Professional Dissertations DMin

Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry

College

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

Program

Doctor of Ministry DMin

First Advisor

Abraham Guerrero

Second Advisor

Ricardo Norton

Abstract

Problem

The 184-member West Suburban Hispanic Seventh-day Adventist Church has no record of holding a communication seminar for couples in the congregation. Several church members have requested that training be provided to the church's forty-five couples. The benefits that the seminar on couples’ communication can confer have the potential to foster unity in marriages and homes. The lessons learned from the implementation of this project can also serve as a reference for other congregations with similar realities.

Methodology

For the development and implementation of this training seminar, after obtaining the necessary administrative permits, the author examined the topic of couple communication in the light of the Bible and theological publications and studied the topic in the context of contemporary literature. He then analyzed the profile of the West Suburban Hispanic Seventh-day Adventist Church, including a historical overview of the church, a brief demographic of the members, and an analysis of the 184-member membership. He invited forty-five existing couples to get involved in the planned training through a seminar on communication. He also analyzed the community context surrounding the congregation. The author then developed a seminar on couple communication for members of the congregation. Finally, it implemented the seminar on Saturdays, April 22 and 29, 2023. After implementation, the project presented participants with a survey to measure the results.

Results

Of the forty-five couples in the church, thirty-one signed up for training through the seminar on couples-to-couple communication. The registered couples attended the training alternately or permanently. In the end, fifty-one participants took the survey, from which the results explained in the following paragraph were obtained. The sum of the results obtained on positive and negative statements from the survey shows that the fifty-one participants in the measurements made 224 negative and 855 positive choices. This suggests that the sum of the votes in both tables indicates that the respondents made 1079 choices in the previous measurement instrument. This indicates that 20.7% of the statements chosen by the respondents were negative, so that, individually, they perceived themselves to be affected by negative aspects of communication in pairs. But, compared to the percentage of respondents who perceived themselves as on the negative side, 79.2% of the responses were in a positive area, which indicates that most of the participants self-perceived that their partners were influenced by the positive aspects. This reveals that about 80% of the participants observed that their partners functioned positively. Therefore, according to the observation of the author of this thesis, most of the participants perceived themselves to be free to a greater or lesser degree from the negative aspects that afflict couple relationships. This indicates that most couples self-perceive that they developed positive relationships.

Conclusion

The figures obtained indicate that the training of these couples through the seminar in communication met the expectations raised by the problem that gave rise to this thesis. This, together with the positive experience gained by the participants, has the potential to improve communication between couples and to help the rest of the brothers and sisters of this church. The material created by the author can also help other congregations that have similar needs or inspire other leaders to create training seminars about communication, or other topics that encourage good relationships in couples and the family and home unit. The project also contributed to increasing the professionalism of the author of this thesis. This is a benefit for him and for the church.

Subject Area

Communication in marriage; Church work with married people--Seventh-day Adventists; West Suburban Hispanic Seventh-day Adventist Church (Villa Park, Ill.);

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