Doctor of Christian Philosophy
This online course is taught in English only.
Major in any of the following concentrations:
- Biblical Studies
- Christian Arts
- Christian Counseling
- Christian Entrepreneurship
- Christian Leadership
- Divine Healing,
- Intercession
- Ministry
- Missions and Evangelism
- Prophetic Ministry
- Worship Ministry
- Youth Ministry
Biblical Studies
- Our Bible concentration will guide you in letting God reveal Himself to you through His Word.
- The Bible is your main text, and if you complete the entire Through the Bible series, you will be reading every word of every book.
- According to I Timothy 1:5, “the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
- This major is designed to give you a framework to meditate on God’s Word, receiving revelation from every single book, that you might grow in love, pureness of heart, obedience that results in good conscience, and faith in your Lord.
- The heart of the major is the Through the Bible series in which you will read the entire Bible, expecting the Holy Spirit to illumine it to your heart and mind.
- When the disciples on the road to Emmaus heard what Jesus had to say, they exclaimed, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was … explaining the Scriptures to us? ” (Luke 24:32).
Christian Arts
During the last 40 years, the Lord has spoken to various leaders in the Body of Christ about the need to infiltrate and affect all seven spheres or mountains that are the pillars of any society, if we are going to impact a nation for Jesus Christ. One of these mountains is the arts, of which creative writing is just one aspect. As children of God, made in the image of the Creator and reborn by the power of the Holy Spirit, believers should be the most creative people in the world. We should be on the cutting edge, producing the most powerful and influential books, movies, blogs, articles, essays, and poems the world has ever seen. We should be the leaders in every arena of the written word.
Our focus in this “Arts as Ministry” concentration is not on the technical aspects of writing such as grammar, punctuation, or proper forms for attribution and citations. These can be learned anywhere. Our goal is that you learn how to write under the anointing of the Holy Spirit so that whether you are writing a paragraph or a multi-volume work, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, whatever you write will carry the power of the Spirit in it and accomplish the purpose for which God breathed it through you.
To that end, you will explore all of the ways that God speaks to man and become skilled at recognizing His voice in your heart, through your dreams and through His Word. You will research your spirit and learn how you can recognize the movement of the Holy Spirit within you. You will investigate the anointing, what it is, how you experience it, and how you can increase the anointing upon you. You will learn tools for overcoming writer’s block and learn a bit about the publishing business. And you will write – a lot.
Christian Counseling
There is only one Wonderful Counselor, and our purpose as human counselors is to bring people into His Presence where He will heal their hearts. All of the counseling courses at CLU are focused on training you how to more effectively help others hear what God is saying to them and see what He is doing in their lives. Our desire is to equip biblically-based, Spirit-anointed, compassionate counselors who can discern the needs of the heart and usher in the grace of God to meet those needs.
You will experience the joy of teaching your counselees how to connect with the Wonderful Counselor through two-way journaling so they can hear His voice every single day and soak in His unconditional love and acceptance of them. You will be equipped in Christian dream interpretation so that you can help your counselee understand how the Lord is counseling them and what their own hearts are teaching them every night (Ps. 16:7). You will become a minister of grace who can impart a revelation of their identity in Christ that overcomes the lies of the enemy that hold them in bondage. You will pour the healing oil of the Holy Spirit into the festering memories of traumatic experiences through the ministry of inner healing. You will be by their side as the Spirit reveals the lies they have believed and help them embrace the Truth He declares over them. Together you will destroy demonic strongholds and oppressions that have led them to destruction.
Christian Entrepreneurship
- Every believer is called to “full-time Christian service.” Our mistake is in limiting Christian service solely to the traditional areas of “ministry” – either the pastorate or the mission field.
- In the last 40 years, the Lord has spoken to various leaders in the Body of Christ about the need to infiltrate and affect all seven spheres or mountains that are the pillars of any society, if we are going to impact a nation for Jesus Christ.
- One of those spheres is business, and some of us are called to full-time Christian service in the marketplace.
- The Business as Ministry concentration is designed to release the creative flow of the Holy Spirit within the student in and through business.
- You will explore and develop your own theology about the role of the believer in the marketplace and money in the Kingdom so that you are free to follow the Lord’s leading in that direction with the fullness of faith if that is His will for you.
- You will learn how to be a servant leader in whatever situation the Lord has placed you, bringing the Presence of the Lord and the rule of the King into every aspect of society.
- If you are so led, you will receive basic training in developing a business plan and starting up a business, and you will learn to seek the Lord’s guidance through every step of the process.
- The vision of creating and releasing wealth into the Kingdom of God will be explored, and various avenues for doing so may be examined.
Christian Leadership
- The Lord has promised that if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, He will set you high above all the nations of the earth. You will be the head and not the tail; you will only be above and not be underneath (Deut. 28:1, 13).
- In other words, if you hear and obey the voice of the Lord, you will be a leader. Since the foundation of all education at CLU is hearing the voice of God and living out of it, we fully expect that every CLU student will become a leader in whatever sphere of influence the Lord chooses and in whatever level of authority He desires and your obedience allows.
- Biblical leadership involves inspiring and equipping others to enhance and fulfill their destinies. The dictatorial rule is unknown to the way of love, where serving those you are responsible for is the heart’s passion of the Christian leader.
- You will explore the principles that motivate Spirit-anointed servant leadership.
- The purpose and power of a multi-gifted five-fold team will be examined, and you will learn how to embrace and release the exponential effect of being part of such a team in every area of your life.
Divine Healing
- Jesus healed all who came to Him, and He commissioned His disciples to declare that the Kingdom of heaven was at hand as they healed the sick, raised the dead and cast out demons.
- His final words before He ascended back to the Father assured us that we would lay hands on the sick and they would recover.
- And to the believers at Corinth, the Holy Spirit declared through the apostle Paul that He had appointed gifts of healings in the Church.
- It is important to have a solid biblical foundation upon which you can step out in faith, so you will thoroughly investigate what the Scriptures say and develop your own personal theology about divine healing.
- You will explore principles that can increase the effectiveness of your prayers for healing as well as the natural “gifts of healings” and principles for living in divine health that are revealed and compatible with Scripture.
- Does your heart long to see those who are sick and in pain touched by the miracle-working power of a loving God? Are you skilled in the use of all the tools the Lord has given to His people to bring healing and health?
Intercession
- It is the Holy Spirit who leads us in intercession. One of the Hebrew words for intercession is “paga” which literally means “to strike or light upon by chance.”
- As God leads us in intercession, He sends us His thoughts which strike and light upon us as a chance encounter thoughts, and these flowing, spontaneous thoughts are actually His voice leading us in the things He wants us to intercede for.
- Intercessors pray, being led by the Holy Spirit, and they change the world through those prayers. Thus it is vital that intercessors have finely tuned their hearts to hear and see in the spirit so that they may instantly respond to the blowing of the Wind.
- Hearing God’s voice within your heart, through your dreams and the dreams of others, and through the Word are essential.
- Being aware of your spirit and recognizing the movement of the Holy Spirit within is vital.
- Knowing how to move in the anointing and what you can do to increase the anointing upon you will greatly increase your effectiveness. All of these skills will be included in your training in this concentration.
Ministry
Our Ministry concentration has four main objectives:
Working knowledge of the Bible. This is a society that has lost its absolutes. We need to return to the Scriptures as a foundation for living. We cannot teach biblical principles without a working knowledge of the Bible. While we have no desire to be legalists, we must know the truth if we are to set people free.
An intimate relationship with Christ. Handling the Word of God without a relationship with God can be deadly. The heart of ministry is reconciling people to God, returning them to the loving fellowship experienced in the Garden of Eden. It is out of our love relationship with our Lord that we are able to invite others to join us.
A compassionate relationship with people. The entire ministry of Jesus flowed out of compassion for others. So must ours. Our generation does not need more professional ministers, but it desperately needs men and women full of divine compassion.
A balanced life. Serving God and serving people can develop a lopsided life. We need to be balanced, aware and rightly related to ourselves and to our families to do our best in ministry
Missions and Evangelism
- The purpose of our Missions and Evangelism concentration is to equip our students to effectively share the Gospel of the Kingdom and disciple the nations.
- The most powerful witness is that which flows out of our personal, intimate relationship with the Lord.
- When we take our place on the witness stand of life and honestly tell what we have seen and heard in the Presence of our Father, our lives and our words have the power to influence the destinies of prisoners of sin and despair.
- The Missions and Evangelism concentration will help you develop a greater awareness of your spirit and the Holy Spirit Who lives within you so that all that you say and do is only in response to His promptings. You will explore the strategic tools of intercession and spiritual warfare in advancing the Kingdom, and become skillful in their use.
- Because it is the anointing that breaks every yoke, you will search out ways to increase the anointing on your life, your words and your works. Tools for personal evangelism will be examined and practiced, increasing your effectiveness.
- If you are called to a share the Gospel cross-culturally, you will be guided into independent studies that will equip you with greater knowledge and understanding of the harvest field into which you will go.
Prophetic Ministry
- Prophets are one of the gifts that Christ gave to His church to help prepare and equip believers to serve and to build the Body of Christ. The gift of prophecy appears in all three lists of spiritual gifts in the New Testament. Prophecy is God’s idea.
- Prophecy involves hearing what God is saying and seeing what He is doing, then declaring and interpreting that in order to instruct, comfort, encourage and stimulate God’s people. Obviously, then, the prophetic ministry must begin with an intimate relationship with the Lord in which the prophet clearly and consistently hears God’s voice.
- Since God’s current, spoken Rhema words will never contradict His eternal, written Logos Word, it is imperative that the prophet has deep, living knowledge of the whole counsel of God as revealed throughout the Scriptures.
- He must speak out of the Holy Spirit Who lives within his spirit and flows with the anointing, so an understanding of these skills will be explored.
- The prophet is just one member of this group of gifts that were given to the Church, so the relationship between the various gifts and roles will be examined.
- There is more than one way for the prophetic call to be released, and the Lord wants to use all of the uniqueness that is “you” to express and reveal Himself, His character and His love to His people.
Worship Ministry
- Are we ever closer to heaven than when we join with the saints and angels before the throne, raising our voices in worship and praise to our Lord?
- What an incredible privilege it is to have the opportunity to experience such heights of glory while still here on earth! And what an honor and responsibility it is to be called to lead God’s people in expressing their adoration and thanksgiving!
- You will explore the theology of worship and music as developed in biblical and Church history, creating a foundation from which you will serve. Since you will want to be sensitive to the movement of the Holy Spirit in every service, you will become thoroughly familiar with how you can sense your spirit and the Spirit Who lives within.
- You will practice hearing and living out of His voice every day so that it becomes normal for you to live naturally supernatural. You will grow in your understanding of the anointing and what you can do to walk and minister in an increased anointing of the Spirit.
- Because worship is such a potent weapon, you will learn about spiritual warfare and the importance and power of music in both the kingdom of darkness and the Kingdom of Heaven.
Youth Ministry
This concentration will help the Youth Specialist clarify his calling and mission, develop a God-breathed strategy for fulfilling that purpose, acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to do so, and finally release all that God has placed within him to accomplish all God has called him to do.
A study of youth ministers was published as Youth Ministry That Transforms: A comprehensive analysis of the hopes, frustrations, and effectiveness of today’s youth workers by Merton Strommen, Karen E. Jones and Dave Rahn. This study listed the following explicitly identified professional development needs of persons in professional youth ministry:
- Communicating Biblical Truth
- Understanding Adolescent Development and Counseling
- Effective Ministry Strategies
- Biblical Knowledge and Pastoral Ministry Skills
- Knowledge of Family Development and Parental Training Skills
- Training in Administration and Management
- Opportunities to Gain New Ideas
- Opportunities for Peer Mentoring Relationships
