Practical Theology Commons^™

Exploring The Influence Of Racial Diversity On Church Growth: A Case Study Of Buffalo Suburban Seventh-Day Adventist Church In Lancaster, New York, Luis A. Mancebo

Dissertations

There is a growing phenomenon in the United States of America: multiracial churches. While earlier research indicates that church growth typically happens in more homogenous congregations, more and more churches are growing that are multiracial. This case study focused on the growth of Buffalo Suburban Seventh-day Adventist Church (BSSDAC), a multiracial church in Lancaster, New York. Data collection was done through focus groups of church leaders and members, and a review of any available church and membership records.

BSSDAC started as a White congregation in Buffalo in 1885 and moved to the suburbs in the 1980s where the initial transition …

The Psychosomatic Journey Of Trauma And Its Healing: A Comparative Synthesis Between Scientific And Psycho-Spiritual Perspectives, Isabel Kelly

Pomona Senior Theses

The purpose of this paper is to create a comparative synthesis between scientific perspectives and spiritual perspectives of understanding the psychosomatic (mind-body) nature of trauma. In order to do so we will consider the works of Dr.Bessel van der Kolk, a world-leading psychiatrist in the field of trauma therapy who advocates for the use of body-oriented approaches to healing, and the works of Carl Jung and Donald Kalsched. Jung is considered one of the founding fathers of the field of Transpersonal Psychology, while Kalsched is a Jungian psychoanalyst who specializes in working with trauma patients. We will see that while …

Nurturing Emotional Intelligence To Encourage An Increase In Compassion Among The Members Of Ecclesia Baptist In Asheville, North Carolina, Aileen Mitchell Lawrimore

Doctor of Ministry Projects

God’s infinite chesed for humanity, embodied in Jesus, calls Christians to claim their inherent brokenness and their infinite beauty and to offer the same grace to others. This chesed, experienced as compassion, enables Christians to extend compassion to themselves and others. To encourage this behavior among members of Ecclesia Baptist, this project paired psychology with theology and biblical study to nurture emotional intelligence (EQ). Participants attended five two-hour sessions and spent time on reflection and practice outside of meetings. Results indicated that increased EQ boosts confidence in compassionate behavior and increases intentions to continue practices formed from the study.

The Influence Of Jesus' Approach To People Through "Teaching And Healing" On The Faith Of People In Jesus Christ And On Their Relationship To The Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Armin Danz

Master's Theses

The problem underlying this study is the slow but steady decline in membership in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Numerous missionary efforts in the past have not been able to change this trend. However, an approach that summarizes the work of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew has not been followed: Namely that Jesus taught people about the Kingdom of God and healed them through prayer. Both church historical sources and modern research suggest that wherever the biblical example of Jesus was followed closely it had a positive influence on the growth of churches. …

A Strategy For Increasing The Levels Of Financial Literacy Among African-Americans In The Greenville Neighborhood Of Jersey City, Nj, Troy S. Levy

Professional Dissertations DMin

Problem

Financial illiteracy afflicts many African-American and Black immigrant communities. The realities of residing in urban locales have contributed to the illiteracy and many times have led to a negative legacy of financial stewardship in these same communities. There are external challenges as well as internal challenges that have stifled African-American financial literacy. Not only is a negative corporate legacy of financial stewardship a result, but poverty, higher vulnerability towards financial bullying (housing discrimination, payday loan shops, etc.) among other challenges are directly correlated to the problem. Although poverty is an effect of lower levels of financial literacy in these …

Training, Equipping, And Deploying Teenagers For Preaching With A Prophetic Emphasis At The Plantation Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Iosif Salajan

Professional Dissertations DMin

Problem

Teenagers were not integrated in the preaching ministry of the Plantation Seventh-day Adventist Church. Their involvement in the worship service revealed challenges in publicly expressing their faith and spiritual experience. The absence of training, equipping, and deploying teenagers for preaching ministry contributed to their low retention and their lack of representation in the leadership of the church.

Method

Between August 2018 and May 2019, under the coordination of the researcher, preaching mentors offered teenage mentees from the Plantation Seventh-day Adventist Church a complete learning cycle called sermonic process. It started with producing the sermon, continued with practicing the sermon …

Developing Spiritual Disciplines In Youth And Young Adult Leaders Through Mentoring At The Peachtree City Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Nathaniel E. Elias

Professional Dissertations DMin

Problem

The Peachtree City Seventh-day Adventist Church (PTC) leadership and parents of teenagers expressed concerns regarding the lack of spirituality and church involvement of their youth and young adults. Church appointed youth and young adult leaders had not received consistent spiritual equipping to share with the youth and young adults of the church. Youth ministry primarily focused on recreational fellowship and lacked spiritual focus. The church approached the associate pastor to provide spiritual equipping for youth and young adult leaders.

Method

Six church nominated youth and young adult leaders participated in a 10-month mentorship program that equipped them with spiritual …

Discovering Successful Pastoral Mentors Based On Their Spiritual Gifts Cluster And Engaging Them In Mentorship In The Wisconsin Conference Of The Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Adam Case

Professional Dissertations DMin

Problem

Many pastors are placed into pastoral ministry with passion and education but lack sufficient mentoring to help them succeed in ministry. These pastors would benefit from a mentor who could support them and/or grow them through intentional mentorship in specific agreed upon areas. The concept of mentoring is biblical, Jesus being a prime example, and one that is in line with the principles of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. There is no conflict with the concept of mentoring, but nothing practical has been put into place in the Wisconsin Conference to discover good pastoral mentors and then engage them in …

Applying Biblical Principles Towards A Model Of Theological Dialogue At The Hillside O'Malley Church, David Shin

Professional Dissertations DMin

Problem

Based on feedback from members of the Hillside O’Malley Church through personal conversations, theological polarization threatened to paralyze the local church and keep it from fulfilling its mission of ministering to its members and reaching out to the community with the gospel message. The theological polarization stemmed from divergences on the presuppositional, macro-hermeneutical level that are revealed visibly in how members interpret the biblical text.

Method

The methodology that was employed was to derive biblical principles from an exegesis of the book of Acts specifically related to theological reason, which included an understanding of how presuppositions worked in the …

Increasing Effectiveness And Efficiency Through A Collaborative Evangelism Strategy Within The Georgia-Cumberland Conference Of Seventh-Day Adventists, Victor Maddox

Professional Dissertations DMin

Problem

There were a number of organizations, ministries, and individuals throughout the Georgia-Cumberland Conference (GCC) territory engaged in various forms of evangelism which include health education, literature distribution, media presentations, community service, Bible instruction, etc. All had some level of success. Personal observations of these efforts revealed a redundancy in programing, uncoordinated planning, insufficient record-keeping, inadequate follow-up on interests generated, and failure to build upon the results of previous evangelistic meetings within the GCC.

Method

The goal was to improve the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the evangelism process in the GCC through the coordination of evangelistic meetings between organizations, …

A Strategy To Coach Pastors To Revitalize Declining Churches In The Carolina Conference And Other Seventh-Day Adventist Conferences In The United States, Brad Cauley

Professional Dissertations DMin

Problem

Many English-speaking Seventh-day Adventist churches are in an attendance decline or plateau in the United States. Specifically, the investigator found that 56% of English-speaking churches within the Carolina Conference of Seventh-day Adventists were in decline when comparing the five-year attendance mean for 2008-2012 and 2013-2017 using annual average attendance data. This discovery was alarming. Simultaneously, however, the population was growing in many of these communities. More intentionality was needed to stem the tide of attendance decline. These churches were in need of revitalization, but many of their pastors lacked the natural temperament and/or support needed for revitalization to occur. …

A Strategy To Train Members To Encourage Non-Members To Make Decisions For Baptism And Church Membership At The Middletown Valley Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Joshua William Voigt

Professional Dissertations DMin

Problem

In every church I have pastored, there have been individuals who attend the church but are not members. Some come to community-focused events the church holds throughout the year, while others come to the weekly worship service. There are also some who come whenever the doors of the church are opened. This group of people includes both Christians from other denominations, as well as non-Christians. The Middletown Valley Seventh-day Adventist Church had an unusually large ratio of non-member to member attendance.

Method

A six-month evangelistic strategy was developed for the Middletown Valley Seventh-day Adventist Church. The strategy began with …

Strategy To Implement And Evaluate A Health And Wellness Program In The Inner-City Of Benton Harbor, Michigan Through The Harbor Of Hope Church, Imasiku Mubita

Professional Dissertations DMin

Problem

The data from the Berrien County Health Department (2011b) shows that the city of Benton Harbor has unusually high prevalence of obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. In addition, the city is a food desert and residents lack good healthcare coverage which helps to exacerbate these lifestyle diseases among its inner-city residents. Also, the dearth of healthy food intake plus the lack of exercise further hampers the community's health.

Method

A nine-week health-wellness program was opened to the community through the Harbor of Hope church in Benton Harbor. During this program community members had their biometrics screened at the beginning and …

Ephesians And Ecumenism, Toby Eisenberg

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Christian ecumenism has made great strides during the twentieth century but is now widely seen as needing a new path. Avery Dulles has proposed an “exchange of gifts” notion of dialogue in which the participant churches share their understanding of the Christian life and all of the reasons they have for holding their particular doctrines and practices, drawing on whatever normative sources they believe are appropriate. The approach enables the participants to bear testimony in love in the hopes that they may better understand and appreciate each other more fully, thereby opening a path to increased doctrinal consensus and thus …

“Spirited” Engagement: Latin American Faith And The Construction Of Emancipative Pentecostalism, David Luckey

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Pentecostalism is a prominent form of Christianity around the world that is increasingly pervasive in the Global South. One of the persistent issues that obscures accurate understanding of the movement is the question of whether such a spiritually-oriented faith gives attention to social realities. This dissertation identifies a broad spectrum of Latin America Pentecostal social- ethical engagement in order to complicate stereotypes and reveal a natural orientation toward public witness. It shows that Pentecostalism is too complex for broad generalization, and it draws on leading voices from within the movement to articulate a call to increasing efforts for social justice.

The Unmarried (M)Other: A Study Of Christianity, Capitalism, And Counternarratives Concerning Motherhood And Marriage In The United States And South Africa, Haley Feuerbacher

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

A reified and patriarchal form of Christianity that emphasizes “family values” – that is, adherence to the formula of a male-headed, heterosexual, capitalist, nuclear family, characterized by distinct, complementary, and hierarchical gender roles as essential to the well-being of individuals, one’s nation, and the ecumenical Church - over “community values” has become a happy bedfellow of the market system and neocolonialism, extending its reach worldwide through globalization. The result is that single mothers constitute the most economically oppressed demographic internationally across all race and ethnic categories. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory and a postcolonial feminist theological lens to collect, retell, and …

Natural Law, The Object Of The Act, And Double Effect: Moral Methodology For Catholic Health Care Ethics, Travis Stephens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Veritatis Splendor is the first and only magisterial document that systematically articulates a moral methodology for Catholic moral theology. This dissertation makes explicit the methodological connection between Vatican teaching and the United States Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. The thesis of the dissertation explains the systematic connection between Natural Law, the Moral Object of the Act, and the Principle of Double Effect and by extension the ethical Principle of Cooperation. Second, the thesis applies this complex moral method of official teaching to health care ethics.

Following the introduction, chapter …

Poor Pastors With Rich Friends: Retrieving The Great Tradition’S Wealth To Serve The Poor, Hank Voss

Essays

No abstract provided.

Exodus/Bay Shore: How An Idea Became A Reality, Freda Elliott Baker

West Islip (New York) Church of Christ Audio Collection

Freda Eliott Baker recounts the story of the ExodusBayshore church plant.

The Impact Of Discipleship On The Wellbeing In Intergenerational Congregations, Joe Azzopardi

Human Subject Research Archive

This study has sought to understand the impact of belonging to an intergenerational congregation on wellbeing.