Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

The Atheistic Problem Of Good, Bruce Leroy Davis

Masters Theses

The purpose of this work is to bring attention to goods in philosophical and theological circles. More precisely this thesis argues for the atheistic problem of good. The problem of good comes as a byproduct of the problem of evil. The argument seeks to show that if the atheist insists on holding to an understanding that evil exists and is problematic for theism, then the same can be stated in the reverse. The atheist will need to deal with their problem of good because if evil exists, necessarily so does good, in at least the same abundance as evils. The …

A Phenomenological Examination Of Church Leaders' Perceived Impact Of Executive Coaching On Organizational Culture, Jerrell Stokley

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The trajectory of the seminary training curriculum has evolved pedagogically at projecting adequate church leadership education and hands-on development. However, empirical research reveals that the seminary struggles with preparing generations of church leaders for modern church responsibilities including executive leadership, tactical performance, administration, and church organizational culture (Crowson, 2021; Costin, 2008). Hicks (2012), as cited by Smith (2017) states, “Recent studies have begun to explore the need for management training for pastors” (p. 2). Graduates as well as current church leaders report feeling ill-equipped for the increasing duties for today’s church culture. This qualitative, phenomenological study evaluated mid-to-senior level Christian …

Understanding The Sources Of Hurt And Wounded Members In The Church Of Pentecost Norfolk, Jehu Kwame Gyimah

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Church hurt is an emotional feeling that disconnects a person from reality, and remains a neglected topic in many Pentecostal churches. In the church setting, hurt members who are broken inside often portray an attitude of wholeness on the outside, even if the physical, spiritual, and physiological atmosphere of hurt prevents them from fully connecting or interacting with others. That hurt eventually hinders their growth, the growth of others, and the potential of the whole church. In this thesis, the researcher investigates the causes of church hurt experienced by members of COP Norfolk, a US subsidiary of the global Christian …

A Phenomenological Study Of Church Growth Strategies Used By Pastors Of Digital Churches During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Nicholas D. Cole

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the digital church growth methods that pastors of digital churches in the United States used to increase church attendance during the 2020-2022 COVID-19 pandemic. For the purpose of this study, pastors of digital/online churches were studied. Since the 1950s, the church growth strategy for many Christian churches has been to attract as many people as possible for in-person worship services. However, in-person church attendance has declined consistently for the past 20 years. The shutdowns of churches worldwide during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic amplified this trend. The only option available …

Becoming Who You Already Are In Christ: An Eight-Week Discipleship Plan To Equip Members Of Crossline Church To Live Out Their Identity In Christ, John Paul Jones

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This action-research project focused on equipping members of Crossline Community Church to live out their identity in Christ. The intervention was an eight-week discipleship plan, “Becoming who you already are in Christ.” The action-research project aimed to evaluate the impact of equipping believers with their identity in Christ upon their transformation into Christ-likeness. The project incorporated biblical, theological, and devotional content with a comprehensive pedagogy designed for maximum influence toward progressive sanctification. The twelve participants in the intervention engaged in sermons, training classes, small groups, and personal Bible studies as a part of the action research. Triangulated evaluation tools were …

Small Groups That Fuel Active Service In The Local Church, Stephen Jerel Love

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Manna Church prioritizes empowering and developing leaders as an imperative objective of the local church. Such development is fueled through various avenues, including small groups. This thesis project will survey the purpose of small groups within Manna Church and how newly designed groups can address the problem of low voluntary participation in weekly services. The need for more active serve team members problematically exists among six site locations in the Fayetteville-Fort Bragg region. Furthermore, each ministry leader seeks innovative strategies to initiate and maintain involvement during weekly services. However, numbers are at an unprecedented low point. The effects of these …

Hospitality: Areas That Are Effective In Creating A Desire For A Visitor To Connect To Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Brent M. Hartwig

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

This major applied project explores hospitality offered by the local congregation. Biblical hospitality is implicitly and explicitly commanded in scripture. Balancing the Missio Dei and two kinds of righteousness will keep us on the straight and narrow theologically when pursuing hospitality.

When churches offer hospitality, we are feeding, clothing, visiting, providing, and welcoming our neighbor. Our Redeemer wants to continue serving the community as a family-oriented, mission focused, hospitable congregation. We are doing the feeding, clothing, and providing through many efforts in the community. We are active with the local homeless shelter and crisis center. For the MAP, we wanted …

Positive Factors Related To The Decision To Study For The Office Of The Ministry By Men Of The Lutheran Synod Of Nicaragua (Iglesia Luterana Sínodo De Nicaragua/Lutheran Church—Canada), Edmund Auger

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

Auger, Edmund D. “Positive Factors Related to the Decision to Study for the Office of the Ministry by Men of The Lutheran Synod of Nicaragua (Iglesia Luterana Sínodo de Nicaragua / Lutheran Church—Canada).” Doctor of Ministry. Major Applied Project, Concordia Seminary, 2023. 128 pages.

The Lutheran Church throughout the world needs a continuing supply of men to serve as faithful pastors in the public ministry of the Gospel. The identification and spiritual formation of candidates for Word and Sacrament ministry is critical for the young national church body, Iglesia Luterana Sínodo de Nicaragua (Lutheran Synod of Nicaragua).

This project is …

There Is A Place For You And Your Little Ones: Homiletics And Liturgy In View Of Pregnancy Loss, Joseph Michael Baumgarten

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

Baumgarten, Joseph M. There is a Place for You and Your Little Ones: Homiletics and Liturgy in View of Pregnancy Loss. Doctor of Ministry. Major Applied Project, Concordia Seminary, 2022. 81 pp.

Pregnancy loss and the grief that follows is more common than most people think. However, there is a gap in resources, discussion, and care for those who have experienced such losses. This is true in wider culture as well as in the church. While there are a few resources available, they are limited. This project addresses the church’s ability to provide proper recognition of pregnancy loss, the validation …

Embodied Superintendence: The Person Of The Preacher In Lutheran Homiletics Especially In Relation To Cultural Identity, Dennis Matyas

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Over the past several decades, the greater homiletical academy has progressed from questions of authority to dialogics to identity, both of the preacher and of the hearers. Within this timeframe, modern Lutheran homiletics has stayed relatively silent on considerations of the person of the preacher, opting instead for certain foundational homiletical truths including the efficacy of the Word of God, the proclamation of justification, and the authority of the Ministerium. After recovering the consideration of the person of the preacher as a foundational Lutheran homiletic, this work explores the formational significance of the preacher’s cultural identity by offering a theoretical …

A Spiritual Call: Jeremiah’S Call To The Heart And The Stages Of Spiritual Progression In Carmelite Spirituality, Julia S. Whelan

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The aim of this study is first, to identify resonances between Jeremiah 1:10 and the three stages of the spiritual journey as defined by the Carmelites such as John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila (i.e., the stages known as purgative, illuminative and unitive) and then, in light of an in depth understanding of the spiritual senses attributed to Jeremiah 1:10 in its reception history, to evaluate the impact of Jer 1:10 upon the Carmelite conception of the spiritual journey.

A comprehensive Word Study is undertaken of six task verbs from Jer 1:10, presented as three pairs: to root …

2023 Denominational Survey Results, Calvin University

CRCNA Denominational Survey Results

As part of the denominational ministry plan, Our Journey 2025, the CRCNA has contracted with DataWise Consulting to administer an annual denominational survey. The results from the 2023 survey have now been compiled.

All CRC-affiliated adults and older youth are welcome to respond to this survey as they are led. However, in order to ensure a healthy number of responses to the survey each year, CRC leaders have randomly assigned every CRC church to one of five “cohorts.” Each cohort includes about 20 percent of all active congregations, and each congregation will be asked to engage in active recruitment …

What God Has Joined Together: The One Threefold Purpose Of Marriage, David Frayne Shudy

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

Modern married couples and marriage-minded individuals are often left awash in a sea of confusion aimlessly groping about for a purpose for their marriage, with disastrous societal results. Whereas long-standing Christian tradition has taught a unified threefold marital purpose of three equal elements—procreation, mutual help, and remedy for sin—Enlightenment thinkers and their ideological descendants have introduced a hierarchical marriage teleology with a self-chosen purpose (usually companionship) at the top in order to correct for an alleged countervailing overemphasis on procreation in premodern marital teleology.

This thesis will challenge the claim of a relative deficiency in the companionate aspect of premodern …

Educating A Denomination: Albert C. Outler And American Theological Education, 1925 - 1974, Lane Davis

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation provides a critical biography of Albert C. Outler, a prominent historian and theologian in modern Methodism and analyzes three significant emphases in his work: ecumenism, theology and psychology, and Methodist doctrine. The study begins with Outler's formative education and his ministry as a Methodist pastor in Georgia. Outler's doctoral education at Yale focused his work on discovering the connections of the "common history" of all Christians. The study then considers Outler’s extensive work in three interconnected disciplines: ecumenical studies, the study of religion and psychology, and Methodist theology and doctrine. The connection between these diverse subjects lies in …

Recovering A Missional Ecclesiology: A Framework For Reviving Congregational Mission Within The Baptist Union Of Victoria, Gayle Hill

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT This project is an intervention to develop a theological and theoretical framework

that will become the foundation for a future curriculum for recovering a missional ecclesiology for the pastors of the Baptist Union of Victoria (BUV). Despite mission being central to the overall vision of the BUV, declining numbers, the post-COVID context in Victoria, and an overarching post-Christian and pluralistic context have significantly challenged the centrality and functioning of mission across our denomination. The impetus of this project was the observation that our churches were floundering rather than flourishing in the missional space. Many chronic and acute provocations were …

Cultivating Reproductive Small Group Leaders Within Southwest Church, Springboro, Ohio, Roger D. Hendricks

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This project was designed to address an ongoing challenge within the Southwest Church (SWC) in Springboro, Ohio. The specific challenge that SWC leaders have faced throughout the twenty-five-year history of the church is to continually increase the number of small group options within a growing congregation. Small groups have been identified as the primary vehicle for SWC members to grow as disciples of Jesus Christ. This congregational emphasis has led to the good dilemma of having more individuals willing to participate than lead weekly small groups. In the past few years, SWC leaders have identified the need for the …

Letter From The Chairman: Over One Hundred Years Of Student Publications At Concordia Seminary, Ben Vanderhyde

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

For hundreds of years, in various countries, through various languages, Christian pastors have exhorted their people to lift up their hearts in the liturgy of Holy Communion. Whether or not every church has always used these precise words, the exhortation is universal among Christians. We are called to put our faith and trust in the one who is above us; to set our hope firmly on the one whose second advent is on the verge of dawning; to aim all of our desires and affections toward the one who made us. In short, we lift up our hearts to the …

A Lutheran Perspective On Righteousness In China, Futao (Gary) Liu

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

The recent history of China cannot get away from the impact of western thoughts and industrialization, including Democracy, Marxism, Republicanism, etc. For two millienium or so, the Chinese philosopher, Confucius (551–479 BCE), had dominated Chinese society through his philosophy (commonly called Confucianism) in every respect, from the hierarchical structures of governments and states to familial relations. Confucianism met its real challenge only in the recent history of China. At the collasping edge of the last feudal society (the Qing Dynasty which fell in 1911), patriotic Confucians had tried to bring what is useful of the West into traditional values and …

Almsgiving In Early Christian Catechesis, Ben Vanderhyde

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

To say simply that almsgiving was a part of early Christian catechesis would not say much that is new to the Lutheran church today. Our own catechism includes this idea in its explanation of the 5th commandment: “We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.” It is not so much significant that the Apostolic Fathers taught almsgiving but how they did so. Almsgiving played such a central role in the life of the early church that it came to be …

Pierre Manent: The Empire Of Modernity And The Church’S Response, Hayden Lukas

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Manent’s body of work often problematizes the modern conservative impulse to draw on the history of thought with modernity’s conception of history, and this essay will attempt to explain this dynamic. To do this, I will explain the basics of Manent’s account of modernity as a way of evaluating history, drawing on the work of other political philosophers to supplement Manent’s account. Then I will examine how the work of Manent and Emile Perreau-Saussine, with the Catholic response to the Enlightenment, can contribute to the Church’s strategy to engage with the puzzle of modernity. .

The Holy Heart, Cody Macmillan

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

No abstract provided.

Bounding Down The Mountain Peaks, Andrew Bloch, Lindsay Bloch

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Poetry composed by Andrew & Lindsay Bloch.

Ariel, Hayden Lukas

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Poetry composed by Hayden Lukas.

Learning The Liturgy With Mr. Miyagi: The Case For Liturgical Catechesis, Benjamin Leeper

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Using the narrative of The Karate Kid as a guide, I will demonstrate that Christian formation is a matter of recontextualizing liturgical practices in the daily life of the believer, so that she knows when, where, and how to use the precogni¬tive spiritual habits formed by Word and Sacrament in Christian worship. This understanding challenges prevalent liturgical theology, which tends to assume an automatic connection—or worse, no connection at all— between worship and daily life, by highlighting the necessity of locating for believers the telos of the church’s rites and ceremonies in discipleship. Finally, I will provide concrete examples of …

Grapho 2023, Ben Vanderhyde

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Lift Up Your Hearts

Liturgy & Life: How The Divine Service Connects With The Rest Of The Week, Benjamin Janssen

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

On vicarage, I was blessed to spend many hours with a faithful member named Ginger, who, alongside her husband Walter, runs and operates the congregation’s robust food and clothing distribution center. This center is completely run by volunteer efforts out of the undercroft of the church and successfully feeds and clothes 150 families a month. This work both serves the neighbor in need and brings the congregation into contact with many of those living in the immediate community. In short, it is a blessing to the congregation and the surrounding community. Therefore, at the end of each service day, I …

Members Of One Holy Body, Benjamin Leeper

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Poetry composed by Benjamin Leeper.

Sursum Corda As A Call For Repentance And Faith, Sebastian Grünbaum

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

This article examines Chemnitz's understanding and interpretation of the Sursum Corda in his work the Lord’s Supper. Chemnitz’s theological adversaries had been claiming that the Sursum Corda was evidence that the early church did not believe that the true body and blood were on the altar. They argued that the believer had to go up to the Lord (who sits on the right side of the Father) in faith and eat mere bread in this faith.3 Chemnitz aimed to correct this understanding by showing that the Fathers did not understand the Sursum Corda in this way but rather as an …

Catechism Service, Jaron Melin

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

This service is organized in a simple manner for any congregation to use. Pastors and congregations are encouraged to use and adapt it for their worship. It was made brief to be printed as a worship-bulletin onto both sides of a single sheet of paper. Any part can be expanded to include more of the Small Catechism for further instruction and formation (e.g. questions and answers). Furthermore, Phillip Magness has put the Small Catechism to music which could be incorporated into this service so that people can learn the catechism by heart to music even in the midst of worship.

Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay promotes the writing and illustrating of middle grade literature that mirrors the wonder-inducing experiences of leafing through an illuminated manuscript and stepping into a Gothic cathedral. An examination of Catholic medieval visual culture moves into a discussion on its underlying philosophy and theology, which are profoundly centered on relational healing and the dignity of the human person. Christian writers including St. Pope John Paul II, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Josef Pieper, Madeline L’Engle, Dr. Bob Schuchts, Makoto Fujimura, and Andrew Peterson inform an exploration of mercy, forgiveness, and love as self-gift in the context of illustration and storytelling …