Confirmation: The Stewardship of Baptism

What is confirmation ministry? Confirmation has changed from being understood as a sacrament, marking the time at which a person receives his or her first communion, to a rite, a ritual in which the baptized is reminded of his or her baptismal vows and initiated into the community of discipleship. This articles explores confirmation as the stewardship of baptism among Batak Christians and Asian Lutherans.     

Power Evangelism in a Protestant Context? Reflections after a Workshop in Samosir/Indonesia

This article discusses how the neo‐Pentecostal concept of power evangelism, read from a liberation perspective, might be useful to contextualize evangelism in the Toba Batak region of Samosir. In a situation where evangelistic preaching follows an evangelical forensic paradigm but Christians turn to traditional religious rituals for blessing, healing, and protection, a new approach is needed. Preaching and liturgies informed by a power paradigm might resolve the problem of syncretism, but important theological questions need to be clarified.     

Discipleship Training Of Children and Youth

Today, we all face an infinite number of faith choices, especially youth. This makes confirmation ministry as discipleship training most important in our churches. This article explores the confirmation ministry of Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Depew, NY, and critically analyzes the methodology—4 turnings, 6 disciplines, and 19 assets—behind the ministry. This methodology has been developed from researchers such as Jean Piaget, James Fowler, Duffy Robins, and researchers at the Search Institute.     

Confirmation Ministry in the Crossfire of Tolerance and Fascism

This article discuses the vitality of confirmation ministry in India in the present social, economic, and political contexts. The article analyses how confirmation ministry in the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church contributes to Lutheran identity and leadership, dealing briefly with the theological impetus from Luther's Small Catechism and Luther's theology of sola fide and sola gratsia     

Muhammad in Contemporary Christian Theological Reflection

After briefly surveying the generally polemical pre-modern Christian views of Muhammad, this essay considers a range of recent Christian approaches. Daniel Madigan explores often unrecognized complexities involved in the question; he considers Muhammad's message a “salutary critique” prompting Christians to a fuller understanding of their faith. Hans Küng insists that Christians should recognize Muhammad as a prophet; Islam is akin to early Jewish forms of Christianity, whose validity should be recognized. Jacques Jomier and Christian Troll are respectful of Muhammad but argue that, if Christians call him a prophet, they effectively deny their own faith. Kenneth Cragg presents a “positive, critical position”, encouraging sympathetic Christian interpretation of Muhammad's achievement in his context, but expressing reservations about the “political equation” in his ministry and contrasting this with Christ's way of redemptive suffering. Cragg's approach is upheld against criticisms as an exemplary model of Christian theological engagement with Islam.     

Marriage as Covenant: Tradition as a Guide to Marriage Education in the Pastoral Context

Public sentiment and rhetoric in recent years have unleashed a maelstrom of discussion over the definition of marriage. The insights that arise from consulting tradition and understanding the development of marriage for Christians are fundamental for explicating the special place matrimony holds in Christianity. Marriage ministry, especially marriage education, must employ an integrated holistic approach that offers a balanced presentation of the social, personal, and spiritual dimensions of marriage. The purpose of this paper is to review Christian tradition in order to inform and guide a ministerial praxis.     

Shame,Ministry, and Theological Education: Leaves from the Notebook of a Defiant Seminarian

Many young adult Christians are highly influenced by relativism of all sorts, which can lead them to a state of doubt. If they voice their doubts too loudly, they are often shamed and abandoned by their elder Christians who do not have (or, perhaps better, do not voice) these doubts. I suggest that those of us involved in youth ministry must meet our youth where they are at, that is, meet them in their doubt, which is not, in my view, a bad place to be. This article focuses on a psychoanalytic understanding of shame and draws from the work of Donald Capps, Erik H. Erikson, Heinz Kohut, and D. W. Winnicott.     

Discerning the Ministries of Women

In 1988, the historic Rhodes Inter-Orthodox Symposium on the Place of Women in the Orthodox Church encouraged, among other things, fuller participation of women in the life of the church. This article reports on the results of a study that solicited the views of Orthodox Christians regarding the participation of women in the life of the church. Nearly three-quarters of respondents clearly stated or intimated that they would like to see more opportunities for women to serve in the church. One-third of the respondents identified the issue of deaconesses in their essays. Responses here revealed a great diversity of experience, education, and opinion. Nevertheless, more than half of the respondents commenting on deaconesses showed an openness to this ministry. This may be a powerful measurement indicating that exploring the pastoral need for this and other ministries may well be long overdue.     

Word of God or Witness? Issues in Christian Biblical Hermeneutics

This article gives a historical overview of the main issues and problems facing Christian interpreters of the Bible. The Christian understanding of the Bible is influenced by two main factors. On the one hand, Christians believe that God revealed himself and was present in the life, ministry, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, Jesus is the one Word of God. On the other hand, Christians believe that the Bible is inspired Holy Scripture, containing the revelation of God. There is a tension between these two approaches, as one locates the divine revelation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the other in the Holy Book. The article argues that this tension has been a major creative driving force in the history of Christian biblical interpretation. It traces the main strategies with which Christian interpreters have approached the Bible in order to reconcile these two elements, or in which they have allowed one to overrule the other. This will provide an introduction to the key approaches and methods in Christian biblical interpretation.     

Spirituality and aging: How worship communities of older adults sustain their faith in the absence of traditional ordained leadership

ABSTRACT

This article considers how older Christians (aged over 70) exercise worship in an environment of shared ministry. Specifically, the Local Shared Ministry Units (LSMU) model of worship within the Auckland Diocese of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Polynesia (Auckland Diocese). A collective case study approach was used, and individual members of four LSMUs were interviewed with the resulting comments treated as a collective case study. The findings indicate these older adults are still seeking faith formation, do not regard themselves as fully formed spiritually, and use personal prayer in particular to enhance and nourish their faith growth.     

Theological foundations for spiritual care

Five theological tenets are described which may undergird the integration of religious awareness and spiritual care into nursing curricula. The five all emphasize addressing the articulated needs of the patient within the context of the nursing process. These tenets, while Wesleyan in emphasis, suggest ways in which any nurse may engage in the common ministry of all Christians without usurping the role of clergy or chaplains.This article is a revision of a chapter of Dr. Brittain's doctoral dissertation from St. Mary's Seminary and University.     

Religiosity and perceived emotional intelligence among Christians

Despite copious studies relating religiosity to various psycho-social criteria, it has not been thoroughly explored in relation to emotional intelligence (EI), the ability to perceive, understand and manage emotions toward adaptive behavior. This study examined the extent to which religiosity, operationalized as religious orientation and behavior, was related to perceived EI in self-report measures among 148 church attending adult Christians. Results showed a positive correlation between intrinsic religious orientation and perceived EI, and in particular, its subcomponent emotional understanding, as well as emotional and cognitive empathy. Among behavioral measures of religiosity, only emotional understanding correlated with behavioral indices, though perceived EI overall varied significantly between groups of different levels of religious commitment, as indicated by church status and ministry service. While both attitudinal and behavioral religiosity factors were significantly predictive of perceived EI, the former proved to be more predictive than the latter. Implications of these results and limitations of the study are discussed.     

Trust in God and psychological distress: exploring variations by religious affiliation

Trust in God has been widely identified as a central aspect of religious life, yet relatively few studies have examined whether trust in God is associated with better mental health. This study has two goals. The first is to see if Conservative Christians have greater trust in God than moderate or liberal Christians. The second goal is to see if trusting in God is associated with lower levels of death anxiety, fewer depressed affect symptoms, and fewer somatic symptoms among Conservative Christians than moderate or liberal Christians. The data come from a nationwide survey of middle-aged and older adults (N?=?1535). The findings reveal that, compared to moderate or liberal Christians, trust in God is associated with lower levels of death anxiety as well as fewer symptoms of a depressed affect and lower somatic symptom scores among Conservative Christians.     

Do Villages Remain Christian Communities?

A house-to-house survey of a rural English community of around 400 people resulted in 100 completed questionnaires. Respondents were asked to rate a series of questions on a five-point scale to indicate whether they saw themselves as Christians, whether they considered themselves regular churchgoers, and other related indices of religiosity. The results show the sample to be more Christian than the national average in respect of both avowed belief and church attendance. This would seem to confirm that Christianity remains strongest in the countryside and that the community model of the church survives in rural areas. This in turn raises questions about the style of ministry most appropriate for rural parishes in England and Wales.     

Whose Church? Which Unity? That We May Be One: Practicing Unity in a Divided Church,Gary B. Agee,Eerdmans, 2022 (ISBN 978-0-8028-8186-1), xviii + 150 pp., pb $19.99 Winsome Conviction: Disagreeing Without Dividing the Church,Tim Muehlhoff and Richard Langer,InterVarsity Press, 2020 (ISBN 978-0-8380-4799-0), x + 214 pp., pb $17

These two recent books each offer guidance to Christians in the United States on pursuing unity in the midst of social, moral, political, and theological divisions. They offer two distinct approaches: one relying mainly on relevant academic research and the other drawing mostly on a pastoral appeal. They also target different audiences: one an explicitly theologically conservative evangelical ‘church’, the other a ‘church’ including all professed Christians. This review argues that both have different strengths. While Agee's approach is ultimately more promising for addressing the underlying causes of disunity among Christians, Muehlhoff and Langer offer well-founded tactics for mutual understanding within a more limited group of Christians.     

Toward professionalism or voluntarism in pastoral care

In its modern evolution as a subprofession, pastoral counseling has increasingly developed professional criteria to determine who can and who cannot legitimately do pastoral counseling. This trend moves pastoral counseling toward the medical profession and away from the life and mission of the institutional church. As pastoral counseling seeks a legitimacy in close association with the medical profession it runs the risk of losing touch with the institutional church—the voluntary associations of Christians that have always been the ultimate source of legitimacy for the ministry in America. The present challenge facing the field of pastoral care is to shift attention from professional specialization outside the church to an effort within the church to train the laity to be effective agents of pastoral care.This article was first presented in the Seminary Series Lectures, The Graduate Seminary of Phillips University, Enid, Oklahoma, during the spring of 1975.     

Primal Alternatives to Talk Therapy: The Batak “Tondi” of North Sumatra

Although talk therapy has tended to rely on exogenous or outside the person resources, many primal alternatives to talk therapy have emphasized the importance of endogenous or inside the person sources of empowerment. The Toba Batak of North Sumatra provide an internalized means of mediating mental health through a religious-based notion of the tondi, or source of power, inside the person as the source of mental-physical health and illness. The rituals necessary for maintaining health are discussed with the rationale supporting those rituals. Applications of these historical beliefs among contemporary university students are also discussed.     

Transgenesis in animal systems: a view from within

The introduction of 'foreign' or altered genes into animals arouses both scientific and public concern. So too does any extension of this practice to human beings at the somatic (tissue) level, let alone interference in the human germ line (genetic material passed on to future generations). The range of possible genetic modifications, both those in progress and those likely in the near future, is so vast as to make a uniform Christian response untenable. As with other technologies, there are both laudable and dubious uses for genetic engineering in animal systems; it is neither an unmixed blessing nor an unmitigated curse. It is argued that Christians should engage with these issues on a case-by-case basis, giving due weight to the possible risks and concomitant suffering for the animals used, but basing our ultimate approval or disapproval on the congruence of means and aims with those evinced by Jesus in his ministry of healing, teaching and reconciliation.     

“Now there are diversities of gifts,but the same spirit.” (1Cor 12:4): images of the self and concepts of office of LGBTQ* pastors in Germany

ABSTRACT

After providing background information on the legal status and admission of LGBTIAQ* pastors in Germany, the paper focusses on experiences of LGBTQ* Protestant pastors in the major German Protestant church (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland) to explore how they include their sexual orientation and/or gender in their pastoral work. LGBTIAQ* pastors face the challenge of managing visibility and discretion, in relation to a heteronormative setting, as well as the specific expectations of LGBTIAQ* Christians. The presumption of shared experiences and knowledge by similarly marginalized people plays a part in their ministry. The paper argues that embracing those experiences and community knowledge as part of pastoral theology can strengthen their reflection on pastoral work.     

I don't believe but I pray: spirituality,instrumentality, or paranormal belief?

These three studies are among the first to systematically compare five Chinese religious groups on intrinsic (spiritual) and extrinsic (instrumental and paranormal) orientation. In Study 1, a Chinese version of the Index of Core Spiritual Experiences was developed. In Studies 2 and 3, spirituality and religious involvement was found to be greatest among Christians, followed in order by Buddhists, Taoists, traditional nones, and other nones. An instrumental purpose for religious activities and paranormal belief was found to be highest among Taoists, followed in order by Buddhists, traditional nones, other nones, and Christians. The results are consistent with the conclusion that Christianity offers the least support for an extrinsic religious orientation and the most support for an intrinsic religious orientation.