Relationships between parenting styles practiced in individuals' families of origin and the measurement of individuals' spiritual maturity in adulthood were studied. Relationships between gender and the authoritative (facilitative) parenting style comprised the main focus of the study. Participants for this study were recruited from a large, non-denominational Christian church located in north Texas. A total of 300 individuals were randomly selected. A total of 160 individuals filled out the demographic sheet, the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ), and the Spiritual Assessment Inventory (SAI). Canonical correlation procedures were performed among the set of SAI scales measuring individuals' spiritual maturity (awareness, instability, grandiosity, realistic acceptance, disappointment, and impression management) and the set of PAQ scales that measure parenting styles (authoritative or facilitative, authoritarian, and permissive) of mothers and fathers. Conclusions about female and male students raised in homes characterized by fathers and mothers with an authoritative (facilitative) parenting style were varied. Female adults raised in homes characterized by fathers and mothers with an authoritative (facilitative) parenting style were not correlated in a positive manner with spiritual maturity. Male adults raised in homes characterized by fathers with an authoritative (facilitative) parenting style demonstrated significance at only a large observed p value and therefore, could not be reported. Male students raised in homes characterized by mothers with an authoritative (facilitative) parenting style were correlated significantly with spiritual maturity in one correlation at the .04 level of significance. In another correlation, at the .003 level of significance, male adults raised in homes characterized by mothers with an authoritative (facilitative) parenting style were not correlated. Some cautions were discussed regarding the findings, and directions for future research on parenting styles and spiritual maturity were discussed.

No description available.

This dissertation examines the relationship between marital satisfaction and family cohesion across three family life spans among evangelicals. Chapter 1 defines the factors involved when studying the social sciences of marriage, parenting, cohesion and adaptability, and family life cycles. Attention is also given to historical research, trends, recent contributions, and theological insights that apply to the aforementioned subjects. Chapter 2 sets a biblical and theological foundation and thereby acts as a guide for defining values and focus for the precedent literature. Specifically, this chapter analyzes the contributions in the fields of marriage, child-rearing, and family development from a social historical perspective. Chapter 3 examines the methodological design for this body of research through four guiding research questions. In addition, the formulations of procedures for gathering research are identified in great detail. Chapter 4 describes the research findings and offers the statistical analysis to show significance in relationships between a number of dependent and independent variables that constitute the marriage and family paradigm. Research questions are interpreted in light of the statistical information and reports are given through tables and figures to display relevant findings. Chapter 5 interprets the data in a conclusive manner. It explains what the significant findings represent for marital satisfaction and the relationship this has with family cohesion, family adaptability, and on the family life cycle. Findings are then applied to a specific ministry setting. For those interested in the fields of education or Christian education, this chapter explores issues related to this study, from which the reader my benefit from further research. Key Words . marriage, adaptability, cohesion, satisfaction, evangelical, family, life cycle, marital happiness, and marital satisfaction.

The thesis provides an account of how natural beauty functions as revelation and contributes to theology. The central claim is that natural beauty ‘images' aspects of God's nature and intentions within Creation's artistic ‘text'—admittedly, most fully from within a Christian perspective, but already potentially in any experience of beauty. Chapter One presents an approach to ‘creational theology'—a methodological understanding of how God can be known through the aesthetic rationality shared between Creation and humanity. This understanding of creational theology outlines a relationship between God and created beauty that is developed progressively with each chapter. Chapter Two addresses the created side of this relationship by characterizing the phenomenon of physical, sensory, ‘perceptual beauty.' This perceptual beauty relates to God as a created framework through which God can express aspects of his nature. Chapter Three describes how such expression is apprehended in natural beauty, namely through a Polanyian epistemic vision and symbolic practice, which engages beautiful images within Creation's art. Chapter Four applies this Christian vision and symbolic practice, adapting John Ruskin's concept of ‘typical beauty.' Through this typological approach, beautiful forms artistically image aspects of God's nature and intentions. Extensions of Ruskin's approach also allow for further development of a creational theology of natural beauty—that is, a theology underscoring the powerful interrelations of God, beauty, and humanity, and the need to respond to beauty as a phenomenality of God for his creatures.

This dissertation is a comparative analysis of the leadership perceptions of older and younger pastors. The research concern is introduced in chapter one with a question raised by critics of the evangelical church within the Emerging Church movement concerning the substitution of a CEO model of pastoral ministry. This question caused the researcher to examine a literature base to establish the credibility of the criticism. Pertinent literature was examined regarding the use of metaphor to describe leadership, biblical and exegetical foundations for leadership, secular leadership and managerial studies, and philosophical and socio-cultural issues that impact current church leaders. The research involved the use of a questionnaire on issues related to polity, power, control, authority, and leadership assumptions. Once the questionnaires were received, appropriate statistical measures were used, including the Chi Square Test for Independence and Chi Square Goodness of Fit, correlational analysis, and t-tests. Analysis of the data revealed significant relationships between the concepts of metaphor, polity, and age. The most significant findings were related to the interrelationship of generation, ideal polity and metaphor. Research on polity indicated a revival of interest in the plural elder polity model. Regarding the concept of metaphor, a significant relationship was discovered between the concept of elder polity and the arts metaphor. Both of these results were significant trans-generationally. These findings were reported in detail and displayed according to each of the pertinent research questions. Keywords: Emerging church, metaphor, polity, philosophy of leadership, philosophy of ministry, older pastor, younger pastor, ministry, power, control, authority. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

This dissertation delineates the theological tenets of John Piper's evangelistic ministry at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. In addition to his basic conservative, evangelical presuppositions, there are four theological tenets that drive the evangelistic ministry of John Piper: the sovereignty and supremacy of God, the depraved affections of man, conversion as the creation of a Christian Hedonist, and the glorifying witness of the church. Chapter 1 addresses Piper's role in modern evangelicalism as a recovery theologian. He is one of several pastors and authors calling evangelicals to recover the god-centered theology of the reformers. Piper's unique perspective of Christian Hedonism is his prescribed vehicle for that recovery. The theology of evangelism springing from this perspective is particularly valuable as a remedy for the atheological pragmatism currently driving so many evangelical churches. Chapter 2 is biographical in nature, exploring Piper's life and theological development. In addition to describing the experiences of his conversion and call to ministry, this chapter details the pivotal awakening he experienced at Fuller Seminary that led to the development of Christian Hedonism and his subsequent espousal of Calvinism. This chapter also recounts the theological developments Piper has experienced during his pastorate, including the missiological awakening that took place at Bethlehem Baptist Church during the mid 1980s. Chapter 3 then delineates the four theological tenets and the sub-points that embody the evangelistic aspects of each tenet. His published writings are the primary sources for this chapter, and the material reflects his affinity for Edwards and his God-centered hermeneutic. Chapter 4 examines five facets of Piper's ministry to prove that the theological tenets delineated in chapter three do indeed define and drive the evangelistic ministries of Bethlehem Baptist Church. Preaching, prayer, discipleship, outreach (local and global), and Piper's writing ministry are each examined to show the foundational presence of the four tenets in the evangelistic aspects of each ministry. Chapter 5 closes the dissertation by summarizing the material presented in chapters three and four. The final section of this fifth chapter briefly addresses the strengths and weaknesses of Piper's theology of evangelism and Bethlehem's evangelistic ministries. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

The purpose of this research was to examine the nature of the relationship among the four major emotional intelligence realms--that is, Identify, Use, Understand, and Manage--of pastoral team leaders to the level of effectiveness of the team he leads. This relationship was evaluated by the lead pastors themselves and the members of their pastoral leadership teams. Three instruments were used in the research process: (1) the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale--a self-report instrument completed by the lead pastors, (2) the short version of the Team Effectiveness Questionnaire--completed by all participants, and (3) the Leader Emotional Intelligence Strength Rater--a qualitative instrument created by this researcher to be completed by team members to help assess the emotional intelligence of their pastoral team leader and how it influenced the effectiveness of their teams. From this research, four primary discoveries about the nature and strength of these relationships were discerned, one for each emotional intelligence (EI) realm. In the Identify EI realm, it was discovered that a pastoral leader's Identify EI skill of being able to "recognize his own feeling" related strongly to the team effectiveness realm of Principled Leadership. In the Use EI realm, the research revealed that the ability to "inspire others" demonstrated the strongest relationship of the pastoral team leaders' Use EI skills to their teams' effectiveness. Specifically, this skill related to the team effectiveness realm of creating team Collaboration. In the EI Understand realm, the skill of "makes correct assumptions about people" correlated strongly to the team effectiveness realm of Principled Leadership. And in the emotional competency Manage realm, the EI skill of "connects with other people" demonstrated the strongest relationship to the team effectiveness. This Manage EI skill correlated strongly to the team effectiveness area of creating team Collaboration. In sum, this research has demonstrated that within the pastoral team leaders and the teams that were the subjects of this research, specific EI abilities of the pastoral team leader relate to and influence particular realms team effectiveness. Moreover, these relationships can be evaluated by their strength of correlation and influence. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

M.Th. / There is still great uncertainty about the role of healing in proclaiming the Gospel and in church building and development. For many Christian denominations this is still a contentious and controversial subject. Especially the differences in the theories on healing and the way in which these theories should be applied, cause many problems to come to the fore in obvious and unsettling ways. In the past few Pentecostal theologians have tried to make contributions that help to identify and solve these problems. By doing this study from a Pentecostal viewpoint, the student is hoping to aid the church in developing a theory and praxis for the healing ministry that is based on Scripture. This study is unique in the sense that it approaches the issue from the standpoint that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are an absolute necessity in developing a Scriptually sound theory and praxis for the healing ministry. It was therefore necessary first to stress the important role of the gifts of the Spirit in the ministry of Christ and the New Testament church. The study then looks at the role and influence that the gifts had in the emergence of the modern Pentecostal movement and of the AFM of South Africa. To discover whether this ministry is still functioning effectively, a questionnaire was given to believers in eight different assemblies. The information was then used to compile a list of guidelines that might be adhered to in order to maximise the usefulness of the gifts of the Spirit.

This qualitative study sought to replicate the previous study conducted by John David Trentham in 2012. Trentham’s study was cross-institutional in nature with a population from bible colleges, confessional Christian liberal arts colleges and universities, and secular universities. This study is focused on a population consisting of pre-ministry undergraduate students from a single institutional setting, secular universities. The Perry Scheme is the basis for the evaluation and previous research conducted by Trentham is used to study how attendance at secular universities affects the progression of pre-ministry undergraduate students through positions established by Perry in his epistemological developmental scheme. The qualitative research design consisted of six steps. The first step consisted of customizing the Trentham Interview Protocol which entailed adding a line of questioning exploring the impact of attending events sponsored by Student Services/Student Affairs. The second step was to recruit study participants having each complete a Thesis Study Participation Form verifying they met the criteria for the study. The third step was to conduct a pilot study ensuring I was able to properly conduct the interviews and make any necessary adjustments before moving forward. The fourth step was to conduct and transcribe interviews with study participants and submit them to the Center for the Study of Intellectual Development (CSID) for scoring. The fifth step was to perform an independent content analysis utilizing Trentham’s categories for assessing epistemological priorities and competencies. The six step was to evaluate the scoring provided by the CSID and the content analysis, determine research findings, and draw conclusions based on the data obtained. Overall, the findings of this research were consistent with those of Trentham’s earlier research. This is especially so of his study participants from secular universities. Study participants with higher Perry Scheme scoring also scored higher in Trentham’s structured framework for epistemological priorities and competencies. This study also suggests a possible correlation between epistemological positioning and voluntary attendance at extracurricular events sponsored by Student Services/Student Affairs with Trentham’s Epistemological Priorities and Competencies. However, due to the small population size, further research is necessary. The prominent themes that emerged were consistent with those observed in the Trentham study.

The aim of this study, as explained in the first chapter, is to synthesize insights from Christianity and secular psychology in order to answer four questions: (1) Why do people reflect upon themselves? (2) Why do they understand themselves wrongly (i.e., constructing a false self)? (3) What does true self-understanding entail? (4) What interventions can foster true self-understanding? Chapter 2 presents a biblical response, with specific focus on passages from Proverbs, Matthew’s Gospel, and Paul’s letters. Chapter 3 collects answers from the writings of four Christian thinkers: Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, Søren Kierkegaard, and Thomas Merton. Chapter 4 examines answers from two modern psychologists, D.W. Winnicott and Susan Harter. The fifth chapter concludes with a synthesis of these answers, in order to propose a Christian perspective on the false self and true self.