Certificate in Theology of Global Health
Enhance your sustainable service and broaden your horizons of understanding for greater impact in meeting human needs.
Program Overview
This graduate certificate program serves to deepen understanding and empower practice in human health-related missional engagement. With the secularization of societies, healthcare and global public health training is for the most part devoid of a faith-based, spiritual, and missional foundation. In addition, theological education and church life in many countries is often lacking a creation-centered, whole-person oriented perspective. This would serve to foster the WCIU vision of a verdant and flourishing world, ripe with wholeness and peace for all peoples, and to help practitioners, scholars, and policy-makers develop effective solutions to the roots of human problems around the world.
We are Body, Mind and Spirit
Yet many faith-based services focus primarily on meeting a community's spiritual needs.
We are Healing Agents
This program uses an integrated biblical and theological understanding of health to foster sustainable missional engagement.
We are Called to Stand in the Gaps
For the sake of the flourishing of all nations, we must address the whole person in every context.
Program Features
12 Credits
PROGRAM REQUIREMENTSA total of four courses are required to complete this certificate (see below for more details).
1 Year - 16 Months
LENGTH OF PROGRAMStudents are able to complete the degree in about one academic year by taking one course per term for a total of four courses.
Topics Include
Whole-person health and the biblical and empirical elements of sustainable human flourishing.
The upstream etiologies of disease in a global context and our compassionate response to human suffering.
A practical understanding of the biblical basis of engaging in the repair of brokenness in social, environmental, biological, cultural, and spiritual systems.
A hopeful vision for justice, peace, restoration, wholeness, and reconciliation, inspired and sustained by a view toward the renewal of all things in heaven and earth.
What will you take away from this program?
Who should enroll?Healthcare practitioners, public health and community health workers engaged in or planning to work in many contexts, especially in less developed settings.
Church leaders, development workers, and cross-cultural workers who seek to integrate a whole-person perspective in their work among the nations.
At the completion of this PROGRAM, you will:Model critical thinking and discernment regarding complex health issues facing people around the world.
Conduct multidisciplinary research on issues related to global health which is applicable in the student’s context.
Articulate an integrative theology of health and healing that can be used to inspire and equip men and women for leadership in health and development work in their context.
Demonstrate Christlikeness and spiritual vitality in approaches to developing leaders in global public health and healthcare service.
Integrate theories, principles, analysis, and practices in the promotion of global health and development including whole-person care, public health, ministries of reconciliation, justice and transformational development.
Demonstrate the skills and competencies needed to address many unique global health and development challenges and opportunities to repair brokenness of social, environmental, biological, cultural, and spiritual systems which affect human health in their global contexts.
Course Information
The Graduate Certificate in Theology of Global Health is made up of four courses.
Students are required to take each of the four courses from the following list in sequence:Course Descriptions
TGH 510 - Creation, Health, and Wholeness
This course will focus on the consequences of the fall and the meaning of illness, suffering, and death from a biblical perspective. The multifaceted etiologies of disease, states of brokenness in all aspects of human life, the challenge and value of suffering (pathology), the global burden of disease, and the inevitability of disability and death will be studied. Ways to address causes and consequences of brokenness, leading to strategic engagement in the healing of whole persons among all the peoples of the earth, will also be explored.
TGH 520 - The Fall, Disease, Suffering, and Death
This course will focus on a comprehensive theological understanding of creation with an emphasis on human creation. The privileged and responsible relationship humanity shares with the rest of creation, and the call to stewardship, will be studied. Human wholeness, the elements that lead to health and well-being, empirical evidence of the causes of human flourishing, and the social, cultural, and spiritual determinants of health will be explored.
Prerequisite:
TGH 510 - Creation, Health and Wholeness
TGH 599 - Salvation, Healing, and Mission
This course will focus on developing a theological view of salvation in all its fullness. Students will study the multiple dimensions of healing as the work of God and His representatives in the world, and how this work toward healing all of creation, including human health and wholeness is an integral part of the mission of God in the world.
Prerequisites:
TGH 510 - Creation, Health, and Wholeness
TGH 520 - The Fall, Disease, Suffering, and Death
TGH 550 - Peace, Justice, Restoration, and Consummation
This course is designed to synthesize the biblical understanding of personhood, wholeness (shalom), peace and reconciliation, and justice, and to contrast and compare them with widely accepted ideas and secular theories. Students will explore their personal understanding and positions on these topics, ensuring that these are anchored in sound biblical hermeneutics and theology rather than conforming to general secular notions. This course will build a clarifying view of God’s intended ends, which give motivation, perseverance, and hope to those facing the challenges of a disordered body, civil society, and planet.
Prerequisites:
TGH 510 - Creation, Health, and Wholeness
TGH 520 - The Fall, Disease, Suffering, and Death
TGH 599 - Salvation, Healing, and Mission
What are you waiting for?
FAQs
Do I need to complete an undergraduate (Bachelor’s) level degree before applying for the graduate certificate level program?
The Graduate Certificate Program is designed for students who have already completely undergraduate work. So yes, you need to have an undergraduate degree or your region’s equivalent to qualify for this Graduate Level Certificate Program.
Will a graduate education help me move up in my organization even at the Certificate level?
While it is true that advanced degrees do not lead to climbing the organizational ladder in cross-cultural NGOs, increased effectiveness does. Consider that you will be better equipped during and after your time at WCIU.
My bachelor's degree has not trained me Biblically, or to work with cultural/historical data. Am I still able to do the program?
We have a more post-modern, cross-cultural approach than other similar programs where one size does not fit all. So, yes, often it is helpful to not have pre-packaged answers before starting the program. These areas will be developed in each student as part of the degree.
I work full-time, or my ministry keeps me going non-stop. Is WCIU’s Graduate level certificate program flexible enough for me?
The WCIU student is part-time and meets with students online. If a student is able to manage with their schedule, full-time is certainly possible.
if I complete a certificate, can I still do the Master' degree?
Yes! If you complete one of our Certificate Programs and decide you want to continue your education, you can apply the credits you earned in your Certificate Program to a Master’s Degree at WCIU.
Can I do more than one certificate?
Yes!
Do you have questions about our tuition costs or the admissions process?
Find out more on our admissions & tuition page.
Graduate Certificate in Theology of Global Health
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