PhD Theses

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14194/2796

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Mission of the church

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    A missiological exploration of the encounters between Reuben Omulo and the Church Missionary Society in Central Nyanza, Kenya
    (South African Theological Seminary, 2022) Omondi, Francis 1966; Kritzinger, J. N. J.; Johannes S. Malherbe
    This research examined the Anglican Church’s history of mission in Central Nyanza, focusing on the formative role played by Reuben Omulo, a Luo mission innovator. It explored the key features of the mission praxis of Omulo and his encounters with the Church Missionary Society (CMS). It adopted Kritzinger’s (2008) seven-point “praxis matrix” in an “encounterological” approach to probe the encounters between the mission praxes of Omulo and CMS. This involved investigating the dynamics of the interaction between those praxes, focusing on each of the seven dimensions in turn. The study used data from personal interviews and discussions with a selected group of respondents from Siaya and Kisumu Counties, among families and places where Omulo worked. It analysed secondary data from relevant published works and other written materials from private archives. The pre-colonial encounters forged the diverse Luo people into a nation, as this research clarified, and further described those complex relations, which shaped critical features of the Southern Luo world, priming them for their encounters with the European colonialists and CMS missionaries. CMS’s intention for indigenizing the Church met resonance in Omulo. As the research illustrated, Christianity met spiritual needs that traditional religion could not. For Omulo and his colleagues, more so, the vernacular Scriptures eliminated ambiguities in the Luo religion, making the transition to Christianity more effortless for them. The study revealed a creative tension between Omulo and CMS praxes, which for Omulo was an attempt to balance Christianity’s demands with traditional responsibilities and integrate the Luo into Christianity. But CMS sought to interpret the Luo worldview to infuse it with the Scriptural message of Christianity. Omulo and his colleagues proved to be active recipients of the Gospel, as the study showed, for protesting colonial injustice, compelled the authority to reform, and further stimulated CMS and Anglican Church in Kenya to embrace a social justice spirituality. The challenges facing the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) can be traced to how CMS established the African Anglican Church in Central Nyanza, as this research showed. This research, therefore, suggested that the ACK should focus on empowering the laity as her primary agency for mission and that the Church’s mission praxis must reaffirm culture to speak to the core needs of the people. It recommended that mission history be studied with the praxis matrix as part of an “encounterological” approach.
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    Designing and Evaluating a Curriculum for the Effective and Accessible Training of frontier Missionaries from New Sending countries
    (South African Theological Seminary Johannesburg) Vermont, Henry 1959; Malherbe, Johannes S.
    Many missionaries, especially those from the New Sending Countries (NSCs), go to the field inadequately prepared for the challenges they will face, resulting in high missionary attrition rates. This dissertation seeks to answer the question, how should a curriculum for accessible cross-cultural training of effective frontier missionaries from the New Sending Countries be designed and tested? The research answered this question by following a practical theological research approach. Using literature review and analysis, the researcher investigated the commonalities and differences between the main cultural traits of missionaries from the Sample of New Sending Countries and those from the Old Sending Countries. Another literature review examined the best practices in adult education, curriculum design, technological trends in education and missionary training. Further literary research and analysis resulted in a new competency-based framework for missionary training. The researcher then synthesized the results of these literature reviews to create a curricular approach that addresses the identified challenges. Concurrently, with these reviews, the researcher led a small team that implemented a set of online courses and evaluated learner experiences through structured questionnaires, opinion polls, computer log files and analytics of video usage. The literature reviews revealed that Western training methods should be adapted to suit the cultural learning preferences of New Sending Countries. The research found that adults prefer self-driven and self-paced learning, learnt Just In Time (JIT) for its application. Therefore, the synthesized curriculum uses hybrid online e-learning in a time-phased approach. The analysis of missionary competencies mapped onto missionary life phases is made possible by the CPL (Competency-Phase-Learning domain) training matrix designed in this dissertation. This analysis showed that pre-field training is mostly cognitive and could therefore be done mostly through online video-based training. Nevertheless, on-field training requires learning in the affective and psychomotor domains in addition to the cognitive. Therefore, a hybrid blend of online e-learning and practical application is the solution for training in each phase. Such training can be facilitated by the missionary team leader in conjunction with the online course content. Once implemented by mission organizations, this approach should make training accessible to missionaries from most countries. The empirical evaluation of actual course usage showed high levels of engagement and learner satisfaction among both New- and Old Sending Country learners. The final chapter of the dissertation contains the findings and recommendations for further research.
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    The Emergence and Development of Missiological Themes in Early Nonconformist Hymnody (1706-1755)
    (Johannesburg South African Theological Seminary) Burden, Matthew
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    El “Reino De Dios” En La Teología Y Misiología De La Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana (1970-2000)
    (Johannesburg South African Theological Seminary) Ocaña Flores, Martín Willman
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