Steps in the MATUL learning process
The program features a 45-credit curriculum delivered at partner schools in each continent.
- Each semester includes an internship. Formal classroom learning is matched by field based experience and complemented by analysis from both global and local literature.
- This is all interfaced online with APU resources and the global cohort.
- For American Students: The first four months of study is in downtown Los Angeles at the APU LA-MATUL urban centre where students will take classes, live in an intentional community with fellow MATUL students, work alongside an emergent church, and work part time.
- The following eighteen months to two years spent overseas living among the urban poor at a partnering city.
- Time abroad begins with 4-8 months of Language and Culture Learning.
How do you learn leadership?
This is a unique international studies program. Movement leadership is more than organizational, business or church leadership. It’s the release of entrepreneurial dynamics in multiple dimensions. Urban educational processes include:
Action - Learn skills that range from communicating the gospel and small group formation to the complexities of community and international development. For example, one internship extends a theology of justice to actively standing with people in their struggle for land rights. Another moves from the analysis of the causes of poverty to  creating vocational or preschools among the poor - one of the best ways to escape poverty.
Theological Reflection and Social Analysis - Movement leadership involves vision, which requires engagement with the global literature, understanding of urban realities, urban theology and the literature on multiplying movements of churches.
Spiritual and Character Formation - Students learn from leadership teams as they do church alongside the poor. Fieldwork is supervised under NGO community leaders. Leadership has to do with being molded into people of character. Thus, the first course is on Urban Spirituality: the vivacious spirituality of the broken and the quiet reflective spirituality that sustains workers long term in extreme conditions.
Is this program right for you?
This program is designed for action-oriented individuals and entrepreneurial or emergent leaders. Mid-career or early career professionals who see themselves long-term in committed service to the world’s urban poor should apply.
We are looking for emergent leaders, with some urban ministry experience and the spiritual, physical and emotional health for 18 months living and learning among the urban poor.
What kind of career can you get?
- Ministry - Apostolic, prophetic, pastoral or evangelistic roles in national movements.
- Mission - New post-modern incarnational missions such as Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor, Servant Partners, Innerchange, Word Made Flesh.
- Development Agencies - Multiplication of development or mercy processes (in NGO’s like World Vision, Tear Fund).
- Business - Multiplying entrepreneurs among the poor.
- Advocacy - Living deep in the culture of the poor will impact policy and projects in development agencies like the UN, World Bank, etc
Courses
Writings, Reign, and Urban Realities: This course relates the biblical motif of the Kingdom of God to issues of leadership development in resource-poor urban communities.
Language and Culture Acquisition: This course guides students in acquiring the knowledge and skills for independent language and
culture learning within urban poor communities.
Urban Spirituality: An in-depth examination of human development and family life in the slum context, this course emphasizes the care
and nurturing of resource-poor workers and the practical application of the spiritual disciplines.
Building Faith Communities: This course applies a story-telling approach to the process of entering poor communities and developing holistic poor peoples’ churches in ways faithful to the values and goals of the Kingdom of God.
Urban Reality and Theology:
This course aims to generate perspectives and tools for transformative urban mission.
Service to the Marginalized:
This course guides students in under-standing the conditions of marginalized populations and in formulating a theology and strategy for team-based responses that aim to free individuals and change structural causes.
Educational Center Development:
This course offers analysis of third world schooling with a focus on developing and improving preschool, elementary, and technical schools in the slums as integral to the work of urban poor churches.
Theology and Practice of Community Economics:
This course relates biblical and theological perspectives on human development to the theory and practice of community wealth building. Special emphasis is given to considering how working women in the slums might use micro-enterprises and individual development accounts to create a better environment for asset building and ownership.
Leadership in Urban Movements: This course explores the dynamics of leadership within holistic, urban-poor movements.
Community Transformation: Students explore the challenges, models of, and prospects for, transformational change within slum communities while developing a Christian framework for holistic development, organization, and advocacy among the urban poor and gaining facility in community asset mapping.
Entrepreneurial and Organizational Leadership: This course introduces the concepts and skills of entrepreneurial and organizational leadership required to initiate new movement structures among the urban poor.
Primary Health Care: An exploration of public health challenges facing the Church within slum communities, along with innovative, community-based responses, this course highlights topics such as environmental health, maternal and child health, and chronic health conditions prevalent in slums. Students serve as mentored interns with a health organization in the community where they live or work.
Advocacy and the Urban Environment: Students examine the relations between urban poor communities, the land, and broader environmental problems including natural disasters. Fieldwork focuses on advocacy for adequate housing, infrastructure services, and effective disaster response.
Integration Seminar or Thesis: Students apply analytic frameworks and practical skills acquired through the program to an investigation
of a specific issue on behalf of a community organization.
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