Professional Dissertations DMin
Date of Award
2017
Document Type
Project Report
Degree Name
Doctor of Ministry
College
Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary
Program
Doctor of Ministry DMin
First Advisor
Michael R. Cauley
Second Advisor
James Wibberding
Third Advisor
Anthony Wagener Smith
Abstract
Problem
A 2011 analysis of the Hacienda Heights Seventh-day Adventist Church revealed it had poor missional health in it, was not outreach focused, small group oriented, or a discipling community. This attributed to plateaued church growth with a congregation consisting largely of boomers and a significantly low percentage of GenX’ers and millennials.
Method
An intervention to train the members of the Hacienda Heights church to create missional communities was developed and applied as a means to improve the church’s missional health and growth. The intervention was developed by studying missional church literature and assessing the church and community. The resulting intervention included these modules: personal transformation, creating a sense of urgency, developing a guiding coalition, fostering passionate and authentic spirituality, mentoring disciples of Jesus, and developing missional communities. A follow-up assessment was conducted after the application of the intervention in order to determine its effectiveness.
Results
The intervention trained the church to create multiple missional communities. Missional health also increased as a result of the intervention, which led to improvements in spiritual development, mission and vision casting, organizational methods, outreach methods, leadership development, and discipleship. An increase in church growth was also observed among the millennia generation with eight baptisms, two recommitments, six new interests, and an increase in attendance of 21.
Conclusions
The conclusion of this project is the intervention effectively trained the Hacienda Heights Seventh-day Adventist Church to create missional communities. Secondly, it should be applied indefinitely to foster continued missional community growth and counteract the innate challenges of living missionally in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area. Lastly, without an intentional effort to create missional communities, a church inwardly focused will not reach outwardly on its own without a committed and equipped team of missional leaders to apply the intervention.
Subject Area
Hacienda Heights Seventh-day Adventist Church (Hacienda Heights, Calif.); Generation X; Generation Y; Church growth--California--Seventh-day Adventists; Church work with youth--Seventh-day Adventists
Recommended Citation
Poynter, Brett, "Training The Members Of The Hacienda Heights Seventh-day Adventist Church To Create Missional Communities" (2017). Professional Dissertations DMin. 317.
https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dmin/317/
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dmin/317
Creative Commons 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/317/