This student cohort is for practicing missional leaders eager to discover new missional paradigms for meaningful connection with the next generation—specifically, emerging adults.

The church is in critical need of qualitative research to inform fresh ways to engage emerging adults (ages 18–29), a unique phase of maturation found in industrialized nations. The research students conduct in this cohort will not only benefit their current ministry context, but will help the global church discover fresh missional paradigms with transformational potential for the next generation.

Participants will gain competencies in missional theology, faithful contextualization, and kenotic leadership. These competencies, combined with each student’s unique qualitative applied research project, will fuel the full cohort’s discovery of fresh paradigms for missional engagement among emerging adults. It will be a four-year journey with a cohort of catalytic practitioners, each benefiting from collaboration and mutual strengthening with fellow scholar-practitioners who share similar passions.

The cohort will gather for three four-day, in-person intensives at iconic origin sites of significant Christian movements. The first three year-long modules focus on specific developmental domains: the development of a missional and movemental ethos (Module 1), the development of cultural intelligence (Module 2), and the development of kenotic leadership (Module 3). In the final module, as they complete their qualitative research project, students will integrate these domains in ways that will help them missionally engage with emerging adults in their context in a more fruitful way.