Religion Commons^™

A Theological Dialogue With And Evaluation Of Erik H. Erikson’S Theory Of Identity Development In Light Of Pauline Baptismal Theology In Romans And Some Implications For Pastoral Care, Walter Steele

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Steele, Walter R. “A Theological Dialogue with and Evaluation of Erik H. Erikson’s Theory of Identity Development in Light of Pauline Baptismal Theology in Romans and Some Implications for Pastoral Care” Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2017. 304pp.

The Issue of identity and identity development, or actualization, is both a psychological and a theological issue. Among psychologists who have been concerned with identity, the name of Erik H. Erikson is at the forefront. His psychosocial theory has been appropriated by several people in the field of pastoral care, yet his theory has not been adequately subjected to a robust and thorough …

Overcoming The Unique Spiritual Formation Challenges Experienced By Large-Church Staff, Scott Whaley

Doctor of Ministry

Church staff encounter unique spiritual formation challenges that are not experienced in other vocations. In addition to managing stressors that are typical in every workplace setting, the church staff must also address the implications that arise because their pastor is also their employer, and their place of worship is also their workplace. These challenges are magnified in the large-church environment due an increased focus on employee performance and an emphasis on a corporate organizational structure. Over the last few decades, large churches have adopted best-practices from the corporate world, practices which focus scrutiny on increasing staff performance, further adding to …

The Study Of Brokenness As A Critical Success Factor In The Effective Leadership Of The Pastor, Robert Thompson

Doctor of Ministry

In our western culture, many churches, pastors, and Christian leaders have adopted secular leadership that emphasizes performance and results rather than emphasizing spiritual leadership based in our identity in Christ as a servant leader and the process of brokenness that God uses to develop His servants. Recent literature has suggested that pastors and Christian leaders need to revisit the need for brokenness in their Christian formation as a critical success factor in their leadership. The Church should consider brokenness as a critical success factor in the effective leadership of the pastor.

This dissertation will concentrate on the importance of brokenness …

Making The World A Better Place: The Praxis Of Christian Community Development As A Church Planting And Multiplication Strategy In Urban Poor Communities In The United States, Phillip W. Struckmeyer

Doctor of Ministry

The topic of this dissertation centers on church planting and multiplication in urban poor communities in the United States. The ministry problem being addressed is the fact that The Wesleyan Church denomination does not have a strategy for church planting and multiplication in urban poor communities. In Section One, the complexity of this problem will be explored by: first, considering The Wesleyan Church’s predominantly rural-based, white-evangelical past; second, considering the effects of urbanization and globalization, which have created an increasingly urban, multiethnic, and socioeconomically divided mission field in the United States; and last, gaining a deeper understanding of systemic racism …

Instilling Health And Vitality Into The Third Wave Oraon Churches In Jharkhand, Samuel Stephens

Doctor of Ministry

This study is based on the observation that large numbers of Oraon tribals in the state of Jharkhand, India are embracing Christianity, and an increasing number of small churches in the region is evidenced. The Oraon new believers, however, lack adequate spiritual nurture, resulting in spiritual stagnancy, a leaning to syncretism, and practice of unhealthy traditions. These traits leave the Oraon churches spiritually impoverished and unsustainable. The study seeks to ascertain appropriate measures to infuse and instill such health and vitality.

Chapter one describes the nature of the Oraon people movement first and then places it within its national context. …

Missional Communities: Why They Are Failing And How To Help Them Thrive, Matthew L. Murphy

Doctor of Ministry

Missional communities are failing. Missional communities are failing because they do not contextualize the nature, function, and historical forms of the church. Specifically, missional communities fail due to lack of leadership, gospel proclamation, incarnational living to a particular people, and mission dependence on the Holy Spirit. All of these things stem from not putting the nature, function, and historical forms of the church before modern forms.

Missional communities will begin to thrive if communities will not just copy forms of other missional churches, but if they will contextualize the nature, functions, and historical forms of the church in their own …

A Church Family's Path Through Founding Pastor Transition, Nick Martineau

Doctor of Ministry

Leadership transitions are inevitable within all organizations. It is not a question of if, but when. This is particularly true within churches. Pastoral succession, particularly a long-term founding pastor’s transition, is difficult. There are many emotions and tensions to navigate for the church family, staff, elders, founding pastor, and incoming pastor, in the midst of the transition. A struggle for control often takes place in addition to a great sense of loss, confusion, and fear for many in the church family. Every transition has its own unique story. Some transitions go smoothly, while others result in pain and a disaster, …

Praying About Forgiveness In Japanese, English, And Beyond Words: Bilingualism As An Underexplored Resource For Christian Spiritual Formation, Andrea Lundquist Johnson

Doctor of Ministry

Prayer understood as a form of communication and communion with the Deity is a nearly universal human activity and a core Christian practice. Christian prayer may take many shapes including colloquial, petitionary, ritual, and meditative, and may be practiced alone or with others. Prayer regarding forgiveness is both the example and command of Jesus, yet forgiveness is multidimensional, complex, and culturally conditioned in addition to being difficult because it involves change in self identity.

The question of whether the language of prayer matters for bilinguals, specifically Japanese/English speaking bilinguals, has not been researched. Neither has the area of bilingual prayer …

The Ecological Gift Of Spiritual Formation: A Renewal For Healthy Clergy, Jody Becker

Doctor of Ministry

Every year Lutheran clergy resign pastoral calls citing one, primary reason: burnout. Certainly, the demands of pastoral call within a congregation are easy to observe: long on-call periods of time, intense levels of pastoral care needs, and navigating multifaceted, interpersonal relationships, to name a few. While these demands become symptomatic to the problem of burnout, the determining cause is still unknown, especially given the various contextual factors for these pastors. Yet, the number of pastors leaving ministry or experiencing shortened tenures is alarming. In the Lutheran church, spiritual formation language is often associated with determined deficiencies. Other times, spiritual formation …

Concordia Seminary Winter 2017, Jeffrey Kloha

Concordia Seminary Magazine

Here We Stand

Vocational Apologetics An Argument For Using The Lutheran Understanding Of Vocation As A Form Of Enfleshed Apologetics For The Church To Engage A Cultural Setting Influenced By The Criticism Of The New Atheists, Kirk Clayton

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Clayton, Kirk M. “Vocational Apologetics: An Argument for Using the Lutheran Understanding of Vocation as a Form of Enfleshed Apologetics for the Church to Engage a Cultural Setting Influenced by the Criticisms of the New Atheists.” Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2017. 252 pp.

This dissertation examines criticisms against Christianity from the New Atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and Stenger), considers problems with how the church has formulated its apologetic response, and concludes that Martin Luther’s understanding of vocation applied to the Christian life offers a significant contribution to shaping an apologetic response to the New Atheism.

Apologetics is best understood …

A Sacred Consciousness: A Review, Douglas Firth Anderson

Northwestern Review

This essay reviews Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life.

Not Rewriting Lazarus’ Story, Jackie Smallbones

Northwestern Review

In this sermon, the author considers Jesus’ raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-45). Focusing on the awkwardness of Jesus’ deliberate delay in coming, the sermon asks whether rewriting the incident to make Jesus appear more caring is advisable. No, rewriting the incident would undercut three lessons in the story as written. First, Jesus’ chief concern was with God and his glory. Second, Jesus revealed more about himself, namely, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Third, Jesus wanted to deepen the faith of Lazarus’ family, friends, and his disciples then and since.

Telling Fisk’S Story, John Hubers

Northwestern Review

Pliny Fisk (1792-1825) was one of two missionaries sent in 1819 by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to the Ottoman Empire. This made them not only the first American missionaries in the Muslim majority world, but two of the first Americans to make a permanent move to the Middle East. Hubers’ book explores what it meant for Pliny and his companion Levi Parsons to make that trip, exploring in particular the impact this had on their perceptions of the religious other.

What makes this an interesting study is noting that Fisk never met a Middle Easterner …

Power, Liberalism, And Political Science: Some Christian Reflections, Daniel E. Young

Northwestern Review

How should a Christian political scientist think about power, liberalism, and political science? In answering this question, this article first defines power. Considered primarily in relation to the state, power is exercised in conflicts of interests: by officials, parties, or groups or elites getting others to do something the others would not otherwise do, or keeping one or more alternative from even being discussed, and perhaps obscuring what the real interests of others are. Then the argument turns to establishing that how one thinks about power is closely related to one’s larger political theory, e.g., what counts as the “real …

Divinity, Incarnation, And The Strange Body Of Jesus In Horror Films, Mike Kugler

Northwestern Review

Through an analysis of a number of horror films or films with horror-infused aspects, such as The Last Temptation Christ, Passion of the Christ, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, Jesus, and Fist of Jesus, the author uses theology to reflect not only on the horror genre but also on the doctrine of the Incarnation.

Women, Serpent And Devil: Female Devilry In Hindu And Biblical Myth And Its Cultural Representation: A Comparative Study, Suman Chakraborty

Journal of International Women's Studies

Association of Women with Serpent and Devil or evil is common in today’s popular movies and literature. A large number of movies have been made on serpent woman, or Nagin-Kanya, both in India and the West in the last century. But the root of this popular trend lies in Genesis of the Bible, and its interpretations by the theologians and the church fathers. In India, this motif came with British literary and cultural products through colonization. Though we get references of figures (Ulupi in the Mahabharata, myth of snake-goddess Manasa) similar to the western serpent women in pre-colonial Indian …

Lessons Of Faith From A Poor Moabite Widow, Jessica Evangeline Setiawan

Student Work

"We tend to rely on human solutions in the face of huge crises in our lives, and forget that God’s providence extends to every single aspect of our lives."

Posting about unconditional faith in our God from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/lessons-of-faith-from-a-poor-moabite-widow/

Abortion Rights Mobilization And Religious Tax Exemptions, Charles Capetanakis

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Ethics: New Considerations After The Packard Commission, Paul E. Fiorelli

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

The Teaching Authority Of The Church And American Society: A Voice In The Wilderness, Robert J. Araujo, S.J.

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Christ And The Code: The Dilemma Of The Christian Attorney, Joseph Allegretti

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

The Bishops Of Michigan Issue Statement On Due Process

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Natural Law Theory And The Declaration On Religious Freedom Of The Second Vatican Council, Charles P. Kindregan

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

The Textbook Case, Patrick S. Duffy

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Another Aspect Of The Financial Crisis In Education: The Current Problem Of Support For The Education Of Catholic Elementary And Secondary School Children, New York State Council Of Catholic School Superintendents

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Law And Religion In America: The New Picture, William B. Ball

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

A Survey Of Ethics Training In Undergraduate Psychology Programs At Jesuit Universities, Thomas G. Plante, Selena Pistoresi

Psychology

Training in ethics is fundamental in higher education among both faith-based and secular colleges and universities, regardless of one’s academic major or field of study. Catholic colleges and universities have included moral philosophy, theology, and applied ethics in their undergraduate curricula for generations. The purpose of this investigation was to determine what, if anything, Jesuit college psychology departments are doing to educate psychology majors regarding ethical issues. A survey method was used to assess the psychology departments of all 28 Jesuits colleges and universities in the United States. A total of 21 of the 28 schools responded and completed the …

Vainglory: How To Share Your Virtue Without Showing Off, Rebecca Konyndyk Deyoung

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Who Is My Neighbor?, Tom Clark

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"How should we have mercy on those who are experiencing the ravages of war, whose very lives are being robbed from them?"

Posting about ­­­­­­­­responding to the less fortunate from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/who-is-my-neighbor/