Crisis and resilience among church planters in Europe

Church planting - the creation of new Christian communities for missionary reasons - is becoming increasingly accepted among the larger churches and denominations in Europe. As church plants in the secular parts of Europe are usually underresourced, and remain small, the normalization of this entrepreneurial approach of church and mission raises the question of its sustainability. Part of the answer to this question lies in the resilience of church planters; that is, those who lead these enterprises. In this paper we present the results of a qualitative study of European church planters, with a view to their coping with what often appears to be a mixture of high expectations, unclear structures, and a difficult "market." This research shows the particular nature of crises in the life of a church planter, while identifying sources of resilience. Its results are relevant both for the assessment of church planting projects, and for the training and coaching of church planters

Missional Christian communities in conditions of marginality : on finding a ‘missional existence’ in the post-Christian west

There is a particular vulnerability to mission in the secularized societies of Western Europe. Much of this has to do with a loss of confidence, which hinders participation in the mission of God. This article presents an analysis of this vulnerability that comes from a loss of heart, and it offers possible solutions for a bold minority mission as participation in the missio Dei. This includes the de-instrumentalization of mission and rooting it in a doxological approach. Furthermore, the biblical metaphors of exile and priesthood are explored to redefine what it means to do mission from a position of joyful weakness.La misión en las sociedades secularizadas de la Europa occidental sufre una vulnerabilidad particular. Mucho de esto tiene que ver con una pérdida de confianza que dificulta la participación en la misión de Dios. Este artículo presenta un análisis de esta vulnerabilidad que proviene del desánimo, y ofrece posibles soluciones para una misión minoritaria audaz como partícipe en la missio Dei. Esto incluye la des-instrumentalización de la misión y el su enraizamiento en un enfoque doxológico. Además, las metáforas bíblicas del exilio y del sacerdocio se exploran para redefinir lo que significa hacer la misión desde el lugar de la debilidad gozosa.http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/15733831am2022Science of Religion and Missiolog

Automatically Detecting Visual Bugs in HTML5 <canvas> Games

The HTML5 is used to display high quality graphics in web applications such as web games (i.e., games). However, automatically testing games is not possible with existing web testing techniques and tools, and manual testing is laborious. Many widely used web testing tools rely on the Document Object Model (DOM) to drive web test automation, but the contents of the are not represented in the DOM. The main alternative approach, snapshot testing, involves comparing oracle snapshot images with test-time snapshot images using an image similarity metric to catch visual bugs, i.e., bugs in the graphics of the web application. However, creating and maintaining oracle snapshot images for games is onerous, defeating the purpose of test automation. In this paper, we present a novel approach to automatically detect visual bugs in games. By leveraging an internal representation of objects on the , we decompose snapshot images into a set of object images, each of which is compared with a respective oracle asset (e.g., a sprite) using four similarity metrics: percentage overlap, mean squared error, structural similarity, and embedding similarity. We evaluate our approach by injecting 24 visual bugs into a custom game, and find that our approach achieves an accuracy of 100%, compared to an accuracy of 44.6% with traditional snapshot testing.Comment: Accepted at ASE 2022 conferenc

Developing argumentation skills in mathematics through computer-supported collaborative learning: the role of transactivity

Collaboration scripts and heuristic worked examples are effective means to scaffold university freshmen’s mathematical argumentation skills. Yet, which collaborative learning processes are responsible for these effects has remained unclear. Learners presumably will gain the most out of collaboration if the collaborators refer to each other’s contributions in a dialectic way (dialectic transactivity). Learners also may refer to each other’s contributions in a dialogic way (dialogic transactivity). Alternatively, learners may not refer to each other’s contributions at all, but still construct knowledge (constructive activities). This article investigates the extent to which constructive activities, dialogic transactivity, and dialectic transactivity generated by either the learner or the learning partner can explain the positive effects of collaboration scripts and heuristic worked examples on the learners’ disposition to use argumentation skills. We conducted a 2 × 2 experiment with the factors collaboration script and heuristic worked examples with N = 101 math teacher students. Results showed that the learners’ engagement in self-generated dialectic transactivity (i.e., responding to the learning partner’s contribution in an argumentative way by critiquing and/or integrating their learning partner’s contributions) mediated the effects of both scaffolds on their disposition to use argumentation skills, whereas partner-generated dialectic transactivity or any other measured collaborative learning activity did not. To support the disposition to use argumentation skills in mathematics, learning environments should thus be designed in a way to help learners display dialectic transactivity. Future research should investigate how learners might better benefit from the dialectic transactivity generated by their learning partners

A Case Study of Church Growth by Church Planting in Germany:Are They Connected?

It is widely believed that the planting of new churches is a cause of church growth, regardless of culture or context. However, surprisingly little reliable and relevant data are presented to support this claim. In this article recent membership data of the Bund Freier evangelischer Gemeinden (Association of Free Evangelical Congregations) in Germany is explored to examine the relationship between church planting and church growth. The data show that there is indeed a positive correlation, but since there is also a clear correlation between rapid growth and decline, the evidence should be treated with care