Digital Commons Network^™

Betrothed To Jesus: Embracing Uncertainty As The Key To A Lasting Romance, Kyle H. Chase

Doctor of Ministry

NPO:

Churches are not giving college students the tools they need to navigate uncertainty with Jesus.

Key Insights:

For college students who decide to follow Jesus, the experience of uncertainty after college can result in a deconstruction of faith. Church leaders often respond by equipping students with tools aimed at eradicating uncertainty (biblical and cultural apologetics, catechisms, formulaic practices, etc.). The solution is more elegant: If students are to remain adaptable and resilient for a lifetime, they do not need to eradicate uncertainty but to embrace it—not as an occasion for explanation but as an opportunity to encounter the living …

Re-Imagining Church As A Spiritual Family, Abraham Acosta-Newball

Doctor of Ministry

The contemporary Christian church faces a crisis of belonging; many members are opting out for non-theologically related reasons or differences. The claim for this exodus is a lack of genuine community that serves as an extended spiritual family. Modern churches function as event-centered gatherings, and less like a multigenerational community, reflecting instead a culture of individualism and spiritual consumerism. The purpose of this project is to explore strategies for churches to assume a more biblical role of a spiritual family. Particularly focusing on practical ways for building stronger community within multigenerational and multiethnic Worship settings. The project culminates in three …

Leadership Pathways Foundations: Developing Women In Alliance Missions, Melissa Lynne Singfiel

Doctor of Ministry

The project was developed to address the NPO: Women in Alliance Missions have unmet developmental needs, are often overlooked in the first decade of service, and underutilized for leadership opportunities.

A key insight of the research was a twofold obstacle facing women in ministry. First, the fundamental theological disagreement over women’s participation in leadership results in pervasive patriarchal preference and predominance of male leadership voices in the organizational culture. Second, a general lack of preparation and mentoring for women in the areas of leadership and formation results in an absence of women in the leadership pipeline and an additional layer …

A Better Way: From Pyramids To Gardens: Recovering God's Design For Leadership, Accountability And Renewal, Tara Naomi Korpi

Doctor of Ministry

This doctoral project emerges from my vocational context as a consultant and pastor working with senior pastors and executive leadership teams within evangelical contexts. Across these settings, I encountered patterns of abuse and unethical and immoral behavior that were not rooted in isolated mistakes but embedded within organizational cultures that normalized pastoral isolation, protected institutional image, and lacked effective structures for accountability. These observations shaped the project’s conviction that, when empowered with appropriate tools for integrity and accountability, leaders can cultivate healthier churches where righteousness is prioritized, harm is prevented, and pastors are supported to finish well for lasting Kingdom …

Cultivating Millennial Engagement And Spiritual Formation In The Black Church For Leadership Development, Rufus Chambers Iii

Doctor of Ministry

The Black church has historically served as a cornerstone of African American life, transcending its role as a place of worship to become a multifaceted institution deeply embedded in the community’s cultural, social, and political fabric. However, the Black church has been unable to connect with teens, young adults, and young families due to its proclivity towards Black Baptist approaches towards worship, ministry, and community engagement. The rationale for conducting this study is to increase the number of millennial church leaders fully vested in the solvency of the Black church and positions of succession. Across the published literature, Black churches …

A.R.C.Hitecture For Mission: Prototyping Pathways To Renew The Heart Of The Church, David Sunde

Doctor of Ministry

Despite churches’ commitment to making disciples, many earnest Christians—active in church teaching, volunteering, and community life—feel ill-equipped to disciple others. While biblical instruction and resources abound, spiritual formation weighted toward cognitive learning relies on willpower and falls short in shaping identity and desires. The focus on personal salvation often reduces faith to sin management, leaving many underwhelmed and uncertain about how to live meaningfully as citizens of the kingdom. Without qualitative, relational, and reproductive disciple-making, faith lacks transformative power. A.R.C.hitecture for Mission: Prototyping Pathways to Renew the Heart of the Church is a pracademic manuscript that explores disciple-shaping movements from …

Story, Senses, Community And Fun: Teaching The Bible As Christ Centric Story For The Local Church, Adam Barton

Doctor of Ministry

NPO: The leadership at Harvest has observed that our people need improved methods to combat the trend of decreased understanding of the Christ centered Bible story.

My research identified numerous factors for this trend (too busy, too tired, the Bible is too difficult to understand and is no longer relevant, etc.) Perhaps more than all these, we have lost our Hebrew sensibilities of conveying the truth of the scriptures as a story to be experienced. A story told in community (not isolation), a story that draws in the senses (not a text to be analyzed), a story that is enjoyable …

Project Portfolio: From Here To Home: A Proven Pathway From Visitor To Member In Our Church Community, Leon Mckenzie

Doctor of Ministry

Through my role as a pastor in my local church and dean in my diocese, I’ve learned of a growing concern about the lack of hospitality within the local churches. Hospitality holds significant importance in the Bible and is a central aspect of the Church's mission. Thus, I have the opportunity to assist churches in evaluating their readiness to welcome strangers and provide them with a practical framework to apply this concept in their specific contexts.

Through my research, I have found that most perspectives on hospitality focus on its application in the business field or creating a comfortable environment …

A Discipleship Model For Oral Preference Learners: Specifically Related To The Turkana People Of Kenya, Theresa Lynn Pottenger

Doctor of Ministry

The Turkana people of Kenya are primarily oral learners, processing information in oral ways. Oral learners are completely reliant on what they hear, see, and experience because they cannot or choose not to read.¹ Missionaries from highly literate western cultures unwittingly burdened these oral learners with literacy dependent teaching methods and discipleship practices. This has particularly left Turkana Christian leaders with few options for deepening their own Christian spirituality or leading others in discipleship. Additionally, a cultural disconnect between western spiritual categories taught by the missionaries and Turkana spiritual categories have left several Turkana spiritual needs unmet. The Turkana …

A Resilient Faith: Lessons For The Church From Church Leavers, Carol Mclaughlin

Doctor of Ministry

This dissertation began by seeking to understand why people leave church, particularly baby boomers that no longer attend church. Section One introduces the changing perceptions and dynamics of religious identification and church attendance practices. The question I ask and endeavor to respond to is how the church might live a resilient faith in the liminal space between a church-centric faith and faith apart from church affiliation. Section Two considers three responses to church leaving and perceptions of faith. The first considers the shift taking place in faith development when authority moves from the church to the individual. The second is …

Incarnational Discipleship: Inquiry Into The Need For For Cross-Shaped Discipleship And Cruciform Spiritual Formation In Charismatic Churches In A Post-Christendom Culture, Wayland Henderson

Doctor of Ministry

A synopsis of the Project Portfolio begins with the NPO statement: This Doctoral Project includes a discipleship model to help the Gathering Kingdom Community be spiritually formed through Pentecostal and Orthodox traditions and shows the relationship between prophetic function and discipleship for members to flourish personally and function as witnesses of the Crucified Christ in a post-Christian culture. Key insights that emerged from the research are that the current discipleship models in many Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are disconnected from how the Early Church viewed discipleship and what it means to be a witness to the culture. My ministry context …

Commonplace: Gathering Families Of Faith Around The Table In The Manner Of The Earliest Christian Communities For The Future Of The Church, Daniel Hues

Doctor of Ministry

It has become evident that American Christianity is declining at a staggering rate throughout the nation. In my own denomination, the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, membership dwindled by 5% even before COVID impacted our churches even more significantly. Over the last decade the amount of non-religiously affiliated persons has increased exponentially as many people of faith are leaving behind their religion altogether. Research suggests that there are various reasons for this decline. This project aims to answer the problem of individuals leaving their churches and their beliefs behind by creating innovative spiritual communities designed to form, integrate, and re-engage …

No Leaders But The Laity: Equipping, Educating, And Training Laypeople To Lead The Local Church, Christian Bass

Doctor of Ministry

The unfortunate story for many modern independent local churches is decline, disconnect, and irrelevance. This was only exacerbated by the 2020 global pandemic. Despite well- intentioned staff and many “church growth” tools, the independent local church saw many pastors and members leave and institutions close. The good news, however, is the church was never intended to be a cookie-cutter home, a franchise, or a satellite location. It was designed to be a contextualized incarnation of the unique Gospel expression of a local community by and for the people. More than ever, the church needs its laypeople to see themselves as …

Korean American Young Adults: Spiritual And Emotional Formation Though Art, Hesed Lee

Doctor of Ministry

It is a well-known phenomenon in America that many young adults are disengaged from the Church, at the same time they are battling internal emotional conflicts while trying to understand their faith journey. Even though most of them grew up in the Church, participated in church programs, and learned about God, they are anxious, lonely, and struggling to discover their spiritual identity. What then, what are we missing? After conducting an anonymous online survey with Korean American young adults and gathering narrative research from Korean American young adults as well as Asian American English Ministry pastors, this paper explores the …

Built To Last: An In-Depth Look At The Multisite Church And Ministry Succession, Scott R. Jones

Doctor of Ministry

The multisite church model is a movement that, by all indications, is here to stay. According to Portable Church Industries, there are only twelve single-campus churches listed among the top 100 largest churches in the United States. If multi-site churches were a Protestant denomination, they’d be the fourth largest. 1 The NPO addressed is: Multisite churches are predominantly first generation with personality centric leadership, needing intentionality for sustainability and succession. I serve as lead pastor of Grace Church – a non-denominational church with four campuses in the Houston area. I am in my 28th year of tenure. We transitioned to …

Crossing The Jordan Together: Recoding The Language Of Discipleship Used Among The Tribes Of Jesus Followers, Brian D. Russell

Doctor of Ministry

This Project Portfolio addresses the following NPO: The post-pandemic era leaves many Christians and seekers unmotivated to re-engage with the church. Reconnection is possible by recoding discipleship as thriving, holistic devotional living. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, all churches, regardless of size and vitality prior to the pandemic, were dealing with the same challenges of re-engaging people in the church, especially within their hospitality teams. Therefore, an opportunity arose to bring churches together to find fresh ways to re-engage their faith community where no one is the perceived expert. I am currently an adjunct professor teaching undergraduate ministry …

Toward Wholeness: Discovering Intimacy With Jesus Through Holistic Healing, David H. Brown

Doctor of Ministry

NPO Statement: Christians longing for inner healing and wholeness along with growing intimacy with Jesus need a confident, competent pathway to follow.

Key Insights from Research: Intuitively true, but still surprising, the top factor for improving someone’s confidence in pursuing their healing and wholeness in a ministry setting is trust of the minister. This factor topped perceived competence of the minister, community support and biblical soundness as other confidence-building factors. Another key insight, this one brought about through my stakeholders, is the importance of telling one’s story, one’s testimony, to help gain trust and grow the confidence of a potential …

Restory Your Church, Mark Youngman

Doctor of Ministry

This project provides a framework for churches at a turning point or near closure to “ReStory” and consider legacy options for their future including a restart, repurpose, or reallocation of resources. This is the key insight of this project: Churches that tell their past and present stories are well positioned to stay connected to a future vision that meets the needs of the community through creative and innovative means.

I am a pastor in the Tennessee Western Kentucky Conference of the United Methodist Church. In this context, I have witnessed the closure of dozens of churches in both urban and …

The 835 Weekend: A Model For Recruitment Of Generation Z Entrepreneurs Toward Church Planting In Europe, Mark Good

Doctor of Ministry

The continent of Europe, once a center of spiritual renewal and missionary mobilization, has now become a gospel desert. The need for church planting is acute. The means to address this need is partly through the deployment of church planting teams, yet there is a dearth of both European and expatriate missionary young adults ready to take up this charge. Generation Z entrepreneurs must be successfully engaged and recruited to meet the need for pioneering career church planters among the least reached peoples of Europe. The key insights discovered regarding recruitment of Generation Z to missionary careers come from the …

Bridging The Gap Between Orthodoxy And Orthopathy In The Life Of The Reformed Pastor, Daniel Mckinney

Doctor of Ministry

What if Reformed pastors cared about every aspect of their humanity with the same passion they care about their doctrine? When we think about the health of the reformed pastor, we tend to think mainly in terms of our orthodoxy. From 2018-2022 I have witnessed the most orthodox of pastors fall into marital unfaithfulness, resign due to relational conflict, and suffer from burnout. All of this within the state of Utah, where there are only 7 PCA churches. Therefore, there is a need to bridge the gap between Reformed Theology and the emotional, spiritual, and relational health in pastors of …

Re-Imagining Ecclesiology: A New Missional Paradigm For Community Transformation, Michael J. Berry

Doctor of Ministry

This dissertation claims that the church is siloed, disconnected, and disengaged from the communities they are called to serve. The destructive mentalities of a disengaged church may even be complicit in creating and enabling some of these community health problems instead of being a part of the solutions. This research is focused on how ecclesiology, ethnography, and epidemiology is a missional paradigm to improve the gospel’s contextualization and work in community transformation. Chapter 1 demonstrates how increasing public health issues (such as pandemics, chronic diseases, poverty, homelessness, food deserts, addiction, inadequate health care, gun violence, mass incarceration, racism, and social …

Wayfinding: Spiritual Resilience For Global Servants, Joyce Reed

Doctor of Ministry

This dissertation proposes that mission agencies who develop a spiritual formation paradigm that incorporates the principles of wayfinding to navigate personal, vocational, and spiritual shifts enhance cross-cultural resiliency for missionaries (also known as global servants). Section One highlights the problem: mission agencies are not adequately addressing the numerous stressors that global servants constantly manage resulting in less healthy, unhealthy or toxic behaviors. In addition, organizational and historical mission culture often creates untenable expectations that contribute to the global servant's stress. Section Two analyzes how stressors might alternatively be addressed via pre-assignment counseling, sending churches, corporate support structures, or enhanced self-care. …

The Development Of A Robust, Self-Sustaining Internal Coaching Network, Harry Fritzenschaft

Doctor of Ministry

The problem this dissertation addresses is, like most problems, complex, multilayered, and contextual. In essence, I inherited the Multiply Vineyard (MV) internal coaching network, which was in decline, demotivated, not performing well, and in drastic need of refurbishing. The contextual realities of MV’s drastically reduced budgets and pandemic virtual training imperatives compelled me to be more innovative and adaptive. This paper's thesis is the entire MV coaching network infrastructure needs to be renovated and restructured to support MV’s church planting mission.

Section 2 describes MV's alternatives, including continuing our current communications and operations approach and framework. Another proposed solution option …

The Sobramesa Dinner Group: Discipline Boomers In Active Adult Living Communities, James Divine

Doctor of Ministry

Over the next 25 years, the American Church will be in a unique position to impact the eternity of almost 77 million people. As the Baby Boomer population moves into the third age of life, the church has the opportunity to reintroduce this population to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Within this large mission field is the added dimension of a large migration of retired and semi-retired people into Active Adult Living Communities (AALCs). While AALCs represent the largest-growing urban segment of the USA, the church is doing little to evangelize these communities. What the church does for these adults …

Cultivating A Disciple-Centric Growth Culture In The International Church Of The Foursquare Gospel, Tammy Dunahoo

Doctor of Ministry

Jesus said to his followers, “Go, make disciples of all nations,” and, “I will build my Church.”1 Through fifty years of emphasis on church growth, it would seem these roles have been reversed with pastors more focused on building big churches than equipping “the saints for the work of the ministry.”2 It begs the question, “Do we use people to grow the church instead of the church to grow the people?”

This dissertation focuses on the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel (ICFG) which has been affected by this mindset and now faces an aging ministerium and fewer potential young …

Combating Ministry Burnout By Honoring Human Limitations, Dominic Abaria

Doctor of Ministry

The risk of burnout threatens anyone working in human-service vocations but presents an especially volatile risk for those in ministry. This threat is compounded by the confluence of technological advances, performance-based identities, and a frugality mentality prevalent within nonprofit organizations, including churches and parachurch organizations. Since the early 1980s, the three common elements of burnout have been observed and analyzed in the field of psychology: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. However, most approaches to treating burnout only seek to mitigate symptomology without treating the underlying cause.

This dissertation explores the development of a burnout culture in the United …

Why We Fail To Enact The Change We Need: A Framework For Adaptive Change At Large Churches, Beau J. Johnson

Doctor of Ministry

It is difficult for leaders at large churches to make changes to their ministry models. As culture rapidly evolves, large, attractional churches look to adapt their approach to reaching the unchurched. Attendance and participation in large churches continues to decline, despite the breadth of suggestions for what and how to change. These suggestions for change are often top-down, leader-centric, and rarely grounded in the academic research about change management. This paper seeks to address a comprehensive model for leading adaptive changes at large, established churches. Chapter One describes the problem, describing trends in cultural change and the impact on church …

Reclaiming A Multiplying Discipleship: Fostering The Dance Of The Gathered And Sent Church, Matthew Lake

Doctor of Ministry

In the postmodern world, the local church has experienced significant decline as Christendom gives way to a more secular culture. Many shrinking denominational churches have missed imaginative opportunities and practices to produce multiplying disciples. This dissertation explores how declining denominational churches can embrace new opportunities for flourishing in a postmodern context through the development of a culture of multiplying discipleship. History—through examples such as the early church and Wesleyan movements—has shown that multiplying discipleship movements are possible in cultures not familiar with the Gospel. Such movements reveal new possibilities produced through the tension found between more formational offices of teaching, …

Discipleship In A Digital Age: Leveraging Multimodality And Digital Networks, Jennifer Miles

Doctor of Ministry

Advancements in communication technology, particularly since the Internet Age, have impacted culture in several fundamental ways. Cognitive and psychological changes have changed how people seek and understand knowledge. The development of horizontal networks made of both space of places, physical locations, and space of flows, Internet locations,1 has reshaped academic, social, and political spheres. The rise in entertainment to transfer information has shifted society’s focus to one of experience and service in everyday life. These changes have impacted the institutional church through a reduction of individuals self-identifying as Christian and in behaviors traditionally considered Christian.

In response, the church has …

Intergenerational Formation As A Tool For Main Line Protestant Revitalization, Scott Crane

Doctor of Ministry

Generations X (“Gen X”), Y (“Millennial”), and Z (“iGen”) are not being formed in the faith by many mainline protestant congregations, such as the Presbyterian Church (USA) in the Pacific Northwest, as evidenced by their absence. Practices of applied intentional intergenerational Christian formation are vital for being formed in and passing on the faith to subsequent generations. This can take place in worship, Christian education, spiritual formation activities and missional service.

Foundational for the author’s approach to the problem is how shifts in culture, theology, learning theories, and spiritual formation intersect with the cyclical pattern of generation theory, including related …