Word on Fire will partner with The Catholic University of America to offer a new Master's program dedicated to forming "the next generation of Catholic evangelists and cultural leaders."
The Master of Arts in Evangelization & Culture program will blend "intellectual formation with pastoral formation," said a release from Word on Fire.
Courses will be taught live online by faculty in Catholic Univeristy's school of theology as well as by fellows in the Word on Fire Institute.
"This new collaboration on the master's of evangelization and culture comes at a time when the Church is renewing its focus on its evangelizing mission," Joseph Capizzi, dean of the School of theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America, told Aleteia.
"It means a new group of students will be able to engage more deeply in evangelization and their faith within the high intellectual standards Catholic University is known for," he said.
Optional summer residency
The program will take between three and four semesters to complete, said the website, and will begin during the Fall 2025 semester.
In addition to the online courses, there will be an optional in-person summer residency at Catholic University.
Courses include "Ressourcement Theology for Evangelists," "The Beautiful: Art & Architecture for Evangelists," and "Evangelization & Anthropology."
"The Church has been hemorrhaging members the past few decades in the United States and much of the West. While the causes are complex, one of the most significant factors is, as Bishop Barron frequently notes, because the Church has lost confidence in embracing and sharing the beauty, truth, and goodness of her teachings, especially to young people," said the Word on Fire statement.
This program, it added, aims to create effective evangelists to reverse this trend.
"We created the program to offer everyone a means to receive an accredited advanced degree in the Word on Fire evangelical ethos. Drawing on Bishop Barron’s charism and broad appeal, we also created the program to supply the Church with intelligent, thick-skinned, high-spirited, and culturally agile evangelists who are well equipped to identify and engage with the 'seeds of the Word' wherever they exist in the world, especially the digital world," said Word on Fire.
