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Work-Life Balance through Sabbath Keeping for Cornerstone Chinese Alliance Church in Markham, Ontario
Get PDFThe goal of this paper is to help English-speaking adults from Cornerstone Chinese Alliance Church in Markham, Ontario achieve rest, renewal, and reconnection with God and others to bring a sense of balance between work and life. To achieve this purpose, a pilot project will be conducted within the Sunday School ministry with a small number of English-speaking leaders to enable them to practice Sabbath keeping through discussion, accountability, and peer mentoring. The content of this project will go over four key areas of Sabbath keeping, which are rest, recreation, worship, and relationship.
Cornerstone Chinese Alliance Church is situated in the fast growing, affluent suburban community of Markham, Ontario, which many consider to be the high-tech capital of Canada. The affluent lifestyle is enjoyed by young professionals and families with dual incomes. Church members often lead aspiring careers with upward mobility and monetary returns. The drive to succeed, coupled with the value of hard work has led to an overemphasis on careers at the expense of self-care, family, and spiritual health. This imbalanced lifestyle is a breeding ground for issues such as burnout, depression, and divorce.
This paper contains three major sections. The first looks at Cornerstone Chinese Alliance Church’s context: location, demographics, sources of growth, challenges and opportunities to teach and practice Sabbath keeping. The second section of this paper will focus on the theology of the Sabbath, which reflects on different theological viewpoints of Sabbath keeping to explore possible correctives to imbalanced lifestyles. The final section of this paper provides a strategy for launching an integrated approach through the Sunday School ministry that includes formal instruction, discussion, peer mentoring, and accountability groups. The end result should yield a renewed mind, a focused commitment to Christ, and a healthy work-life balance
Equipping and Catalyzing Disciple Makers at Front Range Christian Church
Get PDFThe purpose of this doctoral project was to implement pilot discipleship groups at Front Range Christian Church (FRCC). Taking into account the mobility of both the congregation and the surrounding community, the project aimed at people development over a short period of time rather than the establishment of a new church program. Three pilot groups with varying composition, meeting logistics, and resource utilization were used for comparison in determining the most effective means of equipping and catalyzing disciple makers at FRCC.
Jesus’ example with the first disciples was normative in determining the means and method of discipleship in the project. Through an examination of Scripture, four primary areas of development were extrapolated from Jesus’ discipleship model: biblical worldview, integrated mission, intentional relationships, and habits and rhythms of life conducive for ongoing growth. These four areas comprised the subject matter for each pilot group to varying degrees. The project also took into account the multipliable nature of discipleship in the New Testament. Thus, the invitation to participate in the pilot groups included a full life cycle—from beginning (as disciples) to beginning (as disciple makers).
The assessment of the project consists of three distinct phases. The initial assessment took place midway through the project in order to allow for needed adjustments to increase the likelihood of equipping and catalyzing disciple makers. The second assessment will take place at the conclusion of the pilot project. It is designed to facilitate discussion amongst FRCC leadership as to the potential for ongoing church- wide discipleship efforts. The final assessment will occur over time as it becomes clear whether or not subsequent generations of disciple makers are resulting
Pride, Power, and Politics: A Rhetorical Study of Identity in the Book of Ezekiel
No full textThe study explores polarizing and stigmatizing rhetoric in Ezekiel’s OAN unit (Ezek 25-32) and its literary context by which Judean identity is discursively constructed by defining and marginalizing the foreign other and their Judean supporters. The study reflects a rhetorical critical approach with special attention to the sociological dimension of Judah’s political factions, which represent varying degrees of Judean cooperation with foreign nations. Attention to social location and the book’s discourse on the dissonance between speaker and audience inform the shape of rhetorical argumentation in the OAN.
The study concludes that a series of binary oppositions are pervasive throughout the OAN unit (high/low, life/death; circumcised/uncircumcised; pure/impure; holy/profane) and that the foreign nations are persistently assigned the lesser or negative classification as a means by which to marginalize and exclude the other: they are dead, uncircumcised, impure, and profane. The OAN’s discourse on death and impurity forms a significant component to the unit’s rhetorical force that intersects with Israelite priestly tradition, particularly observable in the Holiness source. The priestly nexus with its implications for achieving spatial and social boundaries reinforces the conceptual marginalization of foreigners and their perceived defilements. The world of power and politics is contextualized by a sacral framework to rhetorically effect estrangement from both foreign and Judean groups marked for sociopolitical disintegration in the book of Ezekiel
“Be [Subordinate] Men!”: The Rhetoric of Gender and Power in 1 Corinthians
No full textScholars have long probed Paul’s writings to understand approaches to and the treatment of women in early Christianity. As helpful as these investigations are, they overlook the importance of attending to the construction and use of masculinity. This project seeks to further conversations about gender in early Christianity by offering a gender critical examination of Paul’s construction and use of masculinity in 1 Corinthians. Highlighting the subjective and socially constructed nature of masculinity demonstrates that what it means to “be a man” exists at the intersection of the social and physical bodies. Applying such an approach to Paul’s self-presentation and paraenesis in 1 Corinthians reveals a consistent emphasis for Paul and the men in the believing community to embody a subordinate, or failed, masculinity as part of a broader emphasis on overcoming factionalism that threatens the believing community (1 Cor 1:10).
The project begins by tracing the development of gender studies with an emphasis on the importance of attending to the social construction of categories of gender. This investigation then demonstrates the relationship of the body, power, and gender within Greek and Roman cultures. The study moves to examine the construction and use of masculinity identities in selections from Favorinus, Philo, and Josephus. These three authors evidence an anxiety to account for problematic aspects of their masculinity. Paul’s self-presentation is then examined with an emphasis on his role as a failed orator (1 Cor 1:17–2:5), wet-nurse (1 Cor 3:1–3), shamed father (1 Cor 4:14–15), and a celibate man (1 Cor 7:1–7). The cumulative effect is that Paul presents himself as a subordinate man who cannot occupy and manipulate key positions of masculinity and power. The study then examines Paul’s commands that exclusively or predominantly address men in the community. This analysis shows that obedience to Paul’s commands requires the men in his audience to embody a subordinate masculinity similar to Paul’s
Antiracist Discipleship: Practicing Freedom from the Deforming Forces of Whiteness, racism, and race
Get PDFThis project addresses the ways whiteness, racism, and race operate in multiracial congregations and presents antiracist discipleship practices as the means toward freedom from their deforming force. Noting the racial hyper-segregation of congregations in the United States, the project avers that segregation is not the church’s actual problem; therefore, congregational integration is not an adequate solution. Rather, segregation is a symptom of a deeper sickness. Racism is identified as a deeper manifestation of the church’s ongoing race problem, but it, too, is named as a symptom of a yet deeper malady. The US church’s deep sickness is “whiteness”, a pernicious perversion of God’s gift of Ethnicity.
This project makes the case for the goodness of the powers and principalities, the ordering structures of God’s creation. The powers are herein presented as good, fallen, and to be redeemed. Ethnicity is named as one among the powers, which through a pattern of perversion by which all powers fall to Sin, becomes whiteness. Whiteness gives birth to racism, which in turn gives birth to race, all of which operate interrelatedly to destroy the US church’s witness to Jesus’ overcoming of dividing walls.
Employing anecdotes from the life of CityWell UMC in Durham, NC, the project reflects on the ways whiteness, racism, and race have worked in our midst, and so threatened our calling to become a people who receive the ways of Jesus as our way of life. The identification of the threats to our calling allows for the naming of specific antiracist discipleship practices and strengthens our resistance to and leads us to freedom from the ways that whiteness, racism, and race would deform our common life and witness. The project concludes with a hopeful anticipation of the way repentance can lead the church to the ultimate healing of our deep sickness
Developing Resilience in North American Missionaries: Program Evaluation of CRM’s Adelante Training
No full textMissionary attrition has plagued mission organizations for many decades, and in response, training programs have been developed to bolster resilience and reduce cross-cultural stress in North American missionaries. Program evaluation is essential to identify the effect of participation in these programs. Church Resource Ministries (CRM) operates a week-long, cross-cultural resilience training, Adelante, for North American missionaries in their early years of ministry. The purpose of this program evaluation was guided by a primary research question: Does participants’ engagement in the Adelante training program increase their cross-cultural resilience and adjustment at a six- to nine-month follow-up time? Measures of cross-cultural adjustment, spiritual maturity, and professional quality of life were analyzed to determine whether the program was effective at increasing cross-cultural resilience. Narrative coaching session reports were additionally utilized as cross-referencing qualitative changes of participants’ learned insights and applied skills following Adelante. Results identified strengths and vulnerabilities in the program model and led to relevant recommendations for CRM stakeholders
Executive Functioning and Resilience: Learning Outcomes During High Fidelity Training in Humanitarian Aid Workers
No full textTraumatic stress and associated disorders are becoming more prevalent in humanitarian aid workers in the context of their employment. Training workshops have been offered by some aid organizations as a method to foster resilience and combat the effects of traumatic stress. In theory, these trainings promote cognitive flexibility during traumatic events, which suggests that executive functioning may help undergird resilience. The constructs of executive functioning and resilience were studied in a group of 29 humanitarian aid workers (8 women and 21 men; mean age = 40.0 years) being deployed to violent regions around the world. They completed self-report questionnaires prior to a high fidelity stress exposure training workshop where executive functioning and learning were assessed through neuropsychological measures. Results showed that aid workers with stronger executive functioning had stronger visual learning under stress and higher levels of resilience. These relationships seem to support McEwen’s (2010) theory of fronto-temporal circuitry such that stress inhibits prefrontal functions through activation of amygdala, leading to heightened emotional reactivity and poorer critical thinking
