Training Members In The Greenwich Seventh-day Adventist Church Towards A More Effective Sharing Of The Gospel

The Problem The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Britain is clergy dependant and as a result the Church is not growing as fast as it could be. Members of the Church are not proficient or confident in leading a person to Jesus. The Method A personal profile has been established so it can be seen that much of this project arises out of my own personality and spiritual characteristics. A profile of the Greenwich community as well as the church has been established through research, interviewing, and data gathering from kept records. A Task Force Team (TFT) has been set up comprising of people trained in personal evangelism. Questionnaires and seminars were the primary means of establishing membership of the TFT. The Results The questionnaires, designed to establish the members of the TFT, have been completed and evaluated and nineteen people have been identified. The training process can now begin. Conclusions The research into the makeup of the Greenwich community and church highlighted the disparity regarding the ethnic makeup of both of them. It is envisaged that the work of personal evangelism, i.e., reaching people in their homes, will do much to bridge the cultural gap. The cross-cultural instrument and questionnaire has identified some on the TFT who would be especially suitable to work with others of differing backgrounds and cultures. To have a team of dedicated people, gifted in personal evangelism and witness, trained, and equipped to be as efficient as possible should be the aim and work of every church community if the gospel is to reach as many people as possible

Bridging The Transition Gap: Student Perceptions Of Middle To High School Transition Practices And School Connectedness

The purpose of this study was two-fold: first, to understand perceptions of high school students regarding their transition from middle school into high school. Grounded theory research methods were used to construct theory from data obtained from the study. Secondly, the researcher wished to advocate for North Dakota high schools for implementing school-wide transition programs to bridge the transition gap during a period of pivotal importance in the lives of our students. A review of North Dakota Century Code 15.1 revealed no statute has been developed requiring North Dakota schools to implement school-wide programs or activities focusing on students transitioning from middle to high school.The researcher conducted a grounded theory mixed methods study by collecting online survey responses (both quantitative and qualitative) from 513 currently enrolled high school (10th-12th grade) students from three participating high schools within one public school district in North Dakota. Grounded theory is employed to understand a situation (student’s perceptions of transitioning into high school) and to identify the cause of a problem (possible reasons/motivations behind students perceptions of school connectedness). The integration of Schlossberg’s Transition Theory and School Connectedness frameworks were critical in understanding how student participants experienced their transition into high school as well as unearthing aspects of school life that may have contributed to the overall transition itself. Findings of this study suggested that students within the participating school district had a need for connections with others, believed there are multiple benefits of joining extracurriculars, and had a need to learn more about the “unknowns” about high school prior to their arrival. The results of this study included recommendations for educators, state educational departments, students, and for implementation of a school-wide transition program for incoming high school students to bridge the transition gap between middle school and high schoo

Becoming Good Europeans? Globality, the EU and the Potential to Realize Nietzsche\u27s Idea of Europe

This dissertation takes up Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of ‘good Europeanism’ and his related idea of Europe to show how the former disposition may be cultivated to achieve the latter—a reinvigorated culture on the continent. It does so by applying his vitalist politics and power ontology (will to power hypothesis and theory of decadence) to critique European integration in the broader context of globalization. The analysis enables me to theorize how “healthy” individuals might exploit opportunities in the present to become \u27good Europeans\u27, with the aim of realizing Nietzsche’s quasi-cosmopolitan idea of Europe. It is my primary contention that Nietzsche’s diagnosis of Europe’s ailment remains relevant, as does his strategy, via a radically Dionysian affirmation of life, for overcoming the international order it has spawned. In doing so I utilize Nietzsche’s related perspectivalist epistemological stance and hermeneutical framework to build on Nietzsche\u27s genealogy of morality. This shows the West’s present “slave moral” regime to be a further intensified development of secularized Christian–Platonic values. It arose through the fusing of liberal-optimism (belief in equality, emancipation, enfranchisement, etc.) with modernity’s doctrines of universalism, humanism, secularism, progressivism and rationalism. It also coextends with the positivistic orientation of scientism to transmit a secular faith in truth, and unparadoxically an injurious relativism and cynical worldview. It is through Nietzsche’s vitalist perspectivalism that I understand the psychological-historical origins and current operation of the axiomatic narratives promulgated via the meta-discourse of ultra-liberal-modernity. The same critical framework is applied to a doxagraphical survey of theories of European integration. These theories are understood as differing perspectives conceived within and informed by the same values matrix, and critiqued in chronological order of their appearance to reflect the evolution of the field. Problems of evaluation, indeterminacy and bias, and the form of reasoning privileged by the positivistic orientation conferred by scientism are examined in terms of how they inform the conduct of social science and conceptualizations and uses of fact. Acts of theorizing are understood as indicative of a will-to-truth which can positively augment life or negatively hamper it. I consider how the mainstream of the field has tended to reiterate the ideological presuppositions of ultra-liberal-modernity. Notable exceptions include recent constructivist approaches and discourse analysis critiques. These critical perspectives are productively broadening and potentially subverting the dominant conventions of the field. This raises the possibility that good Europeans may influence the future development of the EU as counter-theorizers of it. The EU is understood as a crucial locus of the globalization complex, a primarily reactive power constellation comprised of myriad institutions, processes and forces. A ressentiment-driven project, the globalization complex functions as an ideological juggernaut to universalize ultra-liberal-modern values. It affectively implements a negative will to nothingness as nihilistic power which culminates in a hyper-decadent condition typified by resignation to its prerogatives. Its values are politically instantiated throughout the world via democratization and hegemonic capital process. I examine the spectacularized existential meanings and simulated ontological purpose provided by the globalization complex. These engage and automatize the masses by means of commercially generated, media promoted desires and an ethos of consumerism. These sustain a philistinic culture of conformity by means of which its ideological proponents, ascetic-consumerist priests of ressentiment, justify and naturalize their authority. Their influence extends a spirit of revenge against life’s radical contingency and temporality. It privileges homogenizing and ossifying modes of being to inhibit authentic becoming. However, the globalization complex cannot contain all the affective capacities its shrinking and simultaneous acceleration of the world generates. The increased interconnectivity between people that it facilitates and the reactive values matrix it imposes give rise to a changed mentality or consciousness. Life in within the globalization complex provides a few with a philosophical education that endows them with a broadened perspective on the differences between human types. They gain a profound appreciation of the need for the divergent worldviews that distinguish disparate cultures—forms of life imperiled by conventional globalization. This nurtures a reflective, historical consciousness and an acceptance of difference (entwined with their love of fate) that augments their emerging sense of globality and occasionally manifests itself in ways that escape capture. Among a few, globality fosters the skeptical-ironic disposition toward truth claims and craftiness characteristic of ‘good Europeans’. Such iconoclastic individuals may creatively challenge the legitimacy of ultra-liberal-modern values, their distinctive striving symptomatic of a positive will to creative destruction as generative power and authentic becoming-other. To foster the development of the skeptical-ironic disposition, or Weltironie, of good Europeanism I suggest a six-fold skeptical praxis. This is based on the classical Pyrrhonean skeptical notions of akatalepsia (recognition of the impossibility of certain knowledge), epoche (the suspension of belief due to the contingency of truth), ataraxia (the ancient skeptic and stoic doctrine of disciplined withdrawal toward becoming what one is), apangelia (an avowal not involving a commitment to truth or falsity), adoxastos (the disciplined effort to avoid forming convictions and feigning agreement with prevailing value standards when necessary, which corresponds with the strategic use of masks), and finally, from the ancient cynics, the concept of parrhesia (fearless speech in mocking ascetic values). These practices support the necessary perspectivalist stance toward all truth claims to radically affirm the chaos of becoming. The adherents of such an anti-essentialist discipline revel in the fundamental contingency of life. According to Nietzsche’s vision, I consider how ‘good Europeans’ might achieve their aims in light of the prevailing values of our globalizing world. Acting as comedians of ascetic ideals they engage in kynical acts that may utilize the new technologies and enhanced communications provided by science and industry (key components of the globalization complex), to lampoon the anti-human decadence and nihilism of our age. Their inherently political mockery of the prevailing social discourses arouses the passion of other healthy types. They are spurred to similarly creative experiments and life-affirming acts of defiance, and the ethos of ‘good Europeanism’ gradually spreads, thereby. Through their striving such ‘good Europeans’ (who, in our globalizing age, may appear in any geographical locale) become capable of recognizing and exploiting unanticipated, abstract potentials of globality. Afflicted with the decadence of our age, they are not the Übermenschen Nietzsche anticipated, but prevenient to them. More likely to be perceived as buffoons than as great leaders, they are neither conventional revolutionaries nor “improvers of humankind”; they endeavor to discredit the ultra-liberal-modern order instantiated through the globalization complex. By prompting it to reactively assert its prerogatives and intensify itself, they make its contradictoriness, antagonistic impetus and hostility to difference more apparent. However gradually, this will erode its legitimacy, as good Europeans exploit its vulnerabilities. According to Nietzsche’s vision, I consider the ways in which ‘good Europeans’ would likely employ the democratic, egalitarian and populist sensibilities of the globalized masses, and how the EU could be hijacked to augment their aim. This could include the crafty use of human rights, artificial intelligence and bio-engineering to hasten our enervated epoch to its expiration. Efforts to challenge the reigning ascetic-consumerist ideals are conditioning the possibility for the appearance of Übermenschlich individuals to (nomothetically) legislate an agonistic socio-political milieu predicated on a natural rank order of types. It is the hope of ‘good Europeans’ that such Übermenschen will one day inaugurate a transhuman future and create a higher culture for the flourishing of greatness that secondarily edifies the multitude with the meaning and purpose great works provide. I conclude that if humankind succeeds in transfiguring itself through the going-down of our ultra-liberal-modern epoch (the most pervasive and decadent socio-political order in recorded history) these Übermenschen, the progeny of contemporary ‘good Europeans’, will focus on the rehabilitation of the environment and preservation of the earth

Journaling on the Transition to College: Foucauldian Approaches in the First-Year Writing Classroom

Utilizing the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality and technologies of the self, this qualitative action research study explored how power dynamics inherent in higher education can be recognized and resisted as first-year writing students journal on the transition to college (JTC). Conducted in a suburban community college in the Mid-Atlantic United States during the Spring 2020 semester, the study investigated how college is a feature of governmentality, how writing instructors’ actions interrupt or reinforce college as governmentality, and if journaling on the transition to college acts as a technology of the self, in light of the ways college governs. Journal prompts provided students opportunities to critically reflect on the institution of college and their experience entering this new space. Foucauldian concepts were not taught, but they informed the journal design. Black feminist theory supplemented the Foucauldian theoretical framework to address factors of students’ intersectional social identities emergent in JTC and relative to their experiences with power in college. Findings indicated students confront institutional power structures including economic power, grades, policies, and institutional White supremacy, all of which affect professors’ role as authority figures. Underrepresented students experience power much differently than those belonging to dominant groups and JTC provides instructors with insight to interrupt oppressive power through feedback. Writing instructors’ implementation of JTC allows them to disrupt governmentality and provides students a technology of the self through which they develop agency. Though disruptive, COVID-19 provided unexpected opportunities to apply Foucauldian concepts to teaching and learning during emergency remote instruction

Return with Honor: An Investigation of the Reentry Experiences and Discourses of Returning Missionaries in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Reentry is one of the most difficult and important periods of a traveler’s journey – a time to reflect on and integrate new experiences, identities, and perspectives into life at home. This period is often bittersweet and marked by a host of challenges and symptomology. Religious language and practice may function to alleviate or exacerbate these routine reentry challenges, or introduce a host of new concerns. Situated in the nexus of religion and tourism, the purpose of this critical-constructive qualitative inquiry is to (a) investigate the experiences and discourses of returning missionaries in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and (b) explore how these experiences and discourses influence the well-being and religious commitments of emerging adults. Primary data were collected via interviews with fulltime missionaries (n = 16) who had returned to a southeastern stake of the Church between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2016. Additional data were collected from social media posts; archival membership data; news stories; Church sermons, periodicals, handbooks, curriculum, and multimedia; and scholarly literature crossing a range of disciplines. These additional data points were used to inform discourse analyses and contextualize responses. Review of the literature, coupled with results from multiple layers of analysis (i.e., Willson\u27s approach to narrative analysis, Braun and Clarke\u27s approach to thematic analysis, Gees\u27 building tasks of critical discourse analysis), provide evidence that religious and secular discourses influence reentry via multiple points across the missionary cycle (i.e., recruitment, training, departure, mission, and return) and subsequently alter or anchor their religious identity and commitments. Specifically, feelings of alienation, loss, interpersonal discontent, and anxiety may be a product of or worsened by discourses related to the Significance placed on the mission, the Practice of dating and marriage, Identification as a returned missionary, the Sign Systems that privilege returned missionary knowledge and contributions, the Politics that make priesthood advancement and temple marriage more likely realities for returned missionaries, and the Relationships and Connections sacrificed via the adoption of alternative social discourses that elevate individual autonomy and engage with anti-Mormon ideals. As Church leaders prepare missionaries for and help them respond to the challenges of reentry and the transition to adulthood, they may wish to more intentionally steer the discourse of reentry via Church sermons, trainings, and more proactive social and multimedia campaigns. Church leaders also need to balance organizational goals (i.e., retention) with individual needs (i.e., the well-being of emerging adults). More broadly, reentry scholars and practitioners may wish to look beyond outdated anthropological theories of cross-cultural adjustment (i.e., theory of reverse culture shock, cultural identity theory) to enrich understandings of reentry. For example, evidence from this study indicated that the theory of place attachment, social comparison theory, and human development scholarship may all help explain the challenges and opportunities associated with reentry

The Coming Age of Scarcity : Preventing Mass Death and Genocide in the Twenty-first Century

The structure of the book is simple. The first part analyzes major forces having an impact on the survivability of civilization as we know it into the twenty-first century. It outlines the challenges we face, including overpopulation, pressure upon the land, migration, ecological damage, and social instability. In part two, we present more detailed discussion of the problem of scarcity and how it relates to conflict. The authors in this section argue that the current level of human activity is unsustain­able. They demonstrate that population growth in particular affects the natural world and can affect the social order and international political systems.The authors in part three go beyond the empirical and theoretical studies of the first two parts to examine how scarcity has already led to mass death and genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti and to speculate on the likelihood that scarcities could be a more decisive factor in genocide in the future.https://surface.syr.edu/books/1022/thumbnail.jp

Doing good or going better: development policies in a globalising world

The world is changing, and so is the unquestioning belief that development policies are always right. Instead of focusing on the rather limited notion of poverty, this book aims to deepen our understanding of the broad issue of development. What are the drivers of development? What new issues have arisen due to globalization? And what kind of policies contribute to development in a world that is changing rapidly? The articles in this book provide insight into the muddled trajectories of development on various continents and rethink the notion of development in a globalizing, interdependent world. Taken together, the still fuzzy contours of a paradigm shift emerge from the 'Washington Confusion'. Development can no longer be the ambitious, moral project based on a standard model of economic European or American modernization. 'Doing better' means being less moralistic, more modest and pragmatic, and taking seriously the path dependencies and social realities that exist in each country

How do middle managers deal with uncertainty in the strategy process?

Uncertainty is an unavoidable dimension of organizational life, and it is also challenging even for the most competent managers (Pich, Loch, & Meyer, 2002). This thesis examined middle managers’ uncertainty responses during the formulation and implementation of the strategy process in three studies. The first study was qualitative and intended to expose the sources of uncertainty, managerial responses, and variables, which are essential for middle managers to cope with uncertainty in the strategy process. Study 1, involving interviews with 22 middle managers in civilian and military organizations, resulted in six sources, including a new classification--International instability and disasters--and five different responses: Collaborative responses, Emotional responses, Cognitive responses, Value-based responses, and Bureaucratic responses. In the second study, we conducted a Multidimensional scaling technique (N=70) to create a taxonomy of perception of managerial uncertainty responses in order to understand the nature of uncertainty in any organization and to help to build new theories. Results indicated six clusters: Protection by Support, Protection by Structure, Protection by Scapegoats, Certainty of Change, Development by Debate, and Development by Change. In the third study, we examined the effects of individual responses to uncertainty and organizational factors on managerial responses using quantitative analysis (N=310). The results showed that organizational-level knowledge sharing has positive effects on managers’ desire of change. This study added a new source of uncertainty and five different managerial responses to uncertainty, and revealed that individual-level cognitive uncertainty and desire of change result in bureaucratic and collaborative responses. Additionally, we contend that managers respond to uncertainty variously, from suppressing to collaboration, either to protect themselves or to act towards a constructive change in the organizations.A incerteza é uma dimensão inevitável da vida organizacional, e também é um desafio até mesmo para os gerentes mais competentes (Pich, Loch & Meyer, 2002). Esta dissertação examinou as respostas de incerteza do gerente intermediário durante a formulação e implementação do processo de estratégia em três estudos. O primeiro estudo foi qualitativo e pretendia expor as fontes de incerteza, respostas gerenciais e variáveis, que são essenciais para os gerentes de nível médio lidarem com a incerteza no processo de estratégia. O estudo 1, com entrevistas a 22 gerentes de nível médio em organizações civis e militares, resulta em seis fontes, incluindo uma nova classificação; Instabilidade internacional e desastres e cinco respostas diferentes; Respostas colaborativas, respostas emocionais, respostas cognitivas, respostas baseadas em valores e respostas burocráticas. No segundo estudo, conduzimos uma técnica de dimensionamento multidimensional (N = 70) para criar uma taxonomia da percepção das respostas gerenciais de incerteza para entender a natureza da incerteza em qualquer organização e para ajudar a construir novas teorias. Os resultados indicaram cinco clusters; Proteção por Suporte, Proteção por Estrutura, Proteção por Bodes Expiatórios, Certeza de Mudança, Desenvolvimento por Debate e Desenvolvimento por Mudança. No terceiro estudo, examinamos os efeitos das respostas individuais à incerteza e fatores organizacionais sobre respostas gerenciais por meio de análise quantitativa (N = 310). Os resultados mostraram que o compartilhamento do conhecimento no nível organizacional tem efeitos positivos no desejo de mudança dos gestores. Este estudo adicionou uma nova fonte de incerteza e cinco respostas gerenciais diferentes à incerteza e revelou que a incerteza cognitiva de nível individual e o desejo de mudança resultam em respostas burocráticas e colaborativas. Além disso, afirmamos que os gerentes reagem à incerteza, desde a supressão até a colaboração, seja para se protegerem ou para agir em prol de uma mudança construtiva nas organizações

Advances in the sociology of trust and cooperation: theory, experiments, and field studies

The problem of cooperation and social order is one of the core issues in the social sciences. The key question is how humans, groups, institutions, and countries can avoid or overcome the collective good dilemmas that could lead to a Hobbesian war of all against all. Using the general set of social dilemmas as a paradigmatic example, rigorous formal analysis can stimulate scientific progress in several ways. The book, consisting of original articles, provides state of the art examples of research along these lines: theoretical, experimental, and field studies on trust and cooperation. The theoretical work covers articles on trust and control, reputation formation, and paradigmatic articles on the benefits and caveats of abstracting reality into models. The experimental articles treat lab based tests of models of trust and reputation, and the effects of the social and institutional embeddedness on behavior in cooperative interactions and possibly emerging inequalities. The field studies test these models in applied settings such as cooperation between organizations, informal care, and different kinds of collaboration networks. The book will be exemplary for rigorous sociology and social sciences more in general in a variety of ways: There is a focus on effects of social conditions, in particular different forms of social and institutional embeddedness, on social outcomes. Theorizing about and testing of effects of social contexts on individual and group outcomes is one of the main aims of sociological research. Modelling efforts include formal explications of micro-macro links that are typically easily overlooked when argumentation is intuitive and impressionistic Extensive attention is paid to unintended effects of intentional behavior, another feature that is a direct consequence of formal theoretical modelling and in-depth data-analyses of the social processe

How to Achieve Inclusive Growth

Rising inequality and widespread poverty, social unrest and polarization, gender and ethnic disparities, declining social mobility, economic fragility, unbalanced growth due to technology and globalization, and existential danger from climate change are urgent global concerns of our day. These issues are intertwined. They therefore require a holistic framework to examine their interplay and bring the various strands together. This book brings together leading academic economists and experts from several international institutions to explain the sources and scale of these challenges. The book summarizes a wide array of empirical evidence and country experiences, lays out practical policy solutions, and devises a comprehensive and unified plan of action for combatting these economic and social disparities. This authoritative book is accessible to policy makers, students, and the general public interested in how to craft a brighter future by building a sustainable, green, and inclusive society in the years ahead