Assimilation: The Touch, See, & Hear Approach to Integrating People into Your Church

This paper presents the “touch, see, and hear approach” for assimilating newcomers into the life of a local church, using case studies of three churches—Coral Ridge Presbyterian, Highland Park United Methodist, and Idlewild Baptist

Assimilation: The Touch, See, & Hear Approach to Integrating People into Your Church

This paper presents the “touch, see, and hear approach” for assimilating newcomers into the life of a local church, using case studies of three churches—Coral Ridge Presbyterian, Highland Park United Methodist, and Idlewild Baptist

Closing Our Doors: Ten Reasons to Consider Why Your Church May Be in Trouble . . . and What To Do

1) Motivation/problem statement: Churches across America are in decline. This article points out ten possible reasons a person’s church may be soon closing its doors and offers possible solutions. 2) Methods/procedure/approach: I used my experience and several recent research surveys by Barna Research, Faith Communities Today 2005 Survey, and the Leavell Church Growth Center to present a variety of church door slammers. 3) Results/Findings/product: If churches will take note of these door slammers and use the suggested solutions listed, they can address each and turn their church around. 4) Conclusion/implications: If churches want to be healthy in the truest sense of the word, they must avoid closing their doors and implement turnaround solutions

Closing Our Doors: Ten Reasons to Consider Why Your Church May Be in Trouble . . . and What To Do

1) Motivation/problem statement: Churches across America are in decline. This article points out ten possible reasons a person’s church may be soon closing its doors and offers possible solutions. 2) Methods/procedure/approach: I used my experience and several recent research surveys by Barna Research, Faith Communities Today 2005 Survey, and the Leavell Church Growth Center to present a variety of church door slammers. 3) Results/Findings/product: If churches will take note of these door slammers and use the suggested solutions listed, they can address each and turn their church around. 4) Conclusion/implications: If churches want to be healthy in the truest sense of the word, they must avoid closing their doors and implement turnaround solutions

The Numbers to Know for Church Health

The church growth movement has long been criticized as being only interested in numbers. However, this article goes beyond simplistic attention to worship attendance to quantify a series of indicators of church health and suggest proper ratios that are consistent with growing churches. The study concludes with a description of the stages of maturity and provides a self-administered diagnostic tool for gauging spiritual maturity in the life of the believer

The Numbers to Know for Church Health

The church growth movement has long been criticized as being only interested in numbers. However, this article goes beyond simplistic attention to worship attendance to quantify a series of indicators of church health and suggest proper ratios that are consistent with growing churches. The study concludes with a description of the stages of maturity and provides a self-administered diagnostic tool for gauging spiritual maturity in the life of the believer

Integral points on coarse Hilbert moduli schemes

We continue our study of integral points on moduli schemes by combining the method of Faltings (Arakelov, Parsin, Szpiro) with modularity results and Masser-W\"ustholz isogeny estimates. In this work we explicitly bound the height and the number of integral points on coarse Hilbert moduli schemes outside the branch locus. In the first part we define and study coarse Hilbert moduli schemes with their heights and branch loci. In the second part we establish the effective Shafarevich conjecture for abelian varieties $A$ over a number field $K$ such that $A_{\bar{K}}$ has CM or $A_{\bar{K}}$ is of GL2-type and isogenous to all its $G_\mathbb Q$-conjugates. In the third part we continue our explicit study of the Parsin construction given by the forgetful morphism of Hilbert moduli schemes. We now work out our strategy for arbitrary number fields $K$ and we explicitly bound the number of polarizations and module structures on abelian varieties over $K$ with real multiplications. In the last part we illustrate our results by applying them to two classical surfaces first studied by Clebsch (1871) and Klein (1873): We explicitly bound the Weil height and the number of their integral points.Comment: Comments are always very welcom

Ballistic-Electron-Emission Microscopy at Epitaxial Metal/Semiconductor Interfaces(STM-BEEM interfaces)

The invention of ballistic-electron-emission microscopy (BEEM) has made it possible to study hot electron transport across interfaces with a spatial resolution unparalleled before. In order to exploit the limits of the method we have applied BEEM experiments carried out in UHV and at 77 K to epitaxial CoSi_2 films on silicon. CoSi_2/Si may be considered as a model system for the metal/semiconductor interface, because its atomic structure can be rather well controlled experimentally and has been well characterized by transmission electron microscopy. This overview contains a discussion of the various processes leading to contrast in BEEM images for CoSi_2/Si interfaces. The BEEM current may be affected by (a) the atomic surface structure or surface defects, both of which can change the tunneling distribution, (b) inelastic and elastic scattering processes within the metal films and (c) interface scattering or variations of the Schottky barrier height, resulting from interfacial defects. Scattering processes will be shown to be dominant in the case of CoSi_2/Si(111) interfaces, since the Schottky barrier height is not measurably affected by interfacial dislocations and other defects. Here the ultimate resolution limits of the BEEM technique have been reached, in the sense that individual point defects can be resolved. The CoSi_2/Si(100) interface represents a more complicated case, where extended defects lead to significant barrier lowering, whereas interface scattering is obscured by the strong modification of the tunneling distribution by surface reconstructions