The supervision of students for ministry is of primary importance for the Church today. In a context where religion is becoming increasingly privatised and the Church increasingly marginalised, not only are there fewer candidates presenting for ministry, and fewer ministers, the challenges facing these ministers become ever more complex. Although the study of theology is basic to the exercise of ministry, the skills for ministry are learned on placement, where a student engages in the practice of ministry supervised by an experienced and trained minister. It is from this supervisor that the trainee minister learns how to deal with the complexities of ministry today. It follows, therefore, that the training given to such supervisors must be developed to take account of the changing role of ministry. The Church of Scotland has an intensive training course for these supervisors whom I will refer to as ‘formational supervisors’. This thesis aims to evaluate this training to ascertain the extent to which it equips formational supervisors for the task. To do this, I interviewed six formational supervisors and the six probationer ministers on placement in their congregations to determine the extent to which supervisory practice was sharpened and enhanced by the Church of Scotland’s current training programme, where any weaknesses lay, and, therefore, whether the training was fit for purpose. The results of my research show that the training offered is very good but could be excellent. I outline the strengths and weaknesses of the training as it is currently configured and suggest areas for development. I make ten recommendations for improvements to the training. I also identify the characteristics of the formational supervisor which sets this type of supervision apart from pastoral or clinical supervision. This is significant in enabling appropriate training in formational supervision. The results of the research, while being of importance for the training of formational supervisors of ministry students in the Church of Scotland, have wider application. These results would also be helpful for reflecting on training in other churches and could be developed for the training of formational supervisors in any discipline.

From 1830 to 1960 the parish ministry of the clergy of the Church of England underwent a transformation, which was expressed in the gradual abandonment of the parson model and the adoption of the professional model. Staffordshire provides a good case-study area because of its wide variety of urban and rural parishes where this development can be assessed. Amongst the many causes of the change, the population size of the parishes and the sources of clerical funding are considered to be crucially important. The evidence suggests that where parishes exceeded 2000 people and where the worshiping community became the main provider of financial support, the parson model was increasingly difficult to operate. Out of necessity, and sometimes subconsciously, the clergy developed a model with significant professional features, even though the parson model continued to be promoted as the ideal. There was a narrowing of the remit of the clergy and within their local communities they were less involved and less influential. If as a consequence the incarnational aspect of local ministry has been eroded then there are far reaching implications. This study shows how practical circumstances, such as those that relate to geography and economics, although not always recognised, have an important effect upon the practice and the theology of ministry.

The topic of this thesis is black virus disinfection using mobile agents. The black virus is a faulty node that destroys any visiting agent without leaving a trace; moreover, once the black virus is triggered by an agent, it clones itself and spreads to neighbouring nodes. These viruses can only be destroyed if they move to nodes that have been occupied by agents. In this thesis, we consider the black virus disinfection problem in chordal rings. Initially, the system contains a single black virus that resides at an unknown location. We propose a solution that involves deploying a team of mobile agents to locate the original black virus and to prevent further damage once it has been triggered. Our protocol is divided into two phases: 1) searching the graph until the black virus is found and triggered and 2) sending agents to occupy the neighbouring nodes of the black virus in order to trigger and destroy all the black viruses at once. Our solutions are monotone, meaning that once a node has been explored it is protected from re-infection. In order to measure the efficiency of our protocol we consider the total number of agents required for disinfection, the overall number of black viruses and the number of moves required by the agents. We then analyze the cost of all our solutions, providing optimal bounds for some classes of chordal rings.

This study is concerned with the nature of pastoral care and its practice in contemporary British Methodism. Both aspects are explored by means of postal surveys of Methodist ministers, local preachers and other lay members, as well as case study interviews with circuit ministers. These explorations take place in the context of a brief historical overview of the roots of Methodism and a characterisation of the theological viewpoints and spirituality of respondents, which are correlated with the findings of an earlier Anglican study. At the same time a detailed portrait is painted of the biography and ministry of both ministers and local preachers as an aid to understanding their contribution to pastoral care. The nature of pastoral care is discussed and a working definition proposed which emphasises the importance of nurture rather than crisis-oriented care. The perceptions of ministers and local preachers regarding their understanding of the nature of pastoral care are examined, and the influence of theological viewpoint, gender and age is explored. Pastoral practice within Methodism is evaluated and some difficulties and areas of weakness are pin-pointed. Comparison of the perceptions and practice of pastoral care reveals that whereas ministers have a balanced view of pastoral care, frequently such care tends to be crisis-oriented and ministers driven rather than in control of the task: essentially reactive rather than pro-active. A weakness of pastoral care is that it tends to be centred on the full-time professional rather than involving the whole community of faith. It is argued that the divisions between lay and ordained members of the church need to be removed in order to permit effective pastoral care. A working model of pastoral care is proposed, within a Methodist context, which emphasises the functional nature of full-time personnel and the importance of local leadership.

This thesis examines the role and importance of numerical data for the Church of Scotland in relation to areas of mission and planning at a time when the Church of Scotland has experienced sustained numerical decline in formal membership and in church attendance. Within the various chapters of this work, the historical connection of the national church with numerical information is charted, detailing the long association it has had with the gathering and assessment of statistical data. The role of data as a valid component within an understanding of practical theology is discussed as is the connection between mission and measurement through an assessment of ‘data rich’ missiological schemes, including the Church Growth Movement, Healthy Church and the Natural Church Development Process. Three significant surveys of Church of Scotland leaders examine whether the national Census of 2011 and other statistical information was considered useful to local clergy for strategic purposes. Ministers were surveyed about their use of data prior to and following the release of the 2011 census data. They were subsequently surveyed following distribution of initial data from the Scottish Churches Census of 2016. This study therefore provides essential insights into the use made and the value held by ministers of data of this nature. The analysis carried out encourages the Church of Scotland nationally to further develop and enhance data provision for the benefit of their leaders. The response of the Church of Scotland to numerical decline has been to engage in an exercise of managed organisational planning in partnership with presbyteries. This thesis includes a critical examination of presbytery planning by the Church of Scotland and an attempt by one presbytery to utilise quantitative data as its key determinant for ministry allocation. The case studies undertaken identify a range of issues, some being attitudinal in nature and others, practical. An additional case study provided insight into the extent to which strategic information was available within a local congregational setting and the part it played in local decision making. The practical nature of this thesis is evidenced in a wide-ranging list of recommendations offered to the Church of Scotland towards the creation of a new organisational framework for dealing with data, new training offered to church leaders and the enhanced provision of data for use in planning and mission - nationally, regionally and locally.

This interdisciplinary cultural studies research uses critical discourse analysis to review the four political declarations on HIV & AIDS adopted by the United Nations in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016. Religion is implicated in the tensions and conflicts around issues of HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights in the negotiations that hinders consensus, resulting in compromises and omissions in the texts. The research identifies four dominant discourses in the declarations and an additional two in the wider HIV response of relevance to these tensions; a public health, biomedical discourse; a human rights, gender equality and community engagement discourse; political discourses of leadership and national sovereignty; and a traditional religio-cultural discourse. In the wider HIV response a broader religious discourse and secularist discourse are evident but missing from the text of the declarations. This critical discourse analysis of the declarations investigates how the discourses interact in the text; how the traditional religio-cultural discourse influences the text; what is missing from the final text; and reasons for the gaps. Close textual analysis of the declarations identifies tension between the public health, human rights/gender equality discourses and the traditional religio-cultural and national sovereignty discourses. The traditional religio-cultural discourse operates to limit public health and rights-based approaches to HIV prevention and frames women and girls as passive victims, without agency to exercise their rights. When compared against UNAIDS strategies as a standard, the declarations are missing commitments to address the risks of key populations to HIV. Missing also is reference to any contributions the faith community brings to the epidemic. The broad religious discourse includes supportive approaches to public health, human rights and gender equality, with the potential to bridge gaps in the negotiations. The traditional religious discourse is implicated in gaps in the text on key populations and rights. The dominance of secularism at the UN is implicated in exclusion of the broad religious discourse. While obstacles around rights-based approaches to HIV prevention and key populations persist, common ground and synergies between the discourses exist. Recommendations include: to ask new questions at the UN about the role secularism plays that may increase space for conservative voices to operate; seeking new ways of working to bridge some of the gaps; and including different perspectives that have the potential to bridge the gaps and open up new ways to achieve consensus.

The topic of this thesis is black virus disinfection using mobile agents. The black virus is a faulty node that destroys any visiting agent without leaving a trace; moreover, once the black virus is triggered by an agent, it clones itself and spreads to neighbouring nodes. These viruses can only be destroyed if they move to nodes that have been occupied by agents. In this thesis, we consider the black virus disinfection problem in chordal rings. Initially, the system contains a single black virus that resides at an unknown location. We propose a solution that involves deploying a team of mobile agents to locate the original black virus and to prevent further damage once it has been triggered. Our protocol is divided into two phases: 1) searching the graph until the black virus is found and triggered and 2) sending agents to occupy the neighbouring nodes of the black virus in order to trigger and destroy all the black viruses at once. Our solutions are monotone, meaning that once a node has been explored it is protected from re-infection. In order to measure the efficiency of our protocol we consider the total number of agents required for disinfection, the overall number of black viruses and the number of moves required by the agents. We then analyze the cost of all our solutions, providing optimal bounds for some classes of chordal rings.

Orientadores: Helena Judith Nussenzveig Lopes, Milton da Costa Lopes Filho / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Matematica, Estatistica e Computação Cientifica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-10T07:01:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Faria_JosianeCristinadeOliveira_D.pdf: 915381 bytes, checksum: 33fbbc86d823554534cbe546850e707d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: As equações semigeostrocas, introduzidas por Hoskins e Bretherton em 1972 em [20], sao um conjunto de equacoes que modelam fluxos atmosfericos/ oceanicos de larga escala. Elas possuem uma formulação em variaveis duais que se presta ao tratamento analítico. Alguns autores estudaram esta formulação, veja, por exemplo, [3], [14], [22], [12], [21],em particular obtendo existencia de solucões fracas em espaços de medidas. Contudo, ha dificuldades em converter soluções fracas da formulação dual em soluções fracas na formulação original, e portanto de interpretar fisicamente as soluções obtidas. Em [11], Culled e Feldman provaram a existencia de soluções Lagrangeanas para o sistema semigeostrofico em coordenadas fisicas com vorticidade potencial em Lp, p > 1. No presente trabalho estendemos os resultados de Cullen e Feldman para o caso limite p = 1 e estudamos o comportamento de sequencias de soluções Lagrangeanas correspondentes a uma sequencia de vorticidades potenciais iniciais convergindo fortemente em L1. Provamos que tais soluções Lagrangeanas convergem em L1 loc. Exibimos um contra-exemplo que sugere que nosso resultado não pode ser estendido para o espaço das medidas de Radon / Abstract: The semigeostrophic equations, which were introduced by Hoskins and Bretherton in 1972 in [20], are a set of equations that model large-escale atmospheric/ocean ows. They have a formulation in dual variables which can be analytically treated. Some authors studied these equations in dual variables, see for instance [3], [14], [22], [12], [21], particularly it is obtained existence of weak solutions in the space of Radon measures. In [11], Cullen and Feldman proved existence of Lagrangian solutions for the semigeostrophic system in physical variables with initial potential vorticity in Lp, p > 1. In the present work we extend Cullen and Feldman's result to the limit case p = 1 and we study the behavior of sequences of Lagrangian solutions corresponding to a sequence of initial potential vorticities converging strongly in L1. We prove that these Lagrangian solutions converge in L1 loc. However, there is difficulties in to turn weak solutions in dual formulations into solutions in original formulation, and therefore there is dificulties in to interpret the obtained solutions physically. We show by means of a counterexample that our result cannot be extended to the space of Radon measures / Doutorado / Matematica - Analise / Doutor em Matemática

This research dissertation is carried out on behalf of the Stauros Foundation, a Christian agency which endeavours to offer pastoral care and support to people with an alcohol dependency problem. The sample population consisted of 207 individuals who completed a questionnaire that covered five categories of interest, for example, background biographical, alcohol and family background, drinking habits, effects of drinking habits and perceived pastoral needs.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how experiences of violence, which have been secret in the past, can be articulated that they may become resources for theological reflection and Christian action. The research technique employed is ethnography, which is used to uncover the violence experienced in the lives of Dalit Christian women in Kerala State of India. Part one of this thesis concerns methodology. Chapter two examines how other women theologians working amongst poor and marginalised women from non-western cultures have sought to make women’s experience visible and have emphasised its theological significance. This chapter explores what I can gain from the work of these women that will help me to develop my own research on Dalit Christian women. Chapter three describes the research setting by explaining the context for this research, the researched community of Dalits and the location, where Dalit women gathered together. This chapter demonstrates my relations, as an ethnographer, to Dalit Christian women who have converted to Christianity from the Pulaya caste. Finally, this chapter justifies the research strategies employed in this research. Part two of this thesis contains my field research. Chapter four is about meta-ethnography generated at a one-day seminar and two Bible studies. In chapter five Dalit Christian women, who are the survivors of various kinds of violence, tell their life stories in their own words. In this way Dalit women started to uncover the secret and hidden experience they had in the past. Part three of this thesis is the analysis of data and conclusion. Chapter six analyses the significant themes, which have emerged from my research into the life experiences of Dalit women. It demonstrates that Dalit women’s experience and the cultural traditions of Dalit community are important resources for the development of a Dalit Feminist Practical Theology. Finally, in the light of my research, I make concrete strategies for action that could bring hope and transformation in the lives of Dalit women who are experiencing violence.