Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Naomi Annetta Mitchell D.Min.

This project focuses on the role of the delivery of pastoral care during the preaching moment as a means of cultivating, facilitating, and strengthening healthy marriages in the context of the Black church. The benefits of combining pastoral care, sermon preparation, and preaching in a retreat setting to several married couples are explored. Designed to help couples develop healthy relationship skills and competencies, the sermons provide biblical references, theological information, and practical tools of pastoral counselors. I show through contextual practice how couples learn skills and receive tools to assist them with cultivating a healthy marriage. I believe this type of pastoral care preaching is an essential homiletical practice to facilitate healthy marriages.

Rebecca J. Girrell D.Min.

No Longer Servants, but Friends: Toward a Relational Approach to Spiritual Leadership Development is a participatory action research project in which the pastor-researcher and the leadership development team (LDT) of a small United Methodist congregation worked collaboratively to shift the team’s mindset and methods from nominations to leadership development. Using a shared leadership model and tools of appreciative inquiry, the pastor-researcher encouraged the LDT to identify gaps in the church’s leadership system and brainstorm and implement possible solutions. The intervention took place during the 2019-2020 program year and was, therefore, affected by the unanticipated challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the pastor-researcher’s move to a different church. This allowed the pastor-researcher to observe the LDT’s shift in mindset and methods under the pressure of these circumstances.
The pastor-researcher observed the LDT’s process and outcomes and evaluated the members’ self-reported experiences via questionnaire, group interviews, and meeting transcripts. The key findings of the study illustrated that the LDT members experienced their process favorably, especially as evidenced by adopting the collaborative and systemic approaches they experienced in the intervention and applying these approaches to their work with other church leaders. Additionally, the study found that LDT members reported reduced anxiousness in their tasks, increased confidence in their effectiveness, and strong commitment to their shift in mindset, even in the face of the unanticipated crises. Most LDT members attributed these positive experiences to aspects of the intervention, including shared purpose, understanding of the church leadership system, collaborative leadership, and relationship with the pastor-researcher. The pastor-researcher identified opportunity for further study regarding long-term effects of such interventions and the impacts of interpersonal relationships, particularly with the pastor, on the experience and process of church leadership development.

Edwin Cotto-Pérez D.Min.

LA PREDICACIÓN COMO ELEMENTO DE TRANSFORMACIÓN Y ACOMPAÑAMIENTO PASTORAL EN MEDIO DE UNA COMUNIDAD MULTICULTURAL EN TIEMPOS DE PANDEMIA

This thesis project has been developed with a qualitative method to respond to the homiletical problem of how preaching can be an essential element in the intentional effort to provide pastoral care that promotes transformation, encouragement, accompaniment, and spiritual care to congregations and community viewers of religious services through Tamiami United Methodist Church in Miami, Florida, USA. The thesis also proposes how the church can become available to care for the pain, grievance, difficulty, and anguish in times of a health emergency and economic contraction such as COVID-19.

Yoon-Seok Choi D.Min.

This project examines the spiritual growth of Korean immigrant Christians through a set of spiritual formation retreats. The key concept of the retreats is to cultivate well-balanced spiritual life for Korean Christians. With three retreat participants, the researcher is seeking a tangible foundation for accomplishing a deepened spiritual life. While the Korean churches strived to achieve quantitative growth in a short time, they relatively did not pay much attention to the spiritual realm in thousands of years of Christian history. Marjorie J. Thompson provides a well-balanced spiritual formation retreat tool with her book “Soul Feast.” This book is used for the main tool for the intervention. Soul Feast contains ten sessions of spiritual formation themes including the spiritual thirst followed by reading the Word, prayer, common worship, worth of Sabbath, self-emptying, brief information of spiritual direction, hospitality, and making rule of life. The researcher facilitates the retreats for the participants so that they can experience a broaden realm of spiritual practice tradition. With pre and post in-depth interviews, the research examines the differences of each individual participant’s spiritual life practices. By interpreting the results, the researcher tries to find the positive factors as well as limitations found in the intervention.

D Clare Biedenharn D.Min.

Listening is a quality indicator in patient-centered care. Working within the paradigm of the Quaker listening model, as described by activist and educator Parker J. Palmer and others, the intentional use of a spiritually based therapeutic listening model is an effective tool used by the Registered Nurse (RN) in working with patients and their families in making decisions in critical care settings. This project seeks to gauge the outcome of intentional use of this proven and effective model by the RN as both a tool for improving patient care as well as personal spiritual awareness measured through the Daily Religious Experience Scale.

Scott Eugene Carnes D.Min.

The special requirements of preaching during appointive change has long been overlooked with few resources available to provide much-needed assistance. The work required for effective preaching during appointive change has critical elements that are difficult to navigate without an existing pastoral relationship with the congregation and community. This thesis describes a process that incorporates specific and direct attention to elements of change and vulnerability. It offers methods and models for enabling effective preaching during appointive change through deep connection between the congregation and the preacher. This process offers a plan for healthy pastoral transition and contextualized preaching from a place of vulnerability.

Yvette Denise Massey D.Min.

This project addresses the question of whether good preaching can cause congregational growth. The location of the work was two Black churches in the North Georgia Conference of The United Methodist Church and included preaching a variety of sermons, followed by congregational research on the influence of the sermons on church growth. Through this project, the thesis on which this work was based, that church growth was a direct result of good preaching, changed to recognize that while preaching alone does not cause church growth, it is one of many significant factors in the decision to join a church. The project reveals that a comprehensive church system that includes elements such as preaching, outreach, nurture, Christian education, evangelism, and worship, is necessary to impact congregational growth.

Deborah Suikhinmawi D.Min.

Preaching provides the opportunity to express God’s everlasting love, care, and presence, and to nourish a healthy self-esteem in the hearers as beloved children of God. This thesis project focuses on preaching that aims at instilling in its hearers the truth of their identity as people valued by God. It is concerned with the development of a message that restores self-esteem to persons who have experienced persecution, discrimination, and systematic oppression that have stripped them of their self-worth. Preaching the affirming truth of God’s love, care, and presence has the power to heal, remove self-doubts, restore confidence, and rejuvenate spirits of those individuals being dismissed as refugees, immigrants, or socially and culturally other.

Temaki Carr D.Min.

The Legacy of Hope stares into the future, a future that seems riddled with change and transition, and ponders how best to serve a transforming community. Mt. Hope Baptist Church is a historically African American church nestled in a moderately rural Virginia community, which is in the midst of an enormous population, socioeconomic, and demographic transition. How will this community transition impact Mt. Hope? The purpose of the research was to determine what effect, if any, a relational meeting campaign and two multicultural, multiracial Christian education classes would have on incorporating multicultural, nonblack attendees into the life of Mt. Hope Baptist Church. The research determined that the threshold to incorporate multicultural, nonblack attendees into the life of Mt. Hope Baptist church has been traversed. The formal and informal relational meeting campaign with key leaders and nonblack worship attendees as well as two Christian education classes influenced the five measurement protocols towards a propensity of acceptance to multicultural ministry.

Dava Cruise Hensley D.Min.

Grief and Loss are ever present in the life of the church. Death, illness, and change are ongoing events in the gathered community. Such loss is often accompanied by grief and at times, unrecognized and therefore, unresolved. This thesis is directed at naming unresolved grief and through intentional preaching which address grief, offers a legitimate and helpful way to address grief and can be the beginning of the process for healing to move through grief to wholeness using preaching as a tool of pastoral care. In this study, a Parish Support Group (PSG) selected from members of the congregation met before and after the preaching moments to evaluate if grief acknowledged from the pulpit allowed the congregation to begin to name grief. Interviews, questionnaires, and narrative stories were used in the evaluation process by the PSG and congregation. The logic method was used as evaluation of the resources needed to work through grief made changes in the community in vital ways. The congregation displayed evidence of movement as the grieving process was addressed being more willing to move beyond the pews and serve more in the neighborhood.