Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Buzz About The Church: Re-Imagining Discipleship Through A Theology Of Beekeeping, Matthew Todd Thomas

Doctor of Ministry

"The Buzz About The Church: Re-Imagining Discipleship Through a Theology of Beekeeping", creates and awareness of the root problems of why the church has not passed on its sacred faith to future generations. Historically, some contributors to non-transmission have been Gnosticism, the Enlightenment, Consumerism and Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. The dissertation also focuses on movements which have sprung up in response to a declining church like the Emergent Church Movement and Missional Church Movement.

This dissertation argues the solution to the problem is reestablishment of the practice of discipleship as Jesus modeled. Beekeeping is used to reimagine the model of discipleship. …

Quaker Plaining As Critical Aesthetic, Peter J. Collins

Quaker Studies

In the first part of this paper I explore the possibility of identifying a Quaker aesthetic through the concepts 'plain' and 'plaining'. I begin with an examination of the importance of 'the plain' as product and practice to seventeenth-century Friends and briefly outline its enduring importance to Quakers. Friends, however, were not the first group to adopt the plain style which is better understood when located in its broader historical context. For Quakers, the plain is ethic as well as aesthetic, partially grounding all Quaker testimonies. Given the well-documented aestheticization of contemporary life, I argue that the Quaker plain and …

Realms And Redescription In Ricoeur: Discovering Fresh Metaphoric Networks For Spiritual Formation In A Postmodern Consumer Culture, Anderson Campbell

Doctor of Ministry

No abstract provided.

The Cult Of Comfort, Raymond W. Leach

Doctor of Ministry

The tension in which we find ourselves when it comes to the accumulation of wealth and material possessions is a common one for Christians in the United States. This is a natural result of living in a culture that is driven by the pursuit of comfort. It is aggravated by the fact that so many of our tendencies when it comes to money, happiness, and success are conditioned by the world instead of being shaped by the Word of God. We strive for worldly kingship, but we are called to otherworldly kingdom participation. We pursue comfort as defined by our …