Bible--Study

Carvil Antoney Richards D.Min.

This portfolio aimed to develop a collaborative model with six young adults of the Rosthern Seventh-day Adventist Church, Saskatchewan, to increase their confidence for preaching. A three-phase process was required to train the small group. The first phase involved allowing a few young adults to discuss the implication of an assigned Bible passage through the inductive Bible study method. The second phase involved training them to preach; the third phase allowed them to preach. For this portfolio, only the first phase was examined. The participants’ involvement included choosing four Bible passages to develop into four sermons.
This portfolio has V chapters. Chapter I is the introduction, which gives a general overview of the portfolio while chapter II focuses on the researcher’s personal journey and ministry context. Chapter III is about the author’s philosophy of leadership, which governed and guided his ministry practice; chapter IV examines the field research; and chapter V is the conclusion and implication.
The data collection methods used for this research were reflective journaling, participant observation and a survey. While there were things that could have been done differently in the research for a more effective outcome, the project’s conclusion revealed that the young adults’ confidence was increased through their contributions in the group collaboration.

Shane A. Patrick D.Min.

The past decade in American culture has increasingly become an exercise in deconstructionism in almost every way imaginable. The cultural touchstones of recent years include racially motivated protesting and rioting, claims of systematic racism and white supremacy, climate crisis, record-level inflation, a rise in cultural interest in neo-Marxist and socialist ideas, supply-chain gridlock, claims of election fraud, and record-high crime rates throughout the country. Another of these cultural touchstones, and the contextual focus of this project, is the active attempt of America’s increasingly secular culture to deconstruct and redefine sex, gender, and other sexual norms. The zeitgeist of this cultural moment includes a decoupling of sex and gender, and an attempt to encourage and normalize transgender identities and/or gender fluidity. This cultural deconstructionism also runs contra to the Christian worldview and Judeo-Christian values which introduces unique theological and ecclesiological challenges within the local church context. Among these challenges is the question of how to faithfully approach local church membership decisions with candidates who personally experience the burdens of gender ideology—which is the focus of this project.

Tami F Hooker D.Min.

Incarcerated men often feel abandoned by God. Those feelings of abandonment result in their avoiding the church even if they have been raised in it, in religion shopping or choosing their own understanding of and way of relating to the divine over any religion, and in overt religiosity, Implications of this are that the men no longer identify themselves as children of God as defined by the Christian faith. For some, it means they have no relationship with God or with the Church as a whole or the congregation within prison walls. This work takes a look at prison as exile and exile as trauma using the exile and the trauma that resulted from it as described in the Hebrew Scriptures for comparison. The intervention is a Bible study based on narrative theology that inmates from a state prison created and that I facilitated and evaluated in a county jail. The study is titled "Where was God?" It was created so men could hear stories similar to their own and recognize that those telling them are aware that God had been present in their stories and also explore where similar stories had occurred in Scripture. The authors chose ten topics to explore. They were: where was God when I was hurt, felt alone, felt ashamed, was afraid, was pretending, felt invisible, felt un-forgiven and was unforgiving, felt desperate and in despair. It concludes by asking where was God when I felt hope and when I felt love. The hope was that this would help the participants to see their own stories as part of a divine narrative, which would lead them to build a more authentic relationship to God and healthier relationships with others.

Tony Liang D.Min.

The mission of the church was expressed as to build a fruitful cruciformational community of Christ that glorifies God. To do that in the postmodern and post Christendom age, a missional church would need the full utilization of the ministry of the Word. in all its forms for all levels, from personal to congregational. It required developing ministry expressions that properly adapt to the very complex and rapidly changed ministry context, and at the same time that ensured these expressions to be firmly rooted in the Biblical foundation and centered in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The theological vision that was derived from the theological framework for the given ministry context was key to fulfill that purpose effectively. This project was a discipleship training pilot program for all ministry leaders.

The program first presented to the trainees the big picture of how the ministry of the Word transformed the lives of believers as holy priests through the worshiping lives of the church to produce fruitful results. It then taught the trainees the process of utilizing it: to build the theological framework that was the foundation of ministry, to develop the ministry platforms that enabled effective ministry utilization, and to derive the theological vision that connected the Biblical foundation to the ministry expression for
given ministry contexts.

The results from the evaluation of the program showed that the project had reached the initial goals in understanding the basic concepts and their theological foundation. However, the program had too much content. Therefore, the trainees could not explore the three catalysts fully and had not reached one of the goals associated with them (to have the basic skill to apply those catalysts in ministry).

Ye Yeong Park

This thesis begins with raising question of how to overcome the identity crisis of North Korean refugees as the reunification is drawing closer. From the sense of difference, this paper analyses the identity crisis of North Korean refugees who are currently residing in South Korea and observe how they become surmounting the conflict through bible studies. North Korean Refugees will play a critical role as a bridge in interaction with North Koreans as the reunification is coming closer. Accordingly, this paper aims to prove that North Korean Refugee Christians, who have experienced both systems of socialism and capitalism, are right persons to be acted a medium that eventually connects Two Koreas.

[Note about entry: Abstract submitted to the Atla RIM database on behalf of the author. The text appears in its entirety as it does in the original abstract page of the author’s project paper. Neither words nor content have been edited.]

Nathan Opsata D.Min.

This major project created a step-by-step process to help youth ministry leaders plan their youth ministry year. The planning tool was especially designed to guide volunteer-led teams of smaller churches through the planning process in a systematic and complete way by recognizing the strengths and limitations of smaller churches and volunteer leaders. The main deliverables of the step-by-step planning process were to evaluate existing programming, divide the leadership team according to gifting, and to develop a set of guiding documents, including a directory, programming calendar, weekly template with job descriptions, and teaching schedule.

Five smaller evangelical churches were given the tool prior to planning their programming. Interviewing leaders from these youth ministry teams revealed that the tool was helpful in each church, especially for evaluating the success of programming objectives and generating ideas of changes to make. However, the step-by-step process did not allow teams to easily select which components they wished to use and was difficult to adapt for solo-led youth ministries. Furthermore, some ministries and leaders resisted implementing the systems-approach, especially formal job descriptions, in their smaller, family-style ministries.

Makito Watanabe

This project was an effort to reach Japanese-speaking non-Christians living in Honolulu for Christ. The project involved the use of

Yu-Ru Chu

This dissertation is about a biblical study centered on the Messiah concept and its application in church. The first three chapters discussed the main theme of Messiah in the Bible to derive the conclusion that the whole Bible is centered on the Messiah and how this concept relates to the Book of Matthew and John toward worship. The fourth chapter illustrates what the author's church (Fullerton Church) has applied the Messianic Presence as the center of missions and how cross-cultural mission has become the way of worshipping the Lord by her Church.

Kelly R Cupples

It was hypothesized by the researcher that a program of habitual, meditative Bible reading would transformationally effectuate a stronger ability in GenXers and Millennials at Life Fellowship church to hear God's voice. Using a quantitative approach, data was accumulated after twelve weeks of instruction and application of the Bible reading method with the goal of hearing God. While results were modestly positive, the researcher concluded that though people indicated their desire to hear God, it is difficulty for many to establish and maintain the habit of meditative Bible reading for that purpose.

Otis W Cutler

The aim of this project is to observe if distinct teachings regarding Christian discipleship that are offered by Rebirth Ministries can enhance the Self-Esteem of adult African-Americans.