Ministry

Thelma Herrera Flores

The purpose of this research is to develop a United Methodist ministry with Hispanic migrant and seasonal agricultural workers, also known as Campesinos, in the United States of America. The Campesinos encounter numerous struggles that go beyond the poverty of living standards, food, and education. This study will address a specific problem within the communities of Campesinos. Namely, the lack of spiritual leadership and guidance by clergy and laypersons within the church.

My methodology includes the development of an educational program that will enable churches to understand the plight of the Campesinos through bible study, testimonials, watching selected portions of videos, singing, and sharing fellowship Campesino meals. All with the purpose of stirring the church’s heart to action and leading them to a hands-on ministry with the migrant agricultural farm workers.

It is my hope that the United Methodist Church will reach out to the Campesinos to help them discover that Christ is walking next to them in the crop rows and drinking with them from the irrigation ditches. I believe in the beauty manifested through God’s love. The same love that can allow us to see that we are all the same. We all need Jesus.

Adam Chochran

The purpose of this project was to develop a holistic strategy to enhance religious support for the 135th Expeditionary Sustainment Command of the Alabama National Guard. There is a difficulty for National Guard Chaplains to cover units based on monthly schedules, unit locations, and staff requirements. This can serve as a hindrance to religious support to subordinate units. The project director will investigate the needs of religious support down to the company level. This will provide the information needed to assess the religious support needs. The project director will identify resources necessary to enhance the religious support strategy. The project director will identify personnel that will help in the holistic religious support strategy, in accordance with the command master religious plan. The holistic religious support strategy will guide religious support in the 135th Expeditionary Sustainment Command and its subordinate unit ministry teams.

Amy E. Dows

This project compares the expectations of churches providing intentional disability ministries with the expectations of members affected by disability. Questionnaires were developed for churches with disability ministries and for members or families affected by disability. The comparison of these questionnaires provides a glimpse into the expectations held by families and churches that provide disability ministry. According to the results of this survey, families tend to seek a faith community where their entire family is included and supported. They also believe that the church benefits by welcoming individuals with disabilities. Churches, in general, strive to provide a place that is welcoming to all but with little attention given to issues of assimilation, and churches tend to see little or no benefit to the congregation through including families affected by disability other than in ways that trivialize disability as charitable acts to those in need. Although these churches seek to meet the needs of families affected by disability, issues of assimilation to cultural norms and trivialization of disability continue to impact the practice of disability ministry.

Blake Cordaris Allen D.Min.

Replanting efforts fulfill God’s desire for spiritual flourishing and gospel advancement. The goal of church replanting is to go from dying to flourishing. There is no pleasure found in the closing of a church that bears the name of Christ. For this reason, dying churches need biblical solutions to address their current conditions. The purpose of this project was to develop a replanting strategy to equip Living Hope Dunbar Cave to reach the unchurched in Central Clarksville, Tennessee. Chapter 1 presents the history and ministry context of Living Hope Dunbar Cave and the goals of this project. Chapter 2 provides an exegesis of three passages of Scripture (Ezek. 37:1-6; Rev. 3:1–6; Acts 2:40–47) to show that replanting efforts fulfill God’s desire for spiritually flourishing churches and gospel advancement. Chapter 3 presents the practical reasons for church replanting, including biblical stewardship, encouragement, and community vibrancy through gospel advancement. Chapter 4 describes the details and descriptions of the project itself, recounting the project goals, content, and teaching methodology of the eight-week series. Chapter 5 evaluates the effectiveness of the project based on the completion of the project goals. Ultimately, this project intended to take the first step in equipping churches for church replanting.

Michael Christopher Gayle Dr. D.Ed.Min.

Matthew 28:18-20 records Jesus’s command to His disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations,” a passage of Scripture referred to as the Great Commission. This command is at the heart of what should be the life mission of Christians today. Christians have found it increasingly difficult to execute this mission successfully for a variety of reasons. In today’s cultural environment, a level of resistance to the Word of God often renders conventional methods of sharing the gospel ineffective. In the face of this resistance, it is necessary for approaches to be developed by which unbelievers can be reached. This project sought to identify some of the issues that create obstacles to having meaningful discussions with unbelievers, and develop a method to help Christians bridge the gap between misperceptions and scriptural reality.

James Robert Jordan Jr D.Min.

This project attempts to develop and train attendees of Northeast Houston Baptist Church—a church in Humble, Texas—in the vision, discipleship model, and evangelism strategy of the church to produce new leaders, which can be developed for the purpose of continued church planting in the Houston area. Chapter 1 presents the history and ministry context of Northeast Houston Baptist Church and the goals this project seeks to accomplish. Chapter 2 offers a biblical overview of the call for a local church to develop new leaders for the purpose of serving in the kingdom of God through leadership and planting new churches. Chapter 3 provides a historical overview of leadership development in the local church. Chapter 4 describes the project itself, including methodology utilized to evaluate each objective and assess the project’s completion. Chapter 5 evaluates the success of the project and furnishes some lessons learned along the way. The end goal of this project is to provide Northeast Houston Baptist Church a resource that it can use to train new members, future church planters, and pastors who are looking to implement a healthy church model for the glory of God in their individual contexts.

Andrew Chapman

The purpose of this project was to design a strategy for a comprehensive ministry-intern framework for Temple Baptist Church, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The project director led a selected team to design a strategy in order to develop a framework for an intern program. The strategy included a combination of best practices gleaned from the research of various models of ministry internships and a summary of past, present, and future intern use determined through an internal audit of Temple Baptist Church. The project director concluded the project by presenting the strategy to the Strategic Leadership Team of Temple Baptist Church.

This student submitted an Abstract that was shorter than the 100 word minimum.

Fitsum Kebede Tsige D.Min.

Migration has increasingly shifting the social demography of global and gateway cities into a complex and diversified places. Simultaneously, there is a great call for a new model of church ministry and urban missions. It is an absolute obscurity to think migrants are living in a vacuum, isolated and without having any attachment in the places of their settlements. Some research projects that focused on migrant communities in the past took ethnic group as a unit of analysis; some migrant church leaders also ignore the fact that the basic principle of Christianity prioritizes our identity in Christ over any ethnic distinctiveness. Contrary to the previous approaches this study inquired the non-ethnic interaction of a migrant community.

As much as there are numerous causes that drive people away from their homelands, a number of drawing reasons to settle to their new places. Similarly, alterity and prejudice on one side and the ‘search for national identity’ on the other are ‘push-pull factors’ in shifting Christian migrants from the mainstream churches to the establishment migrant churches. The question which is often asked, ‘‘why so many African Christians broke their ties with traditional missionary societies and joined the newly emerging churches?’’ remained to be a subject for discussion. Migration should not be seen as a negative social scenario but it is an opportunity to enrich diversity both in a social and in the body of Christ. It is also a prospect for urban missions which migrants’ churches are increasingly taking the lions share...

Jeremy Daniel Morton D.Min.

The homiletical starting point and methodology outlined by Brown, Jr., Clinard, and Northcutt in Steps to the Sermon significantly influenced the sermon preparation and delivery of Rastus Salter but prove problematic when viewed through the lens of text-driven preaching.

It can be difficult to determine the specific moment actual sermon preparation begins. In one sense, a preacher has been preparing his entire life. In another sense, the sacred responsibility of filling the pulpit and faithfully delivering God’s Word on a weekly basis demands focus, freshness, and intentionality on the part of the preacher to know his text in a way that can only be cultivated through the discipline of study and preparation.

Jenifer Christine Wakefield D.Ed.Min.

January 22, 1973, opened the door for legally obtaining abortion upon demand. This legal decision allowed women from all levels of society to have abortions. The psychological impacts of abortion touch the local church as four out of ten women who have chosen abortion attend a church. Planned Parenthood [PP], the world’s largest abortion provider—reports 43 percent of all women will experience abortion at least once by forty-five years of age.
The American Psychological Association [APA] denies the existence of psychological distress after abortion. The reader will soon discover the contradictory nature of the 2008 APA report and the stance of the Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion [TFMHA] whether or not abortion causes a negative psychological impact. Through specific research, the project will show that women who choose abortion and experience adverse effects need to be able to turn to the local church, and the local church needs to have trained leaders in restorative care ministries to help post-abortive women. This project will reveal the links between abortion and negative psychological impacts and possible long-term physical and emotional issues. Finally, this project will suggest a ministry training model for leaders in the church through biblical counseling.
Chapter 1 shows the history of abortion and its impacts on women. Chapter 2 contrasts how the world and evangelical church care for post-abortive women. Chapter 3 reveals the results of an anonymous survey of ministry leaders and why a need exists for biblical counseling in the church. Chapter 4 explains why discipleship and biblical counseling are needed for women. Finally, chapter 5 presents a training model on how to help post-abortive women in the church through biblical counseling.