The study is an exploration of pastoral leadership from the perspectives of members of the congregation within an Australian Chinese congregational church. The congregational form of church government is one of the governing structures within the Protestant churches. This kind of church operates under a democratic voting system in which each member of the congregation has an equal voice regarding church administration. Most Australian Chinese congregational churches consist of different generations of Chinese Christians. Research indicates that Chinese Australians’ length of residence in Australia is closely linked to their identification with Australian culture. As such, the values, beliefs and attitudes of different generations of Chinese Christians might be different as a result of acculturation. These generational differences will in turn affect the decision making processes of church administration and the approaches to pastoral leadership of the senior pastor. In the past, issues of pastoral leadership have mainly been discussed from theological perspectives. Nowadays, studies of pastoral leadership have been more varied. However, there is still relatively little scholarly empirical research concerning pastoral leadership in a congregational church setting, especially from an intergenerational perspective. In this study, four dimensions of pastoral leadership are identified, namely the personal, organisational, religious and cultural dimensions. The epistemology and theoretical perspective governing the research study is constructionism and interpretivism respectively. Case study has been employed as the methodology. The strategies of data collection include questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, direct observation and document analysis. Rich data is analysed by using the framework of Spencer, Ritchie and O’Connor (2003). The findings of the research revealed differing perceptions among different generations of Australian-Chinese Christians about the pastoral leadership of the senior pastor within an Australian Chinese congregational church. Differences in the perceptions about the pastoral leadership of the senior pastor were also found between groups of lay leaders and church members. Results indicated that a variety of leadership approaches were used by church pastors when they were dealing with different generations of Australian-Chinese Christians in the church. The findings identified the personal characteristics of the senior pastor as the most influential factor in the pastor’s leadership effectiveness, with the organisational, religious and cultural factors also perceived to influence the leadership effectiveness of the senior pastor within the research context. The research presents a conceptual framework for the exploration of pastoral leadership which may be useful for further research. This framework draws attention to the four dimensions of pastoral leadership, namely the personal, organisational, religious and cultural dimensions. The research findings suggest that attention given to these dimensions may enhance both the leadership of church pastors and the growth and development of churches in similar contexts.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Logos Evangelical Seminary, 2003. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 206-216).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Logos Evangelical Seminary, 2003. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 206-216).

This study is innovative in that it draws together the concepts of suggestion from several cultural groups and develops an inventory to account for variations the occurrence of scale to studies the relatively new area of the effects of suggestion in classrooms and compares effect on personality and academic variables. As new ideas and knowledge become more widespread and accepted by the community and teaching profession, precision in the applications of suggestion in the classroom is being seen as more important. Although new to education, suggestion and similar variations has always been central to influencing behaviour and learning among pastoral, counseling and hypnotherapy fields. Teachers who had experience or influence from those fields or the ideas of Lozanov (1978) or accelerated learning groups were and are more the exception than the rule. However, as new ideas become more influential, the influence of suggestion in is becoming increasingly important in progressive, modern education. A major goal of the study was to provide a valid instrument to compare Chinese and Australian differences and similarities in use of suggestion in learning. It was hoped that such a comparison would provide increased mutual understanding of values, strategies, practices and preferences by teachers and students. A second goal was to develop a causative model that explained the relationships between the measured variables of personality and learning behaviour and suggestion in teaching and learning.. A third aim was to make a comparison on effects and performance of suggestion in teaching and learning in Australian, Chinese and Australian accelerative learning classes. This study examined differences between Australian and Chinese high school Science classrooms in their use of suggestion in teaching and learning. To ascertain the prevalence and types of suggestion in the classroom the 39-item suggestion in teaching and learning (STL) scale was developed and validated v in Year 7, 9, and 11 high school classes in China and Australia. The STL scale categorized suggestion into the following types or subscales: Selfsuggestion, metaphor, indirect non-verbal suggestion, general spoken suggestion, negative suggestion, intuitive suggestion, direct verbal suggestion, relaxation, and de-suggestion. The study involved surveying 344 participants (n=182 female, n=162 male) from four high schools in Australia and China. A further 374 participants (n=108 teachers, n=266 students) from six high schools were surveyed for selecting a Chinese sample in a pilot study. About 284 participants (China: 200 students; Australia: 84 students [includes 8 adults]) were observed for validation of the STL instrument. All subjects and classes were randomly selected and were surveyed and observed for the purpose of scale and model development. The STL scale was found to be capable of distinguishing different types of suggestion within Chinese, Australian, and Australian Accelerative Learning classes. The STL scale was significant as a first scale to measure suggestion in teaching and learning in Australian and Chinese classrooms. Items in the scale were strongly and significantly correlated with other items within the subscales and with the overall scale. Path analytic techniques were used to explain relationships between the STL scale, its subscales, nation, gender and high school students profiles on stress, depression, learning styles and academic grades. Limitations of the study included problems arising from language and cultural differences as well as newness of the scale and the field of study. Recommendations for further study included strengthening aspects of the scale with new items and further qualitative and quantitative studies on the uses of suggestion in academic learning and other forms of change in childhood and adolescence.

Chinese compradors, official managers, and overseas Chinese capitalists have received scholarly attention of late with special notice to studying their contributions to China’s industrial modernization. This thesis shifts this emphasis to seeing these three groups of Chinese merchants as types of Chinese capitalist middlemen, whose principal efforts were in the commercial sector during the late Qing and early Republican periods. Specifically, it focuses on their activities within Shanghai’s International Settlements, where the openings for entrepreneurial innovation could be made the most of with little interference from Chinese state officials. The market created by Chinese capitalist middlemen is distinguished from the greater Chinese economy by its concentration in Shanghai’s International Settlements and its being a commercial revolution. Particularly, this thesis links entrepreneurial business history with New Institutional Economics by placing the entrepreneur at the heart of Chinese commercial development beginning in the 1860s. It investigates how the above three types of middlemen’s commercial activities impacted the structural organization of the traditional family firm, reshaping this organization into a modern operation. As the traditional Chinese family firm emerged in a political institutional framework that both favored firms’ risk reduction and official sponsorship, Chinese capitalist middlemen played a part in structurally re-organizing the family firm into the modern firm. Chinese entrepreneurial behavior arose through a social process of bridging, which occurred through Chinese middlemen’s daily interactive commercial activities in Western firms in Shanghai. In the cases of compradors, these acculturated practices were employed in their own family firms and reflected a novel risk-taking pattern wherein they engaged in new fields of enterprise. In the cases of guandu shangban enterprises, official managers evolved these firms to absorb the pricing mechanism and lower transaction costs to benefit customers and the firm’s revenue. In the cases of returned overseas Chinese capitalists, in this thesis Australian ones are examined, they capitalized their department stores’ operations through reinvesting overseas Chinese surplus income that had traditionally been returned as remittances home to China. All of them fashioned a cosmopolitan view of themselves and fostered a moral view that combined Confucian and Christian ethics giving rise to a notion of human capital as a form of commercial welfare. / Graduate

This thesis contributes to the ongoing discussion of modern Chinese identity by pro-viding a case study of Cheok Hong CHEONG. It necessarily considers Australian atti-tudes towards the Chinese during the 19th century, not least the White Australia Pol-icy. The emergence of that discriminatory immigration policy over the second half of the 19th century until its national implementation in 1901 provides the background to the thesis. Cheong was the leading figure among Chinese-Australian Christians and a prominent figure in the Australian Chinese community and the thesis seeks to iden-tify a man whose contribution has largely been shadowy in other studies or, more commonly, overlooked by the parochialism of colony/state emphasis in many histo-ries of Australia. His role in the Christian church fills a space in Victorian religious history. Although Cheong accumulated great wealth he was not part of the Chinese mer-chant class of the huagong/huaquiao traditions of the overseas Chinese diaspora of the 19th and 20th centuries. His wealth was accumulated through property investments following the spectacular collapse of the Victorian banking system during the 1890s. His community leadership role arose through his position in the Christian Church rather than, as was generally the case, through business. His English language skills, resulting from his church association, were the key to his role as a Chinese community spokesman.¶ Cheok Hong Cheong left an archive of some 800 documents in the English lan-guage covering the major people, incidents and concerns of his life and times. His Let-terbooks, together with the archives of the various Christian missions to the Chinese in Australia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, shed light on one person’s life and more broadly, through his involvements on the complex relationships of Chinese emigrants, with the often unsympathetic majority of Australians.¶ This is a case study of a Chinese identity formed outside China and influenced by a wider set of cultural influences than any other Chinese-Australian of his time —an identity that justifies the description of him as an ‘Alien Son’. Cheong’s story is a con-tribution to the urban and family history of an important ethnic sub-group within the wider immigrant history of Australia.¶ While Cheong remained a Chinese subject his identification with Australia cannot be questioned. All his children were born in Australia and he left just twice after his arrival in 1863. He visited England in 1891-2 and in 1906 he briefly visited China. Identity and culture issues are growing in importance as part of the revived relation-ship between the Chinese of the diaspora and the economic renewal of the People’s Republic of China and this thesis is offers a contribution to that discussion.