Religion Commons^™

Equip: Developing Confident, Christ-Centered Volunteers, Alyssa Mclaughlin

Doctor of Ministry

NPO statement: Volunteers within Cedar Hills Church feel unsure of what we believe, unclear on their purpose, and unprepared to disciple others in their specific ministry contexts. Without intentional training and equipping, these barriers keep capable people on the sidelines instead of stepping confidently into the mission of Jesus.

Key benefits or insights that emerged: Research and early implementation showed that volunteers engage more when equipping is relational, practical, and connected to real life. Adults were more willing to participate when they could share from their own experiences and practice their faith, rather than sit through content-heavy teaching. Participants gained …

Space, Belonging, And Formation In The Intergenerational Church, Tara Lynn Wolf

Doctor of Ministry

This Doctoral Project addresses the following Need, Problem, or Opportunity (NPO): Redeemer Lutheran Church has limited intentionally cultivated spaces for informal, intergenerational connection, leading to reliance on programs to foster relationships, formation, and a sense of belonging. This condition challenges the congregation’s stated commitment to being intentionally intergenerational and affects relational continuity spanning generations.

Research conducted through stakeholder interviews, design workshops, surveys, and prototyping revealed that belonging and spiritual formation are formed not only by ministry programming but by the physical and social environments in which people gather repeatedly over time. Key insights indicated that churches often underestimate the influence …

Renewed: A Journey Toward Resilient And Relational Leadership, Molly Bradley Lacroix

Doctor of Ministry

Adverse religious experiences cause spiritual, emotional, and relational wounds. Research on spiritual harm locates its origins in the misuse of power. High-control religious environments are preoccupied with authority, submission, silencing dissent, and shaming those who question or doubt. Clearly, the nature of leadership is key in addressing and preventing harm. Spiritually safe leaders empower people, lead with humility, seek feedback, and take accountability for mistakes. Research on the role of clergy reveals complex roles, relentless demands, burnout, and the impact of secondary trauma on clergy well-being. Additionally, clergy are often expected to operate beyond their areas of competence and report …

The Sabbath Journey: An Invitation For Pastors And Spiritual Leaders To Find Rest In God, Cody Daniel Ragland

Doctor of Ministry

In the fast-paced ministry of today, non-denominational evangelical pastors in the United States often strive to serve their congregations while neglecting God’s gift of Sabbath rest. Though the Sabbath is deeply rooted in Scripture, it is often misunderstood, minimized, or neglected in the lives of pastors. My NPO seeks to address:

This doctoral project introduces The Sabbath Journey: An invitation for Pastors and Spiritual Leaders to find rest in God. It is a year-long cohort program designed for pastors and ministry leaders to cultivate deep personal relationships and accountability as they develop a weekly Sabbath practice. Through intentional community, …

Flourishing Together, Kate Strater

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Our churches are incomplete without the presence, gifts, and friendship of people with disabilities and their families. Yet many congregations still struggle to gather and worship in ways that welcome these indispensable members. How can our churches become communities of belonging and full participation for people of all abilities? How might we flourish together as one body? More than 100 people convened at Calvin Theological Seminary on the evening of June 25 for a unique “community conversation” on disability and the church. The purpose of the gathering was to explore together how churches throughout the region might become more accessible …

A Case Study Examining The Strengths And Gaps Of Servant Leadership Within Pentecostal Churches Of Ohio, Octavia Denise Hardaway

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the gaps in servant leadership within Pentecostal churches in Ohio that could contribute to the departure of members from Pentecostal churches. This qualitative study examined the biblical servant leaders Nehemiah and Paul, as well as theological literature. The researcher created an instrument to assess the strengths and gaps in servant ministry leadership within Ohio Pentecostal churches.

Raising Not So Little Leaders, Rob M. Burke

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The problem this research addressed was understanding how parents, supported by local churches, can instill values of love and kindness and cultivate a servant leadership mindset in children from birth through age eighteen within the Orange County context. This study examined how churches can partner with parents to help children live out these values through the relationships, environments, and everyday rhythms that shape them. In response to this problem, the researcher explored the biblical and theological themes of love, kindness, and service in the Gospel of John and the Johannine Epistles. John shares how Jesus demonstrated these values through being …

[Intorduction To] Shakers At The Center : Manifesting Spirits & Spectacles In Nineteenth-Century America, Douglas L. Winiarski

Bookshelf

Edited by Douglas WIniarski.

"Exploring the theological, social, and cultural dimensions of one of America’s most ambitious prophetic movements

The Shakers’ Era of Manifestations ranks among the most astounding events in American religious history. During the 1840s, members of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing embarked on an audacious project of receiving visions, revelations, and other manifestations from the spirit world and convincing both themselves and the world’s people of their reality. Gifted Shakers known as “instruments” surrendered their bodies to possessing spirits and celestial beings who, in turn, provided the Believers with an unimaginable number of …

East To West: Cultural Attitudes And The Perceptions Of Death, Hannah F. Ahmed

Undergraduate Research Posters

Death is a universal human experience, but cultures teach people to interpret it in different ways. These interpretations influence how individuals understand dying, how they cope with loss, what support looks like, and what meaning death makes in their lives. Eastern, spiritual, and religious traditions emphasize death as a natural transition or return to divinity rather than an endpoint, and as something one must prepare for. In these contexts, people often grow up hearing stories, prayers, and teachings that situate death within a broader journey. Because of this, death becomes something familiar and speakable rather than distant or frightening (Naderi-Afif …

Telling God’S Story, Growing Families

Books

No abstract provided.

"Queens Of Ghost-Land" 134 Years Later: Un-Masking An Appalachian Witchcraft Accuser, Aine Norris

English Faculty Publications

In 1891, newspapers across America printed a story about witches in the Appalachian Mountains and the alleged powers they possessed to control their small farming community. The article was scathing in accusation and ultimately contributed to continued othering of the women profiled, increasing their visible vulnerabilities of class, gender, and societal status. Despite an implied familiarity with the region, the article was published with initials for its byline, an act that simultaneously identified the author to locals as historian Eva Grant while offering her anonymized national protection as a subject expert. For over five years the accusations were re‐printed in …

A Neo-Kuyperian Approach To Mathematics, Calvin Jongsma, Kevin Vander Meulen

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

This chapter develops a Reformational perspective on the discipline of mathematics that stems from the seminal ideas of Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, Wolters, Clouser, and others. The implications of the Biblical motif of Creation-Fall-Redemption is explored for the task of Christian scholarship in general and for the field of mathematics in particular, drawing upon relevant developments in the history and philosophy of mathematics.

The Loss Of Symbolic Imagination And The Decline Of Christian Practice: A Blondelian Perspective, Cathal Doherty

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

The contemporary decline in Christian church-going and sacramental participation is due in part to the legacy of the Enlightenment, which valorizes the life of the mind over actual practice, a distortion due to a conceptualism of human action, widespread in Western thought, that sees in human action the mere execution of ideas. From here, it is a short step to the willful blindness that restricts our action to the execution of exclusively human ideas and concepts, to the exclusion of the divine, quietly repudiating the claims of orthodox Christian revelation that the divine intention is symbolically realized for us in …

Enoch’S Measuring, Counting, Weighing, And Balancing Creation In 2 Enoch, Andrei Orlov

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

In recent years one can see increased scholarly attention to the epistemological dimension of early Jewish apocalyptic writings and, in particular, to the ways by which divine knowledge was harvested and cultivated by the protagonists and antagonists of those early Jewish accounts. The early Enochic booklets have traditionally played a central role in these epistemological probes since they contain the earliest descriptions of the transmission and acquisition of divine knowledge in Jewish apocalypticism.  These accounts deal both with revelations unveiled by God and angels to the patriarch Enoch and with illicit transmission of divine knowledge by the rogue group of …

Unchanging Gospel Message, Changing Context: Contextualization Strategies In The Lukan Paul, Irenaeus, And Athanasius, Joy Axelsson

MA in Religion Theses

This thesis examines how early Christian leaders strategically contextualized the gospel within the diverse sociohistorical contexts of the Roman Empire while maintaining theological consistency. Using a comparative synchronic methodology adapted from Michael Gorman, it analyzes five primary texts spanning the first through fourth centuries: the Lukan Paul’s missionary speeches in Acts (Pisidian Antioch, Lystra, and Athens), Irenaeus’s On the Apostolic Preaching, and Athanasius’s On the Incarnation. Each text is analyzed within its literary, historical, and cultural context to identify patterns of strategic constants and variables in gospel presentation. The analysis shows that central gospel elements, such as Christology, monotheism, …

Faith, Formation, And Formalization: Entrepreneurship Development Among Women In Ghana, Patricia Adams-Williams

Doctor of Ministry

The problem addressed in this study is the absence of a unified, faith-centered framework that equips single mothers in Ghana to build sustainable livelihoods while strengthening their spiritual identity. Although Ghanaian women demonstrate remarkable resilience and entrepreneurial drive, many remain confined to informal markets without access to business training, mentorship, or systems that connect their work to their calling. This dissertation argues that integrating spiritual formation with entrepreneurship training creates a pathway for lasting transformation. The thesis of this study is that Kingdom-centered entrepreneurship, rooted in biblical identity and supported by communal mentorship, empowers women to move from survival to …

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 …

What Church Planters Need : How Community, Training, & Intentional Relationships Fuel Church Growth, Carolina G. Miller

Academic Books

No abstract provided.

Post-Secular Revitalization Of Religion: Ukranian Experience Of Social Initiatives By Churches As A Moral Alternative To The Russian "Theology" Of War, Iryna Horokholinska, Sviatoslav Vaskul, Oleksandr Brodetskyi, Andriy Kvik

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This article examines the processes of religious revitalization in Ukrainian society under wartime conditions and their institutional manifestations. It explores how religious institutions engage with the public sphere and their role in the ethically oriented transformation of suffering, turning individual trauma into socially constructive practice. The study draws on innovations in the activities of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, other Christian denominations, as well as Muslim and Jewish communities in Ukraine. It presents the Ukrainian model of religious revitalization as a social practice shaped by institutional autonomy and interfaith coordination. Particular attention is given to …

Frontmatter (Volume 46, Issue 2), Paul B. Mojzes

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

The Heretical Church: A Comparative Analysis Between The Gospel Of Thomas And The Gospel Of John, Isabella R. Moore

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses a comparative analysis between the allegedly “heretical” Gospel of Thomas and its canonical counterpart, the Gospel of John, to conduct a critique of the contemporary Catholic Church. This analysis and critique also utilize evaluations of medieval and modern definitions of heresy within a religious context, as well as a comparison between bishop dissent of these “secret” or “gnostic” gospels in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries and papal dissent in the 21st century. After conducting the comparative analysis between the two gospels, I posit that the Church’s charge of heresy toward the Gospel of Thomas is an …

Resisting Empire, Promoting Peace: Churches Confront The ‘Russian World’ Ideology Conference Statement, Katharina Kunter

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

From 1-3 December 2025, about 90 church leaders and representatives of churches, national councils of churches, ecumenical partners, and scholars gathered in Helsinki, Finland, for the conference, organised by the Conference of European Churches (CEC) in collaboration with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Orthodox Church of Finland.

The statement underscores that Russia’s war against Ukraine—fuelled by the ‘Russian World’ ideology—is a military, political, and humanitarian assault that threatens both the lives of millions and the democratic foundations of Europe.

The Table Between Us: Cultivating Intergenerational Discipleship And Belonging In The Local Church, James Irwin

Doctor of Ministry

Many members of Generation Z, born in the mid-1990s to the early 2010s, have grown up amid digital saturation, social fragmentation, mental health challenges, and institutional distrust. At Holy Savior Lutheran Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, many Gen Z participants seek deeper, more meaningful relationships beyond Sunday worship. This project addresses the concern expressed by these Gen Z members at Holy Savior.

This dissertation asserts that intergenerational ministry provides a theologically grounded, culturally responsive approach for engaging Gen Z in meaningful discipleship at Holy Savior Lutheran Church. By grounding this approach in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Sanctorum Communio and Life Together, and …

Beyond The Heroic Leader: Formation For Collaborative Ministry, Graham English

Doctor of Leadership

I have served as a local church pastor for 28 years. In my current service on a denominational team that supports 500 Licensed Workers and 115 churches within the Western District of The Alliance Canada, I identified the following Need, Problem, or Opportunity (NPO): “Many leaders in The Alliance Canada lack collaborative skills, inhibiting participatory leadership, stifling innovation, and diminishing congregational empowerment to engage in God’s mission.” My research highlighted the limitations of heroic leadership in complex and rapidly evolving ministry contexts. Leadership approaches that were once effective in the church no longer align with current relational, cultural, and organizational …

Sancocho Leadership: Nurturing Leadership And Vocation Of Latinas, Miriam Méndez

Doctor of Leadership

Latinas are vital to the future of the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey (ABCNJ), but the church has failed to properly nurture and develop their pastoral leadership gifts. They contribute significantly to congregational life, pastoral care, community outreach, and theological imagination. However, their presence in formal pastoral leadership roles remains limited. This dissertation examines the structural, cultural, and theological factors that influence Latina pastoral development. The solution for developing Latina women into pastoral leadership positions in the ABCNJ is the introduction of a contextual, culturally rooted model called Sancocho Leadership. Drawing on practical theology, Latina feminist theology, and leadership …

Parental Incarceration As A Root Cause Of Food Insecurity: A Faith-Based Inquiry Into Grandparent-Led Households, Jennifer L. Eckert

Doctor of Leadership

Parental incarceration is often seen solely in terms of crime and punishment, overlooking the profound disruption that can destabilize entire households. Grandparents who step in to raise children are frequently left to bear the burden of the collateral damage with limited or fixed incomes, increasing the risk for food insecurity while facing stigma and emotional strain.

Although incarceration and food insecurity are often treated as separate issues, this project, Standing in the Gap: Exploring Family Stability through Immersive Learning, recognizes their connection, particularly when the circumstances stem from parental incarceration. At the same time, many faith communities remain on …

Journeying Together: A Coaching Framework Empowering Voice And Transforming Teams, Kari Michele Kinard

Doctor of Leadership

To be seen, heard, and to have a voice are deeply human desires, regardless of where one finds oneself in the world. In the culturally and ethnically diverse Saharan nation, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (RIM), the capital, Nouakchott, serves as a central hub shaped by a strong Islamic identity, historical hierarchies, and long-standing foreign involvement in development efforts. These dynamics create both meaningful opportunities and real challenges for leadership practices across sectors.

Development efforts in RIM have long sought to strengthen communities through education, healthcare, and economic initiatives. While these efforts are well-intentioned, sustaining impact has remained a persistent …

Leadaptive: A Leadership Framework That Equips Pastors To Discern Ministry Season And Flex Leadership Styles With Wisdom, And Effectiveness, Glyn Barrett

Doctor of Leadership

This doctoral project, Leadaptive, addresses the following NPO: inflexible leadership style in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches stifles growth, leading to stagnation and reduced gospel impact. The project addresses this challenge within my vocational context as the Senior Pastor of a multisite church in the United Kingdom, a national denominational leader, and the Chair of Global Church Planting for a worldwide Pentecostal fellowship of more than 460,000 churches. In these settings, leaders often face a tension between spiritual conviction and adaptive responsiveness. The project seeks to design and implement a replicable, Christcentered framework to help pastors lead effectively through the diverse …

Las Mujeres Y El Adn Wesleyano, Rachel L. Coleman

Spanish Resources/Recursos en Español

No abstract provided.

Continuity And Development In The Eschatological Sabbath: Themes In Seventh-Day Adventist Thought (1842–2020), Joseph Nesbit

Dissertations

The Topic

This dissertation explores continuity and development in the eschatological understanding of the seventh-day Sabbath within selected Adventist theological writings from its Millerite origins to the contemporary scholarship of Jo Ann Davidson. The eschatological aspects of the Sabbath have played a central role in both pioneer and contemporary Adventist thought, particularly in its identification as the seal of God in Revelation and as a sign of covenant loyalty in the final crisis. While this understanding has displayed remarkable continuity in its essential themes, it has also undergone significant maturation in tone, scope, and theological emphasis. By tracing both enduring …