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A Study of the Macro, Social and Psychological Factors That Influence the Civic Participation Practices of Christians at Mavuno Church, Nairobi, Kenya
No full textThis research examines the factors that motivate and limit Christians at Mavuno Church in their practice of civic participation. The study itself is informed by a theoretical understanding of the macro context, as well as the social and psychological factors that are linked to civic participation. Chapter 1 offers an introduction to the study, in particular, the purpose and goals of the study.
Chapter 2 provides an overview of historical and contemporary perspectives on civic participation and the potential influence of these perspectives on the civic participation practices of Christians at Mavuno Church, in Nairobi, Kenya. Chapter 3 discusses factors linked to civic participation and provides illustrations of several individuals and institutions who exemplify civic participation and the specific motivating factors linked to such participation. Chapter 4 and 5 discuss the research methods employed and the data collected for the purposes of this study, respectively. These included twenty interviews with key leaders at Mavuno Church, Hill City, 4 focus group discussions from across the different campuses of Mavuno Church (Mashariki, Downtown and Hill City), which were conducted over a 2 year period.
Furthermore the study incorporated a survey which was administered to members of Mavuno Downtown and Hill City campuses and was completed by seventy-five respondents. Finally participant observation of a small group of the staff leaders of the Hill City, Downtown and Crossroads campuses was carried out. Chapter six and seven then present the change plan and implications arising out of the study and the conclusion and recommendations.
Overall the study indicated a need for Mavuno Church to go beyond developing convictions about civic participation and provide more support for individuals to practice civic participation at the level of engaging with structures and decision making processes in society. The findings show that 6 out of 10 Christians at Mavuno Church are engaging civically. Most of these are not engaging at the level of structures and longer term decision making. The church plays the important role of providing an environment in which individuals can begin to practice civic participation beyond the confines of the Church, in the wider society.
Mentor: Alan Weave
18 - Mark Labberton, President 2013 - Present
No full textGod invites us [to be agents of salt and light who] will demonstrate the vivid reality of a God who, in mystery, has poured out his life for the world—and says to you and to me, \u27Now come. Follow me.\u27 - Inaugural Address, 2013https://digitalcommons.fuller.edu/exhibit_70thanniversary/1017/thumbnail.jp
06 - Cravens Estate
No full textFuller Seminary\u27s first students arrived for registration at the Cravens Estate on September 29, 1947.
The fire marshall arrived, explaining class instruction would be a code violation and illegal on the property.
On the first full day of classes, Daniel Fuller stood in the estate driveway, redirecting students to the Lake Avenue Congregational Church facilities.https://digitalcommons.fuller.edu/exhibit_70thanniversary/1005/thumbnail.jp
On Making Extravagant Vows: Commitment, Satisfaction, and Intimacy in Marriage
No full textCommitment within marital dyads is consistently associated with greater marital functioning, but the mutual influence of partners’ commitment on their satisfaction and intimacy is not fully understood. The current study contributes to the growing literature by using the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) to explore the effects of husbands’ and wives’ commitment on their own and their partner’s satisfaction and intimacy. The first hypothesis was that each spouse’s commitment would be associated with his or her own satisfaction level and his or her partner’s satisfaction level. The second hypothesis was that each spouse’s commitment would be associated with his or her own intimacy and his or her partner’s intimacy. The third hypothesis was that husbands’ and wives’ commitment would increase over the course of a marital enrichment workshop. Using self-report data collected from heterosexual, married couples (N = 173), the current study demonstrates that husbands’ and wives’ higher levels of commitment significantly predict higher levels of their own and their partners’ satisfaction and intimacy. Results also confirm an increase in both spouses’ commitment over the course of the marital workshop. Consistent with previous research, these findings indicate that mutual commitment within couples predicts greater satisfaction and intimacy
Little Faith, Big Responsibility: Reimagining the Church\u27s Partnership with Parents in a Child\u27s Spiritual Formation
Get PDFThe goal of this ministry focus paper is to examine the role of the institutional church and that of parents in the spiritual formation of children. This paper explores new ways in which the church can collaborate with parents to better accomplish this important task. It also seeks new ways to reimagine this partnership and how the church can provide parents with the tools and resources needed to confidently reclaim the role of primary faith nurturers.
This project seeks to present the importance of parents and the home as the primary source for a child’s spiritual formation. Child development theorists have shown that caregivers are the greatest influences on a child’s early development in all aspects of life. There is a small window of opportunity to lay a foundation of faith that a child will continue to build upon for his or her entire life and the home is where that takes place. Church was once the focus of the American family and an important element in a child’s spiritual formation, but fails to ring true in the twenty-first century. Even when a family makes attending church a priority, formal religious teaching encompasses only one hour of a child’s 168-hour week, not enough to make a significant impact on his or her spiritual formation.
This paper contains three major sections. Part one looks at the need for parent support and education within the institutional church. Part two establishes the theological foundations of this project. Part three engages a conversation to create a plan of action. Reimagining the partnership between church and home begins with the support of the community of faith, while developing resources and tools to better equip parents in their God-given vocation as primary faith nurturers of their children
You Raise Me Up: Developing a Theology and Practice of Self-Care for Clergy in Chinese Context
No full textPastoral self-care has been rarely studied and practiced in Chinese Church where overwhelming evangelical revival and church growth have caught all attention in the past decades after. This research utilizes an interview of twenty Chinese pastors to explore the reality and the resources in order to develop appropriate praxis of self-care for contemporary Chinese clergy. The findings of the interview revealed that pastoral burnout is less serious than expected and the resources in the context are efficient in facilitating pastoral called life. While pastoral self-care in the western churches is most often emphasized and experienced in physical and devotional nourishments, I argue that construction of relationship of shalom with God, others and nature is primary for pastoral self-care in Chinese context where Guanxi plays the dominant role in mundane life. I also argue that integration of the theology and the resources rooted in Christian and Chinese traditions are crucial for Chinese pastors’ awareness and effort to seek God’s care in their life and ministry. The metaphor of Chinese bamboo umbrella is used to illustrate visually the strategy toward the issue that embodies the wholistic, shalom centered, God empowered self-shepherding in the context
Bokeumjali in Exile: Transnational Readings of Ezekiel 40–48 and Sa-I-Gu
No full textThis study is an investigation of the final vision report in the book of Ezekiel (Ezek 40-48) using the concept of transnationalism from the field of migration studies. Transnationalism takes a dynamic understanding of the migratory process that resists models that conceive migration as a one-time, one-way movement to the place of immigration. Rather, the dynamic and ongoing connections forged by migrants and migrant communities across borders and boundaries are recognized and the focus of analysis. In doing so, migration researchers have observed the formation of transnational social spaces. Applying the concept of transnational social space to interpretations of biblical texts, this study identifies dynamic transnational connections between the home of the exiles in Jerusalem and their home in Babylon to yield a complex reconstruction of home for the exiles. Therefore, this is a study about immigrants and how they think — especially, how they think about the spaces they left behind, now occupy, and dream of occupying. In order to sensitize the modern reader to some of the urgent questions of home asked and answered in Ezekiel 40-48, this study refers to a contemporary case study. The experience of a Korean-American community in the aftermath of the destruction of Koreatown during the unrest that besieged Los Angeles in the spring of 1992 documents the devastating effects of the destruction of home and the urgency for a home especially for immigrants residing far away from home. A Korean term, bokeumjali, is introduced in this study. Bokeumjali is not exclusively defined by geography, but forms within the confines a community of shared heritage, experience, and space. Finally, this study addresses the question: where is bokeumjali for the exiles in Babylon
Building a Parody: Genesis 11:1–9, Ancient Near Eastern Building Accounts, and Production-Oriented Intertextuality
No full textThis study fills a lacuna in the scholarly discourse surrounding the generic profile of Genesis 11:1-9 (the famous “Tower of Babel” story) addressing the issue of the story’s appropriate (etic) genre, for the purpose of understanding the meaning of the text at the level of production. As the study focuses on the production level of the text, it provides a method that synthesizes both literary and historical methodologies into an intertextual-comparative approach. This approach was constructed to identify implicit references or allusions to extrabiblical materials for the purpose of understanding the rhetorical implications of Genesis 11:1-9.
Employing insights from previous studies on the building-account genre in the ancient Near East by Victor Hurowitz, and the comparative study of Gen 11:1-9 by Christoph Uehlinger, this study argues that Gen 11:1-9 functions as parody—a double-voiced text that adapts into its own message the precursor messages of Mesopotamian ideology in order to subvert them. Gen 11:1-9 achieves this parody through a sophisticated marking of precursor material structured around the common ancient Near Eastern genre of building accounts (Bauberichte).
Drawing upon modern literary theories of parody, this study addresses how an author manipulated the standard conventions of the genre and how the parody functioned for an intended community (or “ideal” audience). The analysis also orients the modern reader to the “horizon of expectations” for the parody allowing the reader to move closer to that intended community and participate with them in appropriating the parody’s powerful message
Mutual Constructive Engagement: A Macintyrean Approach to Theology of Religions— Christianity and Islam in Conversation
No full textIn this dissertation I argue that Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of tradition-constituted rationality resolves several of the major problems that impede progress for pluralism in theology of religions. Pluralists are motivated by two primary concerns—accounting for the radical diversity of religious belief without negating their intrinsic truth or salvific efficacy, and providing motivation for interreligious dialogue. The first commitment, I contend, undermines the second, for if there is no difference between religious traditions in respect to truth, then there is little to be gained from constructive dialogue at an epistemological level. The first commitment is similarly undermined by the tendency of pluralists to appeal to some form of universal grounding for all religious belief. MacIntyre’s account resolves both of these problems. First, by arguing that all rationality is constituted by historically-situated traditions of enquiry, MacIntyre is better able to account for true diversity, arguing that every tradition forms from particular authoritative texts and voices in response to unique historical circumstances, not from universal grounds. Second, by arguing that every tradition is always capable of encountering epistemological crises that call into question the very possibility of knowledge, he not only resolves the problem of relativism, but also preserves true motivation for dialogue, since it is always possible, in the midst of such a crisis, for one tradition to learn from another.
My proposal, then, is that MacIntyre’s account can be applied to theology of religions, providing motivation for what I am calling mutual, constructive engagement. I test this proposal by bringing into conversation two religious traditions—Christianity and Islam. In particular, I argue that both traditions have encountered similar crises concerning the issue of divine action, which have called into question not only the possibility of special providence, but also special revelation. This problem has constituted an epistemic crisis of the first order since, without special revelation, little can be known or said about God. I contend that the opportunities for constructive engagement have occurred precisely at these points of crisis, where each tradition has stood to benefit from the other and its respective resolution to its crisis
Training Churches in Faith and Work Discipleship
Get PDFThe goal of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of two training mechanisms to equip churches to run an intensive faith and work discipleship program called the Gotham Fellowship. The first training involves participation in a week-long summer intensive training and the second training will happen through the development of a leaders’ handbook for implementing the Gotham Fellowship.
Building upon the framework of the normative, existential and situational perspectives extensively outlined in this study, these church leaders will be equipped to lead a Gotham-like Fellows program in their churches to lay a foundation for a robust faith and work ministry. This training corresponds to the three perspectives. Normatively, those who will lead the Fellows program will learn a foundational biblical theology of work highlighting five passages of Scripture. Existentially, they will experience spiritually formative practices that highlight the need to engage God personally through adaptations of ancient devotional practices. Situationally, they will acquire and be trained to utilize tools that help apply the gospel’s power into the three areas of heart, community, and world through corresponding projects.
CFW will utilize two main online surveys to assess the effectiveness of this training—the first survey will be sent out shortly after the summer intensive with a follow-up survey sent out after the completion of the first-year Gotham program. Through these two surveys, the hope is to improve these two training tools so that CFW can more effectively prepare churches to launch Gotham programs that will accelerate faith and work ministries around the world