No description available.

As the number of Korean immigrants in the United States have been decreasing, the Korean immigrant churches have also been diminishing. Even prominent Korean churches, like Promise Church in New York City, known for its tradition and scale, has not escaped this crisis. After much contemplation and prayer for the future of the church, Promise Church decided that, although it would require a significant amount of time, it would depart from its traditional Korean-focused immigrant church model in order to become a multicultural church. This decision was not solely based on sociological or demographical reasons but ultimately rooted in theological considerations. In order for Promise Church to transition from its existing Korean-centric homogeneous church model to a multicultural church, this thesis proposes the Eshel Bridge Project, which is currently being implemented within Promise Church. Promise Church plays a pivotal role in the 4/14 Window Movement, with its primary focus and ministry centered around this movement. While engaging in the 4/14 Window Movement, Promise Church has various institutions for children's ministry. These institutions serve children from diverse racial, cultural, and national backgrounds who may not know Jesus. If these children from diverse backgrounds become part of Promise Church's Sunday School, which is primarily Korean, Promise Sunday School will naturally transform into a multicultural Sunday School. As these children grow into adults, Promise Church will organically develop into a multicultural church. The term “islands” is used to refer to the institutions within Promise Church dedicated to children, and “continent” is used to describe the Sunday School. The ministry project that connects the children from these diverse islands to the continent is the Eshel Bridge Project. This thesis outlines and proposes a concrete plan for the execution of this project, referred to as the Eshel Bridge Startup Canvas.

No description available.

No description available.

This ethnography explores the interracial encounters between individuals in a biracial old-line Protestant congregation. Using the theoretical framework of aversive racism, this dissertation suggests that an individual's racial paranoia and racial identity attitude helps to explain the way that white members interact with black members and the way they perceive these encounters. This dissertation addresses the questions: How do members of a biracial congregation interact across race? How do they engage in discussions about race? How does racial identity attitude inform their perspectives? It draws upon data collected over two periods: a two-month pilot study and a nine-month dissertation study. Data include field notes from more than 240 hours of observations during 80 visits, and transcripts of interviews with 17 people (nine black, eight white; two pastors, two staff, 13 members; ages 21 to 76) which averaged 2½-hours each. This dissertation describes three findings. (1) White members have learned to comfortably co-exist with black members in worship but have not developed deep enough relationships to learn from them the extent of racism that survives in the post Civil Rights era. (2) Misconceptions among white members about what is "politically correct" stifle constructive interracial dialogue about race issues and lead to aversive behaviors that have a racist effect for African American members. (3) With only modest social interaction across race and little dialogue about race, white members of the congregation hold markedly different perceptions than black members about the interracial life of this church and the problem with racism there. These findings are significant because they help us to understand the obstacles which this nation must address in order to respond to the complexities of race in urban America, of which this congregation offers a microcosm. / Urban Education

Research by Emerson and Smith (1999) finds that conservative Protestants tend to blame racial inequalities on individual traits like motivation or ability as opposed to structural constraints such as oppression or discrimination. Emerson and Smith have also established that churches tend to be racially homogenous organizations. The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not members of racially-integrated congregations differ from members of racially-homogenous congregations in their explanations for racial inequalities. I am interested in further exploring interracial relations in the context of United States' Protestant churches, particularly how the level of contact with persons of another race might affect whites' perceptions of reasons for racial inequality. I expect to find that individuals who attend racially-homogeneous churches will be less likely to recognize social constraints that may contribute to socioeconomic inequalities between whites and blacks than those who attend racially-integrated churches. In other words, I expect that attending a racially-integrated congregation will have a positive effect on giving structural-level explanations for racial inequality. Using existing data from the 1994 General Social Survey, I analyze the relationship between attendance in a multi-racial congregation and explanations for racial inequalities. The data do not support the hypothesis. / Master of Science

Text in Afrikaans / Die samelewing heleef tans groot veranderinge. Die kerk en gesinslewe word heide daardeur geraak. Al meer druk word op gesinslewe geplaas en daardeur verander gesinne se hehoeftes. Een van die grootste hehoeftes van gesinne is 'n hehoefte aan diepteverhoudings, medemenslike erkenning, emosionele sekuriteit en interpersoonlike intimiteit. Die kerk moet hierdie hehoeftes kan raaksien en aanspreek. Vir 'n hediening aan gesinne en deur gesinne, is dit noodsaaklik dat die gemeente opnuut weer God se plan met die gesin herontdek; die gemeente moet die gesin as 'n ekosistemiese eenheid verstaan en die ontwikkelingsfases en emosionele prosesse binne 'n gesinsisteem moet in ag geneem word. In hierdie studie word die selgemeente gehruik om moontlike antwoorde te hied vir die hehoeftes van gesinne. Die hevinding van hierdie studie is dat die selgemeente oor die potensiaal heskik om vir die gesin 'n ware tuiste te hied waar gelowige gesinne toegerus en opgehou kan word vir hulle roeping in die gemeente, die samelewing en die wereld. Die selgemeente kan 'n moontlike model vir 'n gesinshediening wees. / The church and family are both affected by the immense changes in society. Family needs change under the pressure of these changes. Among the greatest family needs are a relationship with depth, acknowledgement from fellow-man, emotional security and interpersonal intimacy. The church must recognise these needs and address them. A ministry to families must firstly rediscover God's plan for the family; secondly the family must be seen as an ecosystemic unity; thirdly development and emotional phases in the family must be understood and managed. I used the cell church model as a basis to develop a structure for family ministry. I found the cell church model to be essentially a relationship model. I came to the conclusion that the cell church model has the potential to be a genuine home for family; to be a basis from which the family can be built up and from which the family can be equipped for their calling. Thus, I found the cell church model to be a possible model for family ministry. / Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology)

Text in Afrikaans / Die samelewing heleef tans groot veranderinge. Die kerk en gesinslewe word heide daardeur geraak. Al meer druk word op gesinslewe geplaas en daardeur verander gesinne se hehoeftes. Een van die grootste hehoeftes van gesinne is 'n hehoefte aan diepteverhoudings, medemenslike erkenning, emosionele sekuriteit en interpersoonlike intimiteit. Die kerk moet hierdie hehoeftes kan raaksien en aanspreek. Vir 'n hediening aan gesinne en deur gesinne, is dit noodsaaklik dat die gemeente opnuut weer God se plan met die gesin herontdek; die gemeente moet die gesin as 'n ekosistemiese eenheid verstaan en die ontwikkelingsfases en emosionele prosesse binne 'n gesinsisteem moet in ag geneem word. In hierdie studie word die selgemeente gehruik om moontlike antwoorde te hied vir die hehoeftes van gesinne. Die hevinding van hierdie studie is dat die selgemeente oor die potensiaal heskik om vir die gesin 'n ware tuiste te hied waar gelowige gesinne toegerus en opgehou kan word vir hulle roeping in die gemeente, die samelewing en die wereld. Die selgemeente kan 'n moontlike model vir 'n gesinshediening wees. / The church and family are both affected by the immense changes in society. Family needs change under the pressure of these changes. Among the greatest family needs are a relationship with depth, acknowledgement from fellow-man, emotional security and interpersonal intimacy. The church must recognise these needs and address them. A ministry to families must firstly rediscover God's plan for the family; secondly the family must be seen as an ecosystemic unity; thirdly development and emotional phases in the family must be understood and managed. I used the cell church model as a basis to develop a structure for family ministry. I found the cell church model to be essentially a relationship model. I came to the conclusion that the cell church model has the potential to be a genuine home for family; to be a basis from which the family can be built up and from which the family can be equipped for their calling. Thus, I found the cell church model to be a possible model for family ministry. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology)

This study explores how contemporary Afrikaans churches represent gender in their visual culture. For these purposes, a Barthean semiotic analysis is done on visual material produced between 2007 and 2008 by three Afrikaans corporate churches in the Pretoria- Centurion area, namely the Dutch Reformed congregations Moreletapark and kerksondermure (“church without walls”), and Doxa Deo’s Brooklyn and East campuses – Afrikaans Apostolic Faith Mission congregations. The analysis seeks to demystify and denaturalise the material’s potentially mythical, ideological and hegemonic underpinnings. Operating from an interdisciplinary theoretical framework comprising aspects of Visual Culture Studies and Gender Studies, this study primarily provides a focused analysis of the representation of men and masculinity in the selected churches according to three themes, namely professional occupation and leadership; physical activity and adventurism; and fatherhood. This focus was adopted owing to the lack of available literature on men and masculinity in the church and Christianity, as opposed to the more ready availability of research on women and femininity. The representation of gender in Moreletapark, kerksondermure and Doxa Deo is conceptualised in broad terms through a comparison of the representation of masculinity with femininity as its foil. In this regard gender is analysed in the three churches according to notions of gendered ontology and matters of work, marriage and family. Exscripted, or non-represented, themes are also problematised. It is argued that the churches under investigation represent gender in dualistic, essentialist and often stereotypical terms. This particular depiction of gender attests to the churches‟ participation in the biological essentialising of gender, polarising men and women into strict binary dualisms, whilst also visually denying the existence of homosexuality and alternative sexualities. This tendency is problematic, not only because it fails to provide a realistic portrayal of men and women in the three churches, but also because it visually participates in conservative and fundamentalist gender discourses. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Visual Arts / unrestricted

The problem this study addresses is that the Christian church in the postmodern west is in a condition of zero growth and even decline. Conventional strategies intended to reverse this condition have tended to focus on improved implementation of traditional methodologies of church growth. Despite the application of such strategies the church continues to decline, indicating the urgent need for additional approaches. Practical theology suggests such an additional approach: greater engagement with the local community. Certain churches have been identified whose congregations, acting, it is believed, under the leadership of the Spirit, are engaging their immediate communities in a wide variety of ways often with the result that people touched by the church respond with a new or renewed interest in the Christian faith and in some instances join or rejoin the Christian family. The implication, and the hypothesis of the study, is that widespread application of the practices of such community-engaging congregations, called “holistic” congregations, might have a positive impact in terms of growth in the wider church community. To determine the validity of this implication a small-scale inductive, empirical, effect-to-cause study was undertaken. Combining qualitative and quantitative research methods intended to identify the ethos of those churches that meet the developed criteria of “holistic” churches, as compared to a second group of “non-holistic” churches, the study addresses the question: Is it possible to discover the ethos of holistic churches with a view to reproducing that ethos in other churches? Analysis of the data gathered during the study identifies a number of specific characteristics shared by the holistic churches. In addition to suggesting strategies that may profitably be investigated and implemented by churches that wish to become, or become more, holistic in terms of their outreach ministry, the results also advocate the further study of holism as a possible key feature to the future of the Church. / Thesis (PhD (Practical Theology))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Practical Theology / unrestricted