Fuller Theological Seminary · Doctor of Ministry · Begins Fall 2026
Pastoral Leadership in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Science, and Technology
Your congregation is already living with artificial intelligence. Someone in your church edits genes for a living; someone else is being counselled by a chatbot at two in the morning. Most of us were not formed for this. This cohort is three years of serious theological work for pastors who would rather be equipped than caught out.
Applications for the Fall 2026 cohort close Friday, 7 August 2026. If you are reading this after that date, it is still worth writing — deadlines have moved before, and a further cohort is planned.
Who this is for
This is a cohort for practitioners, not for academics. It is built for people carrying pastoral responsibility who keep meeting questions their training did not cover.
- Pastors and ministry leaders whose congregations include engineers, physicians, researchers, and technologists — and who are asked the hard questions first.
- Leaders who want to take science seriously without being handed either fear or capitulation as the only options.
- Those working outside the West, or with communities formed elsewhere, for whom the standard science-and-religion conversation has been oddly silent about most of the world.
- Anyone who suspects that artificial intelligence raises questions about what a person is — and wants to think them through theologically rather than reactively.
The three years
Year One — Exploring the Landscape
We map the terrain: what evolutionary biology, neuroscience, cosmology, and the newer technologies actually claim, and where they press on Christian conviction. You will name the particular pressures in your own ministry setting rather than a generic version of them.
Year Two — Engagement, Wisdom, and Resources
We build the theological and practical resources: frameworks for discipleship, innovation, and human flourishing, tested against each other in the cohort and sharpened by peer critique.
Year Three — Caring for the Coming Generations
We turn to the pastoral work itself, and to the generations who will inherit these technologies — held within a Christian hope that has an end in view.
How it works
- Fully online. Every quarter across the three years is online or online-live. There is no residency requirement, so the cohort works from wherever you serve.
- Live sessions Wednesdays, 10:00–11:30 a.m. Pacific in the autumn and spring quarters; winter quarters are online without the weekly meeting.
- Sixteen units a year — reading and seminar, doctoral research, and integration — for three years.
- A cohort, not a correspondence course. You move through all three years with the same group, which is most of why it works.
Your cohort leader
I am Jacob Chengwei Feng, affiliate assistant professor of theology and leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary. I came to this subject the long way round: I began doctoral study in physics, took a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering, and spent about a decade in quantitative finance on Wall Street before completing a PhD in systematic theology at Fuller.
That route is not incidental to how I teach this. I know what it is to be persuaded by an argument and to have to rebuild afterwards. My research sits at the intersection of theology and the sciences and of world and Chinese Christianity, with monographs published by Brill and Palgrave Macmillan, and science-and-religion fellowships held at Cambridge and Oxford.
What I care about in this cohort is not producing commentary on technology. It is that a pastor should be able to stand in front of a congregation formed by these forces and speak with both honesty and hope.
The next step
If you are weighing this, I would rather talk with you than have you decide from a web page. A short conversation is usually enough to tell whether the cohort is right for you, and I am glad to say so plainly if it is not.
Dr. Jacob Chengwei Feng 