Professional Dissertations DMin

Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Project Report

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry

College

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

Program

Doctor of Ministry DMin

First Advisor

Walton A. Williams

Second Advisor

Barry J. Tryon

Third Advisor

Stanley E. Patterson

Abstract

Problem. In order for the Seventh-day Adventist Church to continue to be effective in its mission to its communities, new leaders must be developed in the local church. While there are many ways to impart skills to potential leaders, developing them as spiritual leaders is a unique task. One program, designed and written by Dr. Dan Reiland seems to fulfill this task. Joshua’s Men is a spiritual leadership curriculum which uses mentoring to develop leaders in the local church. The first edition was published in 1996. Reiland wrote a second edition which was released in 2006. Is this program effective? Does it develop spiritual leaders in the church? Can it be implemented in a small-sized church, where there is a restricted pool of potential leaders? This project evaluates Reiland’s second edition of the Joshua’s Men spiritual leadership curriculum to determine its effectiveness in developing spiritual leaders in the local church.

Method. The method used to evaluate the effectiveness of the Joshua’s Men spiritual leadership curriculum in implementing the second edition of the program was measuring the effect it had on the lives of the participants. Four men from the Williamsport Seventh-day Adventist Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania participated in this project. Three tools were used to measure the results: interviews, a monthly survey and a Personal Leadership Assessment.

Results. The results showed the effectiveness of the program in developing these four men as spiritual leaders. The monthly evaluations, interviews and the Personal Leadership Assessment revealed that the topics, monthly presentations and the reading material used, as a whole, were valuable. The participants also indicated they were applying in their everyday lives what they had learned. This was confirmed in the year end interviews with both the participants and their spouses, which noted that spiritual growth had occurred as a result of their involvement in the program.

Conclusions. Joshua’s Men is an effective spiritual leadership curriculum which helps facilitate the development of spiritual leaders in the local church. The success of this curriculum is found not only in its relevant topics and easy implementation but also in the fact that it uses mentoring as its basis. This combination of strengths makes Joshua’s Men a very effective tool in developing spiritual leaders in the local church.

Subject Area

Mentoring in church work, Leadership --Religious aspects --Seventh-day Adventists, Men in church work --Seventh-day Adventists, Christian leadership--Seventh-day Adventists

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dmin/52/

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