The Doctor of Ministry Program
Houston Graduate School of Theology is Houston’s only fully accredited, evangelical, multicultural, and ecumenical seminary and is home to students from all walks of life and represent a multitude of different traditions and faith experiences. Students from every mainline denomination and many from faith communities with no denominational identity attend the seminary’s urban-based courses.   In what has become quite a cosmopolitan city, HGST students speak Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Swahili and other African languages, and, of course, English.  This diversity is both stimulating and purposeful.  Students are challenged and refreshed as they grow both intellectually and spiritually through contact with others whose backgrounds and faith experiences differ greatly than their own.  For dialogue, growth, and interaction, this diversity helps prepare a new generation of leaders for our diverse world.

Rev. Dr. Don L. Davis is an adjunct faculty member of Houston Graduate School of Theology, and teaches doctoral fellows in their Doctor of Ministry Degree Program.  The Doctor of Ministry is an advanced professional degree, designed to enable the student to practice ministry at an exceptionally high level of competency. It builds on the foundation of the Master of Divinity degree, as well as three or more years of professional practice of ministry subsequent to it. Dr. Davis teaches the doctoral seminar “The Serving Ministry of the Church: Practicing Ministry in a Multicultural Society” (DM 850) bi-annually.  This seminar addresses the task of serving a multicultural society, and how the church can be both witness and servant to this unreached society.

The seminar concentrates on how to minister effectively among unchurched, multicultural communities, and all the complexities that this entails.  It includes topics such as conflict resolution in the church, demographic research and development and spiritual development for the minister.  In a culturally diverse and increasingly neo-pagan religious context, the effective pastor and Christian worker must strive to become proficient in the truths and practices associated with making disciples in the 21st century.

The courses for the Doctor of Ministry program consist of a series of six seminars. The seminars for the Doctor of Ministry program are offered at various times during the calendar year. These are normally offered at a time when the regular classes of the seminary are not in session. Normally the schedule of seminars will be published at least one year in advance, except for the initial sessions.  The initial Doctor of Ministry seminar is required before enrolling in other seminars. Each seminar represents six semester hours of credit.  The final project and the written project report represent three semester hours that are pro-rated at one half credit hour per seminar and granted upon the successful oral defense and approved final project report document.  Each Doctor of Ministry seminar will require a minimum of 2,000 pages of reading from a provided list prior to the intensive session. An intensive session will be five days in length, Monday through Friday. Several papers and/or a project are to be submitted within ninety days after the session ends. Competence will be demonstrated through creative projects and/or papers, which apply professional experience in connection with each course/seminar. These projects/papers will also demonstrate an understanding of the subject matter, bibliography, theory and methodology covered in the seminar.