Professional Dissertations DMin

Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Project Report

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry

College

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

Program

Doctor of Ministry DMin

First Advisor

Kenley D. Hall

Second Advisor

Allan Walshe

Third Advisor

Boubakar Sanou

Abstract

Problem

The spirituality of a large percentage of church members at the Glenorchy church in Tasmania, is primarily based on knowledge about God with little concept of how biblical spirituality interacts with daily life. A recent Natural Church Development survey revealed passionate spirituality and loving relationships scored extremely low and revealed a profound need to engage spiritually with God on a daily basis. The members of Glenorchy Church have a high regard for Scripture and the writings of Ellen White, and therefore have read Steps to Christ, but few have experienced the transformational presence of God in their daily lives by practicing principles in Steps to Christ.

Method

This project endeavored to construct, contextualize, implement, and evaluate a discipleship process in the Glenorchy Church, that utilized principles from Steps to Christ that lead to a transformational experience of God’s presence in daily living. The project commenced with a two-day camp for the church members followed by a contextualized praxis in spiritual transformation based on Steps to Christ, that sought to build loving relationships and model devotional habits including reflective reading in a small group setting over 12 weeks with three follow-up sessions.

Results

Through small groups, community was built by unvarnished shared stories that utilized an andragogy based teaching style. Intensity built up during "Stepping into scripture" and "Steps to Christ" that powerfully connected teaching with emotions that allows for sapience to emerge. The modeling and teaching of devotional habits and particularly reflective reading was helpful to mostly younger members. All of the participants seemed to intensify their devotional lives, however only those with a regular time, place, and ritual and therefore able to practice biblical spirituality, were able to rise above the clutter of everyday life to enjoy the fruits of the Spirit regardless of where they were on the knowledge or experiential continuum.

Subject Area

Discipling (Christianity); White, Ellen Gould Harmon, 1827-1915. Steps to Christ; Glenorchy Seventh-day Adventist Church (Tasmania, Australia)

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/493

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