Cohort Mentor

Thank you for your interest in learning about the Mentor role for the Western Seminary Bay Area Cohort Masters of Arts in Ministry and Leadership degree. The cost of this program is significantly reduced by having someone from the student’s local church or ministry involved.

Each semester of the 3-year degree program, the student has a 4-credit Bible/theology class and a 2-credit ministry class. For the 2-credit ministry class, we require that each student formally has someone from their local church or ministry they serve in who will commit to:

• Pray for the student as they add on seminary classes in addition to their normal ministry and family life.
• Attend a one-time initial Mentor training meeting (will either be on-line or in person). We will go through all the specifics of the mentor role then and answer all questions the Mentor may have.
• Become familiar with each semester’s ministry class goals and objectives by reading through the syllabus at the beginning of each semester.
• Meet with the student three times per semester to review the two assignment papers for that semester’s ministry class. The mentor doesn’t have to grade the papers but discuss the paper’s contents with the student.
• Be an advocate for the student on the church staff or ministry for them to be able to prioritize in their schedule the once a month all day class and once a month one hour Zoom meeting that happens. It is critical for the students to be in-person for all the all-day class and we give out the schedule at least 6 months in advance for them to arrange any coverage for ministry or meetings that may normally happen.

The Mentor role is ideally the person from the church or ministry staff that the student reports to. This way the discussions on the papers written by the student are more naturally discussed in how they apply to the ministry and church the student is serving in.

We do have a formal document that the Mentor will have to fill out for the role that we will give out when the Mentor is identified for each student. The Mentor doesn’t have to stay with the student for all three years of the degree, but if they have to end the role, they will help the student find a replacement and let Western Seminary know of the change.

We will go over all the specifics of the role in the training and if you have any questions about how the Mentor role functions please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., host and curator of the cohort.