<p> The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church faces a crisis: a postmodern world has taken away our Lord. As seeker-sensitive mega-churches retreat after a desperate bid for relevancy, traditional congregations see their demise as part of a more widespread collapse. Yet, who knows? Perhaps God has called all churches, regardless of worship style, for such a time as this. </p><p> The mostly-retired members of <i>Asbury United Methodist Church </i> wonder how much longer the congregation will survive on the corner of DuPont Highway and Basin Road. Yet while young families have left the church, the <i>Asbury Child Care</i> welcomes fifty children each week. The money the Child Care pays the church for rent keeps the church afloat. We wondered what would happen to the relationship between the congregation and child care family if the church became host instead of landlord. </p><p> Since we were gifted at making and serving food (to each other and to our hungry neighbors), we decided to invite our child care family to a series of suppers on Wednesday nights during Lent. We trained our members to serve as Table Hosts. We welcomed children by offering them the freedom of unstructured play after supper as well as an invitation to join in stories, songs, and activities celebrating the special place of children in God's realm. </p><p> In the course of the suppers, we discovered Christ's presence in the gap between our congregation and our neighbors. As we celebrate our Seventieth anniversary, we see God's grace as an abundant gift to all, rather than a dwindling resource. Christ's calling to host our neighbors in love invites us to discover the body of Christ in our neighbors. In this new millennium, Jesus Christ calls the one, holy catholic, and apostolic church to a Pentecostal Pilgrimage from our pews to a feast of love and grace with our neighbors. And if we need help, the little children will show us the way.</p>

<p> The purpose of this dissertation is to answer the question: 'What does a spiritual formation model for the members of a missional church entail so that members of a church are transformed into missional Christians?' Community Life Church Cherrybrook (CLCC) in Sydney Australia is a twenty three year old established church that, generally speaking, has been engaging in an attractional paradigm. Over the last few years the church has slowly been moving towards a missional paradigm that affirms the biblical view of the church as a group of God's people sent into the world to be on mission with him. The author has become convinced that a primary way for the church to further engage with the missional paradigm is for its members to adopt a spiritual formation model in order for new practices to be learnt which will form people into missionaries within their context. By correctly viewing the church essentially as a body of people who are 'sent into' the world on God's mission, the church can once again regain its purpose to be a light in our world and an active witness to the kingdom of God. </p><p> The ministry project will therefore identify formational missional spirituality practices emerging from a missional theology that a sample of people from CLCC can engage in, so that transformation from a non-missional expression of Christianity to a more missional expression can occur. </p><p> An analysis of the biblical and theological material will show that there is support for a missional spiritual formation model of the church. A preliminary review of the literature on the missional church and practices will also reveal that support for a missional spirituality exists. Based on this, a model for the spiritual formation of a missional church will be formed according to an approach which seeks to produce missional formation through a series of practices and subsequent reflection on those actions. Finally, an assessment will be used to gauge at the final stages of the project the extent to which the participants have moved from non-missional expression of Christianity to a more missional paradigm.</p>

<p> This study conducts a close literary analysis of a variety of Talmudic-era prayers in order to develop a method of interpretation, called the "literary-intertext" method. Drawing on literary theory and the work of intertextuality in biblical and midrashic fields, this method offers a literary reading of prayer texts based on the juxtaposition with biblical intertexts. The method can be described as follows: </p><p> Step 1: Approach the liturgical text from a standpoint of exegesis, in which allusions abound and the surface rendering is never satisfactory. </p><p> Step 2: Using the tools of philology and academic inquiry, establish as many parallels to the liturgical text as one can to point more clearly to the identification of the intertexts. </p><p> Step 3: Identify the biblical intertext or intertexts at play in the line of prayer, and consider the surrounding biblical context. </p><p> Step 4: Identify the rabbinic interpretation(s) of the biblical intertext, giving additional layers of meaning to the text behind the prayer text. </p><p> Step 5: Offer an interpretation or set of interpretations that relate to the prayer. In the course of this study, we employ this method with the first blessing of the <i>amidah,</i> the blessings that constitute <i> havdalah,</i> and the texts of confession for Yom Kippur. In each case, the multiplicity of interpretations that emerges through the juxtaposition of the prayer text with the biblical intertext (and its rabbinic understanding) extends far beyond the original surface rendering. These interpretations are offered throughout the analysis.</p>