluate a contemporary model of ministry — therapeutic, managerial, or church-growth — theologically, identifying what should be received, resisted, or adapted. An integrative Theology of Ministry statement, developed in draft and then revised in light of case-lab work, asks students to articulate their own account of ministry’s source, aims, and ultimate purpose. The course concludes with a substantial final paper integrating the method, foundations, formational insight, and critical evaluation developed across the semester.
Throughout, students engage Asian and Majority World theological voices as primary interlocutors and ground their reflection in the Malaysian (or their local) pastoral context.
The detailed assessment structure and reading list will be issued at the start of the course.