Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Phenomenological Study On Church Leaders' Perspective Of Internet Church As A Biblical Community, Jason Lavon Rankin

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Current events and relatively recent technological developments have caused and significantly increased the use of digital technology in most aspects of life. The digital revolution, as some have termed it, has permeated all organizations, from businesses to institutions of higher learning, including religious institutions. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to determine Christian church leaders’ perspectives on whether the internet church fulfills the biblical and theological definitions of the church or biblical community. At this stage in the research internet church, also known as online church, e-church, virtual church, etc., is defined as a group of people with shared …

Understanding The 21st Century Practical Implication Of Chaplaincy Ministry In The City Of Milwaukee, Wi, Jeffrey D. Hayman

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This research project acknowledges that God’s command for Christian hospital chaplains is to serve humanity. Jesus calls a chaplain. He then forms, transforms, and conforms them to His image of oneness. Hospital chaplains like pastors are part of care ministries that extend to various work settings, Christian and secular. The hospital-certified chaplain, by definition, can support the whole workforce in the hospital, including their patients and the patient’s families. The hospital-certified chaplain is the main focus of this research. These hospital chaplains must be qualified, endorsed, licensed, certified, or ordained to be on the frontline in the community. A hospital-certified …

God's Sovereignty - Our Peace In The Darkness, Marie Diane Peters

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This thesis action project utilizes a biblical understanding of God’s sovereignty to help Christians embrace God’s peace and stability as they navigate times of chaos and uncertainty. The goals are to identify unhealthy struggles through interviews that believers experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, conduct a workshop that teaches a biblical understanding of God’s sovereignty, and assess its effectiveness for managing fear. After the workshop, participants showed an increased awareness of God’s sovereignty, personal ways knowledge of God’s sovereignty affected them, and how they would apply it during dark and challenging times. The results show that a greater understanding of God’s …

Older Adults And Digital Technology For Worship Service During A Pandemic At Saint Paul's Baptist Church In Richmond, Virginia, Donnie Lewis Smith

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the church to move from in-person worship to digital, online, and virtual worship services. This thesis project aims to determine if going to an alternative worship platform has presented problems for the elderly and senior Saint Paul’s Baptist Church members. Because of the large number of seniors at Saint Paul’s, the church’s leadership must be ready to help in any way to ensure that all members can participate in worship services during these unprecedented times. Since there is no projected timetable for when and if the church will return to worship services as we know …

A Study On Why People Lack Dedication And Focus During Church Worship And Service Time, Maxine Head White

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The researcher chose the topic of this thesis because members of Last Days Ministries (LDM) lacked dedication and focus during church worship and service. The project aimed to discover what caused LDM members to lack commitment and focus during worship and service time and to find a way to alleviate the problem among LDM members. This thesis project includes four themes from doing this project, of which three concern distractions. Those distractions came from cell phones, spontaneous distractions, and satanic distractions. Cell phone distraction was at the top of the list of distractions that disrupted the church and kept LDM …

Characteristics That Make An Excellent Worship Leader According To The Perspectives Of Baptist Congregants In North Texas, Carlos Jerome Benson

Masters Theses

Despite many Baptists Churches in North Texas, most church congregants vary significantly in how they characterize an excellent worship leader. These congregants often rely on trial and error to establish characteristic traits that are acceptable for the whole of a particular church. There is a gap in the research study of characteristics that make an excellent worship leader according to the perspectives of Baptist congregants in North Texas. This study will find which attributes of worship leadership are most desirable according to the views of North Texas Baptist congregants. These literary examples do not specifically name what characteristics North Texas …

Welcome: Notes On The Church As A Community Of Reception, Joseph S. Flipper

Journal of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium

The Second Vatican Council affirmed the retrieval of communion ecclesiology and the significance of the local church. Correlating with its communion ecclesiology, questions arose concerning the reception of conciliar teaching. According to Yves Congar, in accordance with the essential conciliarity of the church, reception is a creative process of discernment and assimilation. Black Catholics following the council similarly developed a theology of the local church and a theology of reception. I argue that US Black Catholic theologians and pastors described reception as welcome of the Word of God and hospitality toward those who bear the Word.

Marketing And The Church, Parker Panetti

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper attempts to take an in-depth look at the current state of the Church in America and how marketing has and will continue to play a key role in its position in society.

The word marketing comes from the concept of the merchant buying and selling a product - in the market. From a Christian perspective, marketing tells the story of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ - who bought and redeemed mankind for a price, saved from sin, and set apart for service to the Lord. Churches have this story, the greatest story to tell, but people are …

Church And State In Montenegro: From The Serbian Orthodox Church To The Church Of Serbia, Vladimir Bakrač

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The paper deals with the role of religion and the church in the post-socialist transformations of society in Montenegro, focusing on the period from the 1990s to 2022. The goal of the paper is to present the historical and sociological (non-)cooperation between the church and the state in Montenegro and their reflection on social circumstances. According to sociological expertise, secularization and atheization of the society carried out by the then political regime and aligned with Marxist reflections on religion were in force until the 1990s. Subsequently, a period of desecularization of society and revitalization of religion and religiosity followed. Accordingly, …

The Role Of Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytskyi In The Formation Of Ukrainian National Identity, Iryna Krasnodemska

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article examines the main statehood ideas and views of the socio-political and Church figure, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi’s contribution to the struggle for the establishment of an independent, united Ukrainian state. The impact of the Metropolitan’s activity as the hierarch of the Greek Catholic Church on the Ukrainian national spiritual revival in Ukraine (at the end of the 19th to middle 20th century) is clarified as the solid foundation which was laid by his ecumenical ideas. The judgment of A. Sheptytskyi regarding the necessary prerequisites for building a strong, independent Ukraine, and his ideas about reforming state authorities, the Church, …

Core Values: A Phenomenological Study Of Spiritual Formation Through The Longevity Of Values Gained From Women's Ministry, Belinda Copeland

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

While many churches today have moved away from the practice of church-based women’s ministries, other churches still see their value and continue their dedication to providing specifically tailored programs to address the spiritual formation in women. The Bible reminds us in Hebrews 10:25 that we are not to forsake “the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some…” (King James Bible, 1769/2017, Heb. 10:25). However, some churches desire to assemble specific ministries separately, women from men. This study attempted to identify values in the spiritual formation of women and explored whether those values are still helpful in the spiritual …

Demons & Droids: Nonhuman Animals On Trial, Gerrit D. White

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

Nonhuman animal trials are ridiculous to the modern sensibilities of the West. The concept of them is in opposition to the idea of nonhuman animals—entities without agency, incapable of guilt by nature of irrationality. This way of viewing nonhuman animals is relatively new to the Western mind. Putting nonhuman animals on trial has only become unacceptable in the past few centuries. Before this shift, nonhuman animal trials existed as methods of communities policing themselves. More than that, these trials were part of legal systems ensuring they provided justice for all. This shift happened because the relationship between Christian authorities and …

Latest Addition To The Collected Works Of Hugh Nibley Series

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

FARMS is pleased to announce the release of a new volume of previously unpublished class lectures by celebrated Latter-day Saint scholar Hugh Nibley, who recently passed away at age 94. Apostles and Bishops in Early Christianity, volume 15 in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley series, comprises Nibley’s finely detailed lecture notes for a course he taught at Brigham Young University in 1954 on the office of bishop in the early Christian church.

Engaging And Mobilizing Baby Boomers For Effective Ministry, Paul D. Russell

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

In the 21st-century church in America, can Baby Boomers, who presently range from 57 to 76 years of age, be envisioned and commissioned to make a difference through effective and meaningful ministry? The intent of the research was to discover relevant information and present considerations to help those entering the last third of life make an informed contribution to the church and community. Evidence will be presented to show that Boomers need the church and that the church needs the presence and resourceful productivity of the Boomer cohort. This reality does not circumvent the essential mission of reaching other generations …

Forming Saints In A Digital Context, Mark R. Teasdale

Great Commission Research Journal

Biblical and scholarly sources agree on the importance of forming Christians to seek after holy living to make them more effective evangelists, such that the ministries of evangelism and spiritual formation are intertwined. They also agree that one of the primary roles of the church is to provide for this formation. However, the practices for doing this have been complicated by the heavy move toward digital ministry because of COVID-19. Congregations can continue this formational work even in highly digital contexts by helping Christians tell their story through lifelogging, providing rituals and disciplines to sanctify time and physical spaces, and …

Gerontic Evangelism, Yakubu Jakada

Great Commission Research Journal

Gerontic Evangelism focuses on sharing the gospel with senior adults. Many evangelism ministries are focusing on children, youth, women, and other adult members of society, but few focus on the elderly. Senior adults in most cases are not seen as a peculiar group that needs to be strategically reached with the gospel. Their importance in society and their growing population worldwide should attract the attention of evangelists and missionaries to target them as a special group for gospel witness. This paper argues that winning the senior adults to Christ is a necessity and may open doors for the evangelization and …

Competing Notions Of Humility: Why Korean Americans Do Not Need To Abandon Confucius To Get To Christ, Eunice Hong, Max Botner

Great Commission Research Journal

Korean Americans often go to church not only for religious reasons, but also for social and cultural reasons. Due to the close tie between the Korean immigrant church and cultural traditions, second-generation Korean Americans often struggle with trying to balance Eastern and Western cultural values. In particular, tensions arise for second-generation Korean Americans between competing notions of humility. Such tensions, however, provide opportunities to reflect on the particular nature of Christian humility. This article presents biblical humility as one that is neither the maintenance of cultural traditions nor the personal growth of individual disciples; rather, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled humility is the …

Church-Based Research: Using Theories, Concepts, And Operationalizations, David R. Dunaetz

Great Commission Research Journal

Church-based research requires working with abstract concepts ranging from sin to sanctification. Theories, concepts, and operationalizations allow us to work with these abstractions. Theories are sets of statements describing how specific concepts relate to each other. Concepts are broad ideas that exist in our thinking that can be used to describe phenomena, both within and exterior to the church. If we measure the concepts in our theories among multiple people, we can determine to what degree the relationships in our theories are true or discover under what conditions they are true. Sometimes concepts can be measured directly; other times they …

The Depth Of Depravity And The Remedy Of An All-Embracing Life System, Joya S. Schreurs

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Love Your Neighbor: The Church's Response To Individualism's Impact On Interpersonal Engagement, Anna Herman

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Developing, Training, And Equipping Lay Ministers To Serve In Leadership Roles At Small African American Churches, Angelia V. Lewis

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This thesis project explores the validity of a ministry training manual for developing, training, and equipping lay ministers at Fredericksburg Missionary Baptist Church. It assumes that if church members have leadership tools, they will use them to become more effective leaders. However, lay ministers often serve in ministry leadership roles without formal training. They should be trained and equipped by church leaders to lead effectively. Therefore, the question that this thesis project ask is, "Will a development and implementation of a leadership training manual equip lay ministers?" The Scripture is the primary literature resource for God’s provision in developing ministry …

Reckoning With Status And Realigning Our Hearts: A Review Of Celebrities For Jesus, Ruth C. Clark

Staff Work

"Where... dynamic pastors and a church’s ‘good intentions’ begin, celebrity status can quickly overwhelm."

Posting about the book Celebrities for Jesus from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

https://inallthings.org/reckoning-with-status-and-realigning-our-hearts-a-review-of-celebrities-for-jesus/

The Church And Ethnopolitical Conflict In Kenya: 1982-2013, David Tarus

The Journal of Social Encounters

The chapter examines the role of the church in addressing the problem of ethnopolitical conflict in Kenya from 1982 to 2013. Though ethnocentrism within the Kenyan Christian community goes beyond the years cited to the colonial period and the immediate years following independence, the intensity of the problem after 1982 calls for special attention. The single event that marks political change in Kenya is the 1982 attempted coup. Although this was not successful, the coup heightened opposition against Moi’s rule and thus, 1982 marks the beginning of the recent history of Kenya, a history in which three phases may be …

Soldiers’ Inward Battle: A Theological Anthropology Of War-Based Moral Injury And The Role Of The Church, Emily Ann Bogle

Honors Projects

Within the interpretive framework of theological anthropology, this paper seeks to address the moral impacts war-based violence can have on the human body, as well as argue how Christian communities and the larger Church are uniquely positioned to faithfully minister to, and with, soldiers who experience moral injury. Along with an introduction to moral injury, scriptural connections, military training effects, church practices, and mutuality in ministry are addressed

Examining The Cross-Cultural Competence Of United States Christian Missionaries Engaged In Developing Indigenous Leaders: A Mixed Methods Study, Craig W. Goodman

Dissertations

For the past two millennia, missionaries have crossed from one culture to another to bring the Christian message to all cultures of the world. Questions about the effectiveness of these mission efforts have been asked and researched by many; however, one key question remains unanswered: what personal attributes help a person to be more competent at crossing cultures as they interact with people from other cultures? Although cross-cultural competence has been studied in a variety of fields over the past 50 years, the models and assessments used have never been applied to Christian missionaries.

To address this deficiency, this parallel …

The Five-Fold Paradigm : Effects Of The Five-Fold Experimential Course Equip, Nathaniel Dean Mcwherter

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Growing A Megachurch Staff's Discipleship Understanding, Michael A. Wooton

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Challenge Of Change : A Qualitative Analysis Of Pastors As Change Agents, Joshua O. Gale

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Evangelism Through Online Gaming : Communicating To Gen Z Beyond The Church Walls, Michael A. Mcmullen

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Building Healthy Families Through Intergenerational Worship Ministry, Frank Richard Gillespie

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Although literature exists concerning family ministry in the local church, there is little research that gives explicit insight into music and worship ministry’s role in helping to strengthen families. Since worship is one of the ultimate functions of both the church and the family, this study integrates family ministry methodology with worship ministry methodology to discover theological sound and practical ways to build up the family through corporate worship, structured music programs, and community involvement. Guided by biblical and historical foundational teachings on church and family, this qualitative research study identifies perspectives that have not yet been explored and documented …