Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Revitalizing The Church Through Reaching Men With Families, Mike Conan

Doctor of Ministry

Churches today face a unique crisis as most of them are either declining or plateaued, and the culture around them has changed, and men have not responded with faith and godliness, but instead with fear and withdrawal. Churches, especially conservative evangelical churches, who can overcome the worldview struggles and learn to embrace the postmodern, and overcome the struggles of patriarchy and learn to see how the power bestowed by society can be used for good, can see revitalization that will bring renewal to every part of their churches. Reaching these men usually brings new life to the entire church, as …

Optimism For Church Growth: Encouraging Lessons From Christian Revivalists For Generations Primed To Flourish, Michael L. Wilson

Doctor of Ministry

Negativity is contributing to the numerical decline of the Christian church in America. Dogmatism, judgmentalism, hypocrisy, and pessimism have added to the image problem that repels pre-Christians. The common self-critiquing statement of many Christians, that Christianity has become known more for what it is against than what it is for, identifies part of the error that has led to the image problem that burdens the Christian church, but it stops short of diagnosing the full spectrum of the limiting effects of negativity.

In vision-casting, tone matters, and it’s difficult to trust a sinking ship. Reversing the judgmental and pessimistic tone …

New Every Morning: Epectasy As A Theology For Innovation, Joel Hinck

Master of Theology Theses

No abstract provided.

Hope As A Strategy: Messianism In The Philosophy Of Emmanuel Levinas, Gary Ray Sunshine

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This essay is an explication of the role of messianism, often expressed as hope, in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas's single philosophical project from 1933 until his passing in 1996 was to establish ethics as first philosophy. This effort was in opposition to the primacy of ontology in the work of Martin Heidegger. Levinas uses a phenomenological method similar to Heidegger's to establish messianic hope as a fundamental human motivation. Throughout Levinas's work, he borrows a religious vocabulary from his Jewish heritage that he resets into a philosophical domain. He takes a religious concept of messianism, specifically Jewish formulations …