This course introduces you to the study of leadership, theology, and society, offering the intellectual and pedagogical framework for the program. Because rightly understanding our reason-for- being is foundational for human flourishing, we will focus on the question of telos and its inseparable connection with identity. To define telos is to wrestle with “why are we?” and to search for identity is to ask “who are we?” We will find these two fundamental questions inextricably linked, for individual persons and for the organizations such persons construct and lead, which then takes us to the third great question, “where are we?” We will be especially concerned with the coherence of what we believe with the way we live both inside and outside the organizations in which we find ourselves. 

Theological convictions about the nature of God, human identity, and history will be woven into our reflection on the nature of leadership— that is, our going out ahead in order that others might follow —in our pluralizing, secularizing and globalizing world, in and through it all deepening our understanding of the meaning of vocation which only holds deep meaning when it is for the common good. As we are studying the integral relationship of leadership, theology and society, the course is interdisciplinary. 

Throughout the course, students will be led to encounter and enrich their own distinct sense of vocation which arises from the interaction of telos and identity. The interplay of these three dimensions— of why I am, who I am and where I am —will recur again and again as the degree program unfolds in a unique way for each student.