Purchase the Capstone Curriculum
Capstone Curriculum is a 16-module training program, taught at a seminary level, which we specifically designed to serve as the most essential knowledge and skill learning necessary for effective urban ministry. Each module (course) comes with a Mentor’s Guide, a Student Workbook and two DVD’s (four hours of video). Each module also has required supplemental textbooks.
An Overview of the Capstone Curriculum
The Capstone Curriculum is a 16-module training program, taught at a seminary level, which we specifically designed to serve as the most essential knowledge and skill learning necessary for effective urban ministry and church leadership. Although each module contains its own specific list of objectives to guide mentors and students through the material, below you will find our eight overall objectives we seek to implement across our Capstone Curriculum:
- To ground emerging urban leaders in the Gospel of Christ, enabling them to know the basics of conversion and their own calling to salvation and leadership
- To root our students in the indispensability of the Church to serve as both agent and locus of the Kingdom, and for them to serve the church practically and specifically in the local assembly
- To equip urban leaders with the necessary study skills to study, apply, teach, preach, and minister the Word of God in the urban context, applying their learning in the context of their own personal lives and church ministries
- To challenge urban leaders to regularly memorize select portions of Scripture, and develop the discipline of review to retain and utilize texts both devotionally and in ministry
- To establish urban leaders in a Christ-centered vision of Scripture, and equip them in a Nicene-based, biblical theology that is congruent with the historic orthodox faith of the Great Tradition
- To provide a biblical foundation for both understanding and practicing Christian leadership in the context of the Church, with a special emphasis and appreciation for spiritual formation in urban communities, especially among the poor.
- To train urban leaders to evangelize, disciple, plant, pastor, and minister within evangelical urban churches which will be spiritually vital, culturally conducive, and aggressively reproductive within the various people groups needing Christ in the city
- To encourage urban leaders to find practical, meaningful ways to promote justice and demonstrate mercy with the broken and needy in urban communities, and discover ways to display hospitality, generosity, and compassion in the places where they live and minister
Each module (course) comes with a Mentor’s Guide, a Student Workbook and two DVD’s (four hours of video). Each module also has required supplemental textbooks. This curriculum is designed to be used in a variety of formats, time frames, and venues. As a complete training curriculum, it may be accessed through The Urban Ministry Institute’s Satellite Certificate program. With this curriculum you will have everything you need to equip yourself and your leaders for effective ministry in your church and community.
Accreditation and Capstone: An Overview of the Capstone Curriculum with all of the Module Descriptions and Lesson Objectives
Here is a very helpful document that will give you information on Capstone for your review. This document will help you get a thorough understanding of the overall schema of Capstone as well as each particular module's content and objectives. This is the document that our partners have used to determine their level of accreditation for our resource and their institution of higher education. This is a great resource for your mentors!
Sharing the Vision for Christian Leadership Training with Others
We created a summary document of our vision and how churches, ministries, and organizations can partner with us in training their leaders that you can print and give out to others who may be interested in finding out more about how we could work together to accomplish this.
- Capstone Curriculum Summary : English
- TUMI Satellite Brochure: English (download, then print)
- English Overview of Capstone Module Descriptions and Lesson Objectives
- English Folder Labels
- Grant Application (English)
- Capstone Curriculum Summary : Spanish
- TUMI Satellite Brochure : Spanish (download, then print)
- Grant Application (Spanish)
- Spanish Folder Labels
Capstone Module Descriptions
This document has all 16 Capstone Module descriptions in one file. This document is a great tool to help you understand what each module is about in relatively few pages.
Capstone At-A-Glance, Sample, Textbooks
The Capstone Curriculum at-a-glance
This two-page document provides an at-a-glance look at our entire Capstone Curriculum (including lesson titles), and also defines our terminology in this structure programming, along with breakdown of the modules and the outline of the lessons.
Capstone Circle Chart
Here is the one page view of all 16 Capstone Modules and their lessons.
Capstone Module Sample
Are you interested in hearing actual module teaching? Feel free to preview one of the Capstone module’s instruction to gain a better understanding of what we’ve included in each module. Listening to the teaching may convince you that our training may be appropriate and desirable for your church or ministry leadership training!
Required Textbooks
Each Capstone module has assigned textbooks which are read and discussed through the course. We encourage students to read, reflect upon, and respond to these with their professors, mentors, and fellow learners. The current listing on our site will always represent the OFFICIAL Capstone required textbook list.
| Appendices (additional resources for Capstone) |
- Documenting Your Work: A Guide to Help You Give Credit Where Credit is Due” is a key resource that should be made available to each student for each module that will help them as they complete their writing assignments. Print copies of "Documenting Your Work" for your students.
- Imagining a Unified, Connected C1 Church Planting Movement
In Capstone Module 12, appendix 32 (page 255), we refer to a document titled "Imagining a Unified, Connected C1 Church Planting Movement" but did not put that particular document in the Appendix of Capstone Module 12. We have linked you to that file here.
Module Information
Below are links to the course informative given for each Capstone module, along with its summary and description, and both its required and supplemental textbooks.
Module 1: Conversion and Calling
Module 2: The Kingdom of God
Module 3: Theology of the Church
Module 4: Foundations for Christian Mission
Module 5: Bible Interpretation
Module 6: God the Father
Module 7: Foundations of Christian Leadership
Module 8: Evangelism and Spiritual Warfare
Module 9: The Old Testament Witness to Christ and His Kingdom
Module 10: God the Son
Module 11: Practicing Christian Leadership
Module 12: Focus on Reproduction
Module 13: The New Testament Witness to Christ and His Kingdom
Module 14: God the Holy Spirit
Module 15: The Equipping Ministry
Module 16: Doing Justice and Loving Mercy: Compassion Ministries
Capstone is now digitized, searchable and available for the PC, iPad, iPhone, Kindle Reader, and Smartphone!
The digital Capstone is a handy complement to your Capstone Students Softcover Workbook; the accessibility and versatility of the digital editions ensures that the Kindle version of Capstone will be a lifetime resource for sermon preparation, Bible Study, and theological research. These versions are formatted excellently, and, of course, each module now has the profoundly helpful Kindle search capacity and linking features that make these volumes spectacular study resources.
Start Your Own TUMI Satellite
If you have ever dreamed or thought about starting your own training center in your urban church or ministry, please, take a closer look at what we have established to make that dream come true!
Core Texts for Capstone Courses and Your Theological Library
TUMI’s Core Texts Bibliography
As theologians and research scholars, TUMI's faculty had a wide range of excellent text from which to choose in selecting those texts which would become the staple of its training program for urban church leadership development. Do you want to know what we settled on to be must-have-and-own list of books for an emerging urban Christian leader? Here it is in printable form!
TUMI's core texts represent an representative core of evangelically orthodox texbooks which emphasize a Nicene creedal theology. They confess the essential beliefs represented broadly in an evangelical consensus by various denominations and traditions, and provide a well-rounded introduction to the major issues of faith and practice for Christian leadership. Texts were chosen not only on the basis of scholarly acumen and breadth, but also on our more fundamental criteria for urban leadereship training, i.e., accessibility and usuability, readability level, clarity and practicality, along with historic orthodox content consistent with Nicene theology. To keep the student textbook collection affordable, we use these books again and again in our various department areas, referred to them throughout the course of our instruction. We regularly employ these texts in all the various classes and workshops we sponsor.
Recommended Books to Start Your Own Theological Library
We strongly recomend that every satellite do all it can to establish a theological libary collection in connection to its leadership education, both for the sake of faculty studies and student preparation. Such a limited but helpful collection can enhance your training opportunities greatly, and enable you to better serve your students at your satellite, Here is a starter list to help you begin to consider the kinds of texts you should obtain for your satellite and/or personal library collection.
TUMI Printing Resource Page
Do you know someone who might be interested in starting a TUMI satellite? Here is a link to a page with some of our printing resources that will help you share the vision of TUMI with others.
Forum Dialogue and Help
Register on our forums, and see what insights and questions our site coordinators, mentors, students, and guests have been discussing lately.