Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Companion Guide For The Discipleship To Missional Community (D2mc) Program, Jedidiah T. Maschke

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

This Doctor of Ministry (DMin.) Major Applied Project (MAP) offers a companion guide for the discipleship training program called D2MC (Discipleship to Missional Community) taught by PLI, a leadership development organization that works primarily with the LCMS. The D2MC program is based on the training pioneered by Mike Breen through 3DM. The companion guide shows how the methods and practices taught by PLI are soundly based in Scripture and confessional Lutheran theology and offers some personal insights and devotional thoughts. The companion guide was distributed and field tested with volunteer participants through and with the approval of PLI. Participants in …

Positive Factors Related To The Decision To Study For The Office Of The Ministry By Men Of The Lutheran Synod Of Nicaragua (Iglesia Luterana Sínodo De Nicaragua/Lutheran Church—Canada), Edmund Auger

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

Auger, Edmund D. “Positive Factors Related to the Decision to Study for the Office of the Ministry by Men of The Lutheran Synod of Nicaragua (Iglesia Luterana Sínodo de Nicaragua / Lutheran Church—Canada).” Doctor of Ministry. Major Applied Project, Concordia Seminary, 2023. 128 pages.

The Lutheran Church throughout the world needs a continuing supply of men to serve as faithful pastors in the public ministry of the Gospel. The identification and spiritual formation of candidates for Word and Sacrament ministry is critical for the young national church body, Iglesia Luterana Sínodo de Nicaragua (Lutheran Synod of Nicaragua).

This project is …

Hospitality: Areas That Are Effective In Creating A Desire For A Visitor To Connect To Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Brent M. Hartwig

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

This major applied project explores hospitality offered by the local congregation. Biblical hospitality is implicitly and explicitly commanded in scripture. Balancing the Missio Dei and two kinds of righteousness will keep us on the straight and narrow theologically when pursuing hospitality.

When churches offer hospitality, we are feeding, clothing, visiting, providing, and welcoming our neighbor. Our Redeemer wants to continue serving the community as a family-oriented, mission focused, hospitable congregation. We are doing the feeding, clothing, and providing through many efforts in the community. We are active with the local homeless shelter and crisis center. For the MAP, we wanted …

Embodied Superintendence: The Person Of The Preacher In Lutheran Homiletics Especially In Relation To Cultural Identity, Dennis Matyas

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Over the past several decades, the greater homiletical academy has progressed from questions of authority to dialogics to identity, both of the preacher and of the hearers. Within this timeframe, modern Lutheran homiletics has stayed relatively silent on considerations of the person of the preacher, opting instead for certain foundational homiletical truths including the efficacy of the Word of God, the proclamation of justification, and the authority of the Ministerium. After recovering the consideration of the person of the preacher as a foundational Lutheran homiletic, this work explores the formational significance of the preacher’s cultural identity by offering a theoretical …

Behind The Numbers: A Traditional Church Faces A New America, Larry Vogel

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

The dissertation examines membership data for The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) from the mid-1970s to the present. It considers the analysis of LCMS decline by two scholars, George Hawley and Ryan MacPherson, who independently proposed that LCMS membership decline was internal in causation due to diminished birthrates and fewer young families. While acknowledging the reality of such internal decline, this dissertation argues that the lack of external growth is a greater cause for LCMS decline. Its lack of external growth is due primarily to the racial and ethnic homogeneity of the LCMS and its failure effectively to evangelize the increasingly …

A Spiritual Call: Jeremiah’S Call To The Heart And The Stages Of Spiritual Progression In Carmelite Spirituality, Julia S. Whelan

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The aim of this study is first, to identify resonances between Jeremiah 1:10 and the three stages of the spiritual journey as defined by the Carmelites such as John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila (i.e., the stages known as purgative, illuminative and unitive) and then, in light of an in depth understanding of the spiritual senses attributed to Jeremiah 1:10 in its reception history, to evaluate the impact of Jer 1:10 upon the Carmelite conception of the spiritual journey.

A comprehensive Word Study is undertaken of six task verbs from Jer 1:10, presented as three pairs: to root …

What God Has Joined Together: The One Threefold Purpose Of Marriage, David Frayne Shudy

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

Modern married couples and marriage-minded individuals are often left awash in a sea of confusion aimlessly groping about for a purpose for their marriage, with disastrous societal results. Whereas long-standing Christian tradition has taught a unified threefold marital purpose of three equal elements—procreation, mutual help, and remedy for sin—Enlightenment thinkers and their ideological descendants have introduced a hierarchical marriage teleology with a self-chosen purpose (usually companionship) at the top in order to correct for an alleged countervailing overemphasis on procreation in premodern marital teleology.

This thesis will challenge the claim of a relative deficiency in the companionate aspect of premodern …

The Voice Of One Crying In The Wilderness, Megan Kenyon

MFA in Visual Art

I am a Midwestern, Christian, and feminist artist. I make work about the beautiful, broken, and absurd ways in which American evangelical culture influences lives, especially women’s lives. I’m dragging everything into the light by deconstructing and critiquing the world in which I live, move, and have my being. I do this by harnessing prophetic imagination and incarnational space to shine a light on how patriarchy infects evangelical Christian theology and practice. Using prophetic imagination through photographic self-portraiture and text (my own and found texts using the Bible), I seek to make plain the effects of white, Christian patriarchy on …

To Have Sex Or Not To Have Sex: An Exploration Of Medieval Christian And Jewish Sexual Values, Rachel Zaslavsky

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is an exploration of Medieval Jewish and Christian conceptions of sex and aims to challenge the notion of Judeo-Christian values. Medieval Judaism and Christianity are at odds with each other in their understandings of sexuality. By considering Judaism, the belief that medieval religion was averse to sexuality and sexual pleasure is disproven. An analysis of religious works, such as those produced by Christian theologians and Jewish rabbis, yields the following conclusion: medieval Christianity restricted sex on the basis of abstinence, while medieval Judaism restricted sex on the basis of ritual impurity but mandated sex for procreation and female …

The Dwell Bible Listening App As An Effective Tool To Habituate Daily Bible Engagement In The Local Congregation, Daniel Russell Prugh

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

Prugh, Daniel R. “The Dwell Bible Listening App as an Effective Tool to Habituate Daily Bible Engagement in the Local Congregation.” Doctor of Ministry. Major Applied Project, Concordia Seminary, 2023. "115" pp.

Congregational members desire to engage the Bible daily. However, oftentimes there are barriers to this goal. One of the most important barriers is that people do not regularly read. This is problematic if the church desires for people to read the Bible daily. In addition, people encounter a tsunami of information every day, that makes it hard to prioritize regular engagement with the Bible. However, the church can …

Sex In Church: The Christian Vocation Of Sexuality Within The Ecclesial Community, Sarah Talena Rusche

Master of Art Theology Thesis

Rusche, Sarah Talena. “Sex in Church: The Christian Vocation of Sexuality Within the Ecclesial Community.” Master’s thesis, Concordia Seminary, 2023. 71 pp.

Sex is characterized as an individualistic endeavor by both Christian and non-Christian thinkers. The culture of the world gives license to every individual to choose what kind of sexual experiences they would like to give and receive, while the culture of Christianity isolates individuals navigating the complexities of sexuality. In response to this individualism, this thesis argues that a faithful sexual ethic orders itself according to God’s will for His creation by considering the needs of the ecclesial …

I Was Looking For God: A Study Of Wehrmacht Personnel And Their Personal Relationships With Religion, Christopher Bishop

Master's Theses

The Wehrmacht was Germany’s fighting force in the field during World War II. Its brutality and discriminatory practices rivaled that of the Nazi paramilitary and police units dispatched alongside them in newly conquered areas during this conflict. Coming from a society that was not at all unfamiliar with Christianity, some within the Wehrmacht related to Christianity in some form and attempted to use it to either justify actions or make sense of the world around them.

While considerable scholarship exists on the Nazi Party’s relationship to Christianity as a convenient propaganda tool for both soldier and civilian alike, the historiography …

No Lack Of Gain: A Biblical Theology Of Feminine Generosity, Jenny Zoë Huelsman

Master of Art Theology Thesis

This thesis traces a biblical theology of feminine generosity. The capable wife of Prov. 31:10–31 sets an Old Testament paradigm, which is inhabited and enlarged by women in the New Testament. The thesis considers the women who supported Jesus’ ministry (Luke 8:1–3); the widow and her mites (Luke 21:1–4); Mary’s anointing of Jesus (John 12:1–8); and Tabitha caring for the widows (Acts 9:36–42). Throughout these profiles, a picture emerges of women who make essential contributions to the mission and work of Christ as agents of generosity that is derivative, expressive, contextual, intemperate, and Christocentric, always flowing from and returning to …

Discovering The Means To Provide Mentorship For Post-Seminary Pastoral Formation From Apprentice To Craftsman: A Pastoral Journey, Paul Hass

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

This project seeks to produce a distinct process for the discerning of who might best serve as mentors to those newly ordained. The process aims to allow for people in ecclesiastical leadership roles to discern which of the numerous available pastoral mentors might best be suited for fostering a long-term mentoring relationship to a newly ordained pastor. This project uses the results of qualitative research, drawn from interviews, to provide a matrix for evaluating potential mentors through the lens of the Adaptive Leadership model. The resulting evaluation process was ‘tested’ in a truncated format through the Office of the President …

Arendt And Christianity: On Love And The World, Logan Andrew Daly

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Hannah Arendt criticized the Christian faith for what she saw as an inherent wordlessness or ascetic attitude. She believed this focus on the afterlife was an afront to her political philosophy and kept people from participating in the public sphere. This thesis is a selective exploration of Arendt’s criticisms against the Christian faith and aims to show that there is a way of reconciling the respective belief systems, allowing an Arendtian to benefit from Christian ideas and a Christian to improve themselves with the assistance of Arendtian concepts. The project is split into two chapters. Each chapter focuses on a …

Between Choice And Compulsion: An Examination And Critique Of The Evolution Of 'Original Sin', Matthew James Wynn

MSU Graduate Theses

“Why are we the way that we are?” is one of the hardest questions to answer because it requires grasping the origin of human beings. This has left philosophers and theologians in century-long debates on forming a “cosmogony of ontology” (i.e., how the origin of the universe informs the human condition). The concept, “original sin” was developed by a North African theologian named Augustine (354 – 430 CE). Augustine’s reading of Genesis 3, and inaccurate translation of Romans 5:12, taught that a person is born morally culpable for a fault antecedent to their existence. This way of thinking about the …

Hildegard Fantasy, Julianna Charnigo

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a German abbess, composer, mystic, and theologian, was revered as a prophet during her lifetime. Since then, her numerous accomplishments and visionary writings have made her popular both in her native Germany and across the world. Hildegard produced numerous Latin writings, more than any other woman of the Middle Ages, and her more than seventy musical compositions fascinate musicians and listeners to this day. My doctoral thesis is a composition for SATB chorus, orchestra, and soprano solo entitled Hildegard Fantasy, based on the life and music of Hildegard of Bingen.

I have written both the …