Creating and Implementing a Mentorship Ministry for New Believers

A major spiritual crisis exists in the Christian church due to the lack of care and attention given to new believers. Although many churches provide conversion opportunities, they may not prioritize discipleship and support for those who are new to the faith. Consequently, some new believers resign their faith when faced with difficulties, while others may struggle without crucial elements of their faith and doctrine, causing obstacles in their future spiritual journeys. This thesis project argues that having a New Believers Mentorship Ministry is vital and effective in addressing these issues. The project coordinator has three specific expectations for the project. First, the project coordinator recruited eight candidates, who were evaluated and matched as mentors and mentees based on criteria, forming four groups. Second, the project coordinator trained the mentors and established an eight-week mentoring session via Zoom based on a new believer curriculum. The curriculum consisted of weekly readings in Mark, introductory biblical topics, study questions, and prayer. Lastly, the project coordinator evaluated the participants using assessments, interviews, and focus groups in order to assess the progress of the new believers and adjust aspects of the project. The project coordinator focused research on creating a mentoring culture within the local church, mentor-mentee matching, and a new believer curriculum focused on a mentoring partnership. The evaluation portion of the project revealed a notable increase in the self-assurance and spiritual development of both new believers and their mentors

A Brook Runs through It: Fresh Water from the Bach for Today\u27s Thirsty Church

(Excerpt) Not Bach [brook], but Meer [sea] should be his name, Beethoven once said of Johann Sebastian Bach. 1 In this anniversary year marking the two-hundred and fiftieth year of his death on July 28, Bach is receiving extraordinary attention, which includes a significant biography by Christoph Wolff,2 yet another series of recordings of all the cantatas (that makes five3), and soul-searching among various scholars in an attempt to grasp the essence of this person\u27s life and work

Does belief have an aim?

The hypothesis that belief aims at the truth has been used to explain three features of belief: (1) the fact that correct beliefs are true beliefs, (2) the fact that rational beliefs are supported by the evidence and (3) the fact that we cannot form beliefs `at will. I argue that the truth-aim hypothesis cannot explain any of these facts. In this respect believing differs from guessing since the hypothesis that guessing aims at the truth can explain the three analogous features of guessing. I conclude that, unlike guessing, believing is not purposive in any interesting sense

Epistemic Schmagency?

Constructivist approaches in epistemology and ethics offer a promising account of normativity. But constructivism faces a powerful Schmagency Objection, raised by David Enoch. While Enoch’s objection has been widely discussed in the context of practical norms, no one has yet explored how the Schmagency Objection might undermine epistemic constructivism. In this paper, I rectify that gap. First, I develop the objection against a prominent form of epistemic constructivism, Belief Constitutivism. Belief Constitutivism is susceptible to a Schmagency Objection, I argue, because it locates the source of normativity in the belief rather than the agent. In the final section, I propose a version of epistemic constructivism that locates epistemic normativity as constitutive of agency. I argue that this version has the resources to respond to the Schmagency Objection

APPROACHING THE FISSURE IN BEING: PARMENIDES, SARTRE, PLOTINUS, AND EARLY CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

This essay is a project aimed primarily at mapping certain philosophical and theological ontologies onto psychology; in particular, existential psychology. The existential psychology is strongly inspired by Sartre, and the ontologies which are investigated are those of the pre-Socratic Parmenides, Sartre himself, the Neoplatonist Plotinus, and early Christian representations of the relationship between the divine and human natures of Christ as well as the persons of the Trinity. Early (primarily Eastern) Christian doctrines of deification are also treated as significant expressions of a similar, latent existential psychology. The nature of this psychology, brought out by Sartre, is a reaction to tension between conscious and non-conscious being. Consciousness reveals that being can be other to itself: it is the "hole" in the heart of being, as Sartre calls it. I argue that Parmenides regards being as whole and unified in part because he does not or can not find a place for the gap in being which is the nothingness of consciousness. For similar reasons, both Plotinus and Sartre describe conscious being as a denigration of sorts in being. Because of the othering of being to itself in the form of human consciousness, man is always other to himself, and can never fully be what he aims to be. Sartre describes this failed effort as the attempt to become "self-caused," that which can give itself its own essence. It is suggested that Sartre's description of non-conscious being as well as Plotinus' description of the One sometimes appear to contradict themselves insofar as they imply self-causation within non-conscious being, and I argue that this is due to the inability or refusal of either to imagine consciousness as a failed project. Similarly, I argue that the early Trinitarian and Christological controversies of the Christian church as well as some early Christian conceptions of deification (particularly Eastern conceptions) can be seen as representative of attempts to reconcile conscious being with non-conscious being; either in the form of the self-cause or in something approaching it

'Europe' and 'The Islamic World' : Perceptions and Stereotypes

Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg lecture has been exposed by some learned voices of 'the Muslim world' as alluding, by the means of one particular quotation, to age-old stereotypes about Islam being an essentially violent creed in which moderation through reason has no legitimate place, and of representing Muhammadas an evil and inhuman man who preached that Islam should be spread by the sword. While none of these presumably 'Muslim' voices deny that the Pope has the right to express his opinions, even when they are plainly wrong in the face of historic facts that show how Islam and Christianity were spread (or were made to spread) across the world, he is criticised for a host of omissions in terms of intellectual honesty and factual accuracy. These omissions, it is argued here, cast an unfortunate light on the compatibility of scientific and religious rationality much advocated by the Pope in his 12 September 2006 lecture. This flagrant 'performative contradiction' (Habermas) leaves room for speculation about the true aim of the speech. Is Benedict XVI's appeal to theology as a legitimate academic discipline a credible attempt to explicate Roman Catholicism's rightful place in a modern world governed by liberal democracy and ethical-political pluralism, or is it a reflection of a move to restore the age-old, intolerant, anti-scientific, and anti-democratic legacy of the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church

The Terrestrialization of Amphibious Life in a Danube Delta \u27Town on Water\u27

Visitors to the Danube Delta town of Vylkove, known as the “Ukrainian Venice,” are often disappointed by the condition its 40 kilometers of canals, which frequently resemble over-grown ditches that are often impassible by boat. Consequently, a development organization and town administrators have begun lobbying for funding for a large-scale canal restoration project and for the town’s designation as a heritage site to help in mobilizing funds. However, these tourism-development narratives also assume that all residents can and want to practice an amphibious way of life that prevailed for centuries. Combining analytical frameworks of amphibious anthropology and recent social science literature on water infrastructure helps reveal a) how Vylkovchany’s dwelling practices did not categorically privilege wet over dry (and vice versa) in spite of Enlightenment-inflected narratives of settlement that enact such separations and b) the specific ways in which socialist modernization and postsocialist deindustrialization have modified Vylkovchany’s relations with the Danube’s Kiliia branch and intensified their siltation. This paper makes the case for including ethnographic analyses of terrestrialization as part of an amphibious anthropology and demonstrates the value of amphibious anthropology in pinpointing dynamics of landscape change that should be addressed in designing a restoration project