The long journey to my doctorate in leadership began as a pact with two dear friends and colleagues from Ashland Theological Seminary in 1993. My decision to enroll at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was prompted by a combination of factors: it offered one of several residential programs leading to a Ph.D. The School of Theology's deep respect for special revelation is evidenced by faculty correspondence.
On the other hand, the School of Ministries' deep respect for practical theology is evidenced by the faculty's commitment to equipping leaders who release all of God's people for service to the kingdom. Instead of avoiding general revelation, they courageously search for the cores of God's truth buried deep in the rubble. While he would object to the analogy, I feel like the "disciple" evolving from student to friend.
His dedication to the classroom is a nice reminder that students are shaped more by an hour of live interaction than by reading ten academic articles. These humble servants of God made their greatest impression by fostering the illusion that "I did it myself."
INTRODUCTION
Perceiving undeveloped believers as marginalized members of the body of Christ, this emancipatory study seeks to build awareness of the need to empower all believers to make contributions to the kingdom through intrinsically motivated service that embraces their faith. Each person of the Trinity is fully committed to fulfilling God's plan: the Father sends; The Son realizes; The Spirit empowers (1 Cor 12:4-6). The breadth of the Spirit's role in the church age is revived in Pauline literature (Berding 2000, 40).
Many ministers try to play a starring role in God's redemption story and then invite members of the congregation to serve in their ministry. By viewing undeveloped believers as marginalized members of the body of Christ, this emancipatory study sought to raise awareness of the need to empower each member to contribute to the kingdom through intrinsically motivated service that internalizes sincere faith. Limiting features of the study include the prior involvement of the researcher, the focus and quality of interviews, the timeline of the study, and the theoretical assumptions of SDT.
Despite the limited nature of the study, specific lessons may apply to other situations because "the general lies in the particular" (Erickson 1986). Raising awareness of the need to reexamine church-sponsored service is the first step toward exploring the potential of SDT.
Data Collection
The intent was 'to understand people's perceptions, perspectives, and beliefs about a given situation', rather than to analyze literature in terms of interest (Leedy and Ormrod 2005, 139). Critical theory's concerns about unequal power fit with the author's advocacy (Gall, Gall, and Borg 2005, 381) The host community group network served as a unit of analysis for a pool of selection.
To ensure all perspectives were heard, a critical set of stakeholders involved in various aspects of Church-sponsored service was purposefully selected. Finally, SDT's theoretical grid excluded members who had no experience of church-sponsored services and imposed a minimum quota of staffers and volunteer leaders (Bernard and Ryan 2010, 362). The significance attributed to past experiences of Church-sponsored service was explored through open conversations following four protocols: (a) data collection in the participant's setting; (b) interpret meaning behind data; (c) create new questions; (d) build inductive themes (Yegedis, Weinbach, and Morrison-Rodriguez 1999, 180).
Tracing SDT elements sharpened the deductive analysis; asking open-ended questions facilitated the inductive emergence of themes. In the final phase, the researcher moderated three focus group discussions of theoretical and critical themes that emerged from the interviews.
Data Analysis
Participative Reporting
One observer defines learning as "the action or process by which changes in behavior, knowledge, skills, and attitudes are acquired." (Boyd et al. With the introduction of Rogers' (1983) "client-centered therapy," the shift from teacher to student was. Most studies in the psychology of religion ignore motivational frameworks that would enrich the researcher's understanding of "religiosity" (Neyrinck et al. 2005, 75).
A contemporary advocate of spiritual discipline describes Christian formation as "the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner world of Christ's self" (Willard 2002, 22). However, they have not yet examined qualitative differences in the content of religious belief (Granqvist et al. If "all truth is God's truth," the only plausible response to the embodied integration of Deci and Ryan's work is to redeem it for His glory.
Rather than assent to the wisdom of His teaching, this requires 'knowing' the Master Himself (John 6:69). Here, traditional assumptions about the role of the Holy Spirit, the nature of spiritual gifts and the dynamics of Christianity. In this study, the researcher found that perception was the participant's reality until they learned otherwise.
By then, the damage had already been done – the growing conflict had torn apart a group of fragmented communities. Making the researcher a central instrument in the process was the best way to exploit his cultural and historical biases (Creswell 2009, 8). The topic of his master's thesis was "Empowerment Theology". Over the next twenty years, he helped many churches and non-profit ministries deal with a variety of leadership issues.
The researcher excluded congregation members with no previous service experience and tried to balance leaders and members in the selection process. Community groups are the primary vehicle for discipleship—the context in which we apply the gospel in our lives as we transform into gospel character and build redemptive relationships. Facilitation services are largely delegated to CG leaders.” The church's multi-site strategy includes "reaching the city as a church of groups." In the hope of creating a culture of service, leaders have recently restructured the cycle of group life to include community.
This partnership reflects the school's commitment to investing its resources in practical ways that serve its primary stakeholder – the local church. In each section, some of the questions (and subsequent probes) were derived from categories presented in the literature review.
Assembly of Documents
Instrumentation for the final phase of data collection consisted of moderating focus group discussions where leaders and members reflected on service's motivational dynamics, evaluated the church's current model of institutional service, and collaborated on biblical solutions. The data collection stage consisted of four distinct phases: document compilation, unstructured observations, personal interviews and focus group discussions.
Unstructured Observations
Personal Interviews
In doing so, the researcher was careful not to jeopardize his biblical worldview of absolute truth. It's also important to note that the study focused on the participants' perceptions of reality, not the host's actual performance. This required positioning the researcher among the subjects, putting forward his personal values, analyzing the context or setting, and consciously interpreting the data (Creswell 2009, 17).
Coding the dialogue in this way strengthened classification and analysis while preserving the integrity of the interviewee's ideas (Leedy and Ormrod.
Focus Groups
Transferability, on the other hand, refers to “the extent to which findings can be transferred to other settings or groups” (Polit and Hungler 1999, 717). Although we were a diverse group—married and single, young and old, white and African-American—the gospel bound us. I am now in a period of encouraging the church to live from God's heart for the poor.
We have done at least three service projects together as a group (eg the girls recently prepared a meal for Scarlet Hope and hung out with the ladies). In response, members are expected to link the church's gospel commitment to the community's well-being. Based on the researcher's personal observation, two institutional obstacles can blur the church's bold vision.
But if you see the church as a body - the body of Christ - with Jesus Christ as the Head, everyone serves. The fact that fully half of the elders are unpaid laypeople confirms that the commitment of the church goes beyond its founders. How leaders and members describe the motivational climate of the church, as shown in their personal interviews and focus group responses.
Sojourn” now represents an unwavering commitment to the Bible, an uncompromising drive to work for the good of the city and the highest of the Kingdom, a passion to redeem art and culture, and a love for “the least of these.” For the most part, attendees reinforced this glowing image of church life. One story, more than any other, illustrated the need to reevaluate the church's current approach. She was also excited about the chance to share the joy of serving "the least of these" with some of Sojourn's younger women.
If nothing else, she could have assembled a team of women from the church's community group network for hands-on mentorship.). Because of the way the church is structured in the New Testament," one group member noted, "we trusted our elders. Channeling the church's energy through the community group network was one of the study's strongest themes.
One hunch: "They don't know what they're good at, so they use it as an excuse." Another added: "When I was growing up, everyone was expected to serve." Matthew posed this challenge: "We must go from 'Come and see' to 'Go and die'." Kathy clarified, "The first is a follower; the second is a disciple." Standing alone, Matthew said: "This person may be at a different stage in their spiritual journey. He described his worship team audition as a 'disaster': The songs were unfamiliar, his guitar picking rusty and pressured - mostly self-imposed -.
