Improving the Assimilation of New Members in Small Adventist Churches in Central Pennsylvania

Problem The failure of many of our small Seventh-day Adventist congregations to fully welcome new members into their midst has been of pastoral concern for many years. This project is an attempt to build awareness among established church members of the need to assimilate and sacrifice for new members. Method The first part of the project involved research into the assimilation of new members in ten small Adventist congregations in central Pennsylvania. New members who had joined the church during a six-year interval were studied to see if they had maintained active membership status during that time. Interviews were also conducted with three pastors, four active SDA members, and four inactive members to explore their views about assimilating new members. A seminar was conducted in three churches to alert their membership to the needs of new members, and their own roles in assimilating them into their congregations. An attempt was made to ascertain the effectiveness of that approach in changing attitudes with respect to new members by comparing results from a pre-seminar questionnaire (given to the entire church about one month prior to the seminar) and a very similar questionnaire administered at the close of the seminar. Results The findings of the questionnaires regarding the effectiveness of the seminar in changing attitudes with respect to new members were inconclusive. The hope that church members would attend the seminar in large numbers was usually not realized. Therefore, the pool of those taking the follow-up questionnaire was more selective than the pool of those taking the pre-seminar questionnaire, making any conclusions reached by direct comparisons of the answers unreliable. However, subjective analysis of the behaviors of the churches involved and their assimilation percentages was revealing. Conclusions There is a definite comparison between the personal effort the church membership is willing to extend in support of new member assimilation and the likelihood that new members will become active in its fellowship. Churches with higher assimilation rates showed greater interest in the seminar than those with lower assimilation rates. An exception was noted in the smallest church surveyed. It had a large seminar attendance but a very poor record of assimilation. This suggests that factors other than the church\u27s willingness to personally welcome newcomers might be involved. Real change in attitude among the membership in small church settings is not likely to result from one or two seminars alone, but will require ongoing vision-casting by the leadership through sermons, lessons, and personal example

Understanding and Avoiding AI Failures: A Practical Guide.

As AI technologies increase in capability and ubiquity, AI accidents are becoming more common. Based on normal accident theory, high reliability theory, and open systems theory, we create a framework for understanding the risks associated with AI applications. In addition, we also use AI safety principles to quantify the unique risks of increased intelligence and human-like qualities in AI. Together, these two fields give a more complete picture of the risks of contemporary AI. By focusing on system properties near accidents instead of seeking a root cause of accidents, we identify where attention should be paid to safety for current generation AI systems

Resolving SNR 0540-6944 from LMC X-1 with Chandra

We examine the supernova remnant (SNR) 0540-697 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using data from the Chandra ACIS. The X-ray emission from this SNR had previously been hidden in the bright emission of nearby X-ray binary LMC X-1; however, new observations with Chandra can finally reveal the SNR's structure and spectrum. We find the SNR to be a thick-shelled structure about 19 pc in diameter, with a brightened northeast region. Spectral results suggest a temperature of 0.31 keV and an X-ray luminosity (0.3-3.0 keV) of 8.4 x 10^33 erg/s. We estimate an age of 12,000-20,000 yr for this SNR, but note that this estimate does not take into account the possibility of cavity expansion or other environmental effects.Comment: 8 pages, 2 GIF figures. Submitted to ApJL. Replaced with minor revisions from referee comment

The effect of boundary adaptivity on hexagonal ordering and bistability in circularly confined quasi hard discs

The behaviour of materials under spatial confinement is sensitively dependent on the nature of the confining boundaries. In two dimensions, confinement within a hard circular boundary inhibits the hexagonal ordering observed in bulk systems at high density. Using colloidal experiments and Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate two model systems of quasi hard discs under circularly symmetric confinement. The first system employs an adaptive circular boundary, defined experimentally using holographic optical tweezers. We show that deformation of this boundary allows, and indeed is required for, hexagonal ordering in the confined system. The second system employs a circularly symmetric optical potential to confine particles without a physical boundary. We show that, in the absence of a curved wall, near perfect hexagonal ordering is possible. We propose that the degree to which hexagonal ordering is suppressed by a curved boundary is determined by the `strictness' of that wall.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

THE FUTURE OF FEDERAL PROGRAMS FOR SOUTHERN COMMODITIES

Political Economy,

Breakout Session I Notes

These notes are intended as a supplement to the presentation