Spiritual Formation Disciplemaking
Students completing this ministry concentration should be able to design, implement, and oversee a biblical ministry incorporating elements of spiritual formation and discipleship in a church or parachurch setting.
The Master of Arts in Christian Education degree is
designed to prepare students for teaching, leading,
and discipleship roles in local church and parachurch
ministries.
Students in the MACE program will
• apply biblical leadership and educational methods and practices to a ministry population;
• teach the Bible effectively utilizing appropriate educational objectives and methods;
• formulate a biblical philosophy for practical educational ministry;
• evidence a general knowledge of Christian theology, including an ability to support their theological views;
• demonstrate a general knowledge of the Bible, including an understanding of the message and arguments of specific books of the Bible;
• display Christlikeness in their pursuit of knowledge and relationships within the seminary community.
For my competence in Spiritual Formation and Disciplemaking, I am submitting additional artifacts that demonstrate my achieved level of spiritual formations, my spiritual maturity, my willingness to be discipled and then to disciple others, while continuing to be discipled. The artifact is my creative capstone project for systematic theology, a five minute video, that encompasses what I learned in those ST classes as well as my testimony. Which includes the deepest of grief as our youngest child at the time Ezra Arnold, Ezzy Boo-Boo, passed away at the end of my second semester in seminary. It is by far my most painful event of my life. Prior to that I had experienced several painful events that were classified as my most painful event. However, nothing has compared to this loss. We miss him terribly yet rest peacefully in Abba’s promises to us. See ya soon son, see ya soon and forever & ever more! In this five minute or so creative project between the visuals and the audio overlay of a psalm of lament which is timed at three minutes and 15 seconds to represent three years and 15 days of Ezra here on this earth. To me absolutely personifies my major, my emphasis not only professionally at Dallas Theological through this Masters of Art in Christian Education, but in my life that has been evident and actualized well before applying for this degree.
The audio portion of this video is the first episode of our Be Transformed podcast and it has more than double any of the next highest downloads. I very much believe it's a part of Ezra's legacy that I'm to carry on this side of heaven or this side of Christ’s return makes all things new.
Between my experience as a bereaved parent, my recovery and restoration from sexual addiction and alcoholism, from out of control anger and other challenges, the Lord has prepared me to be impactful in the spiritual formation and discipleship of others that have gone through or are experiencing something similar. My sobriety, transformation and education demonstrates competency on many levels.
It’ll take more than what my lifetime is going to be able to fully address and I believe that is part of the enduring legacy of Ezra, his abundant joy, that is Christ’s in him is and is Christ in me and will be Christ in others as this is perpetuated generation after generation, once again, or until Christ returns to set things truly right.
For my competence in Spiritual Formation and Disciplemaking, I am submitting additional artifacts that demonstrate this paper on hesed which was written a few months after Ezra passed away and is a tribute to him and as a vision cast for my other children by blood and my spiritual sons and daughters in the ministry. it is apropos as a cornerstone concept arguably the most powerful word, next to the names of God, in all of Scripture. An excerpt from the paper, “Defining hesed or chesed or khesed in Hebrew and in English, loving-kindness seems to be an appropriate place to begin yet the properly doing so has eluded the brightest most enlightened minds down through the ages. Michael Card in his book the “Inexpressible Hesed” writes, “It is tempting to say hesed is the most important theological words in the Old Testament; another lexicon describes it as the most sacramental word in the Bible. A good case can be made for the claim that it has the largest range of meaning of any word in the Hebrew language, and perhaps any language. Hesed occurs nearly 250 times in the Hebrew Bible throughout all of the three major divisions--the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. The majority of occurrences (127) are in Psalms.”1
I particularly like the Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary one from circa 2003:
“Occasional translation of the Hebrew, chesed. The OT’s highest expression for love. It is variously called God’s election, covenant-keeping, or steadfast love. It is a love that remains constant regardless of the circumstances.”2
Regardless of the circumstances or as I believe it to be more poignantly stated, unconditional. Hesed, lovingkindness, is an unconditional non-systematic covenant He unilaterally applies in order to fulfill His will on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
For my competence in Spiritual Formation and Disciplemaking, I am submitting additional artifacts that demonstrate my willingness to integrate, medical professionals, social sciences, neuroscience, psychology, and other practices that contribute to the understanding of God's greatest & worst creation, human beings. I am thankful to Dr. Adair for bringing this book to my attention as the author's testimony is quite powerful as well as her acumen as a woman of the cloth, a family woman, mother of several children, wife to one husband, and dedicated faithful servant of God who suffered tremendously with clinical manic depressive states of being. And how she has overcome them and learned how to adapt to them as the Lord has seen fit to leave at least remnants of the proverbial thorn in her side. More on this and my critical responses in the paper, which I utilize often in our making of disciples. The recorded calls are examples of my interactive teaching style on this topic.
Select Image for audio recording of my additional commentary
Lifelong Development Statement
As a result of the experiences documented by these artifacts, I will continue to develop in Spiritual Formation and Disciplemaking by welcoming challengers, routinely evaluating our processes our participants our leaders, ensuring that we are staying true to our omission our vision our core values are biblical foundations our ministry plan. although we do have quite the niche and specialty remaining open to the call and correction of the Holy Spirit is also in view we want to ensure that we are truly following the lead versus decades of my life when I was in the lead and treating the Holy Spirit as if they were a dog off a leash here boy here we're going this way! indeed I have suffered experience loss had truly painful events traumatic times in my life low points but I also can't allow myself to think that I have paid all my dues and that my most painful events are behind me my greatest suffering is in the past that's not my call it's above my pay grade and by reflecting on these spiritual forming archives that will be part of a living document experience as it were going forward our reminders of that for myself and for our organization. This is a lifelong sanctification process until Christ calls me home or he returns.
As I developed and demonstrated Spiritual Formation and Disciplemaking in other areas of my degree and ministry experience, I have learned that discipleship means different things to different people and it's absolutely vital to have a clear definition of what we mean by discipleship. also para church is a very new word and needs defining just about every time I mention it unless I'm talking with someone who is a leader of another para-church. I really appreciate teaching from Dr. Svigel who helped broaden the categories that are secondary and tertiary and also my experience walking with Christ has reduced the number of things that are nonnegotiable. orthodox and orthopraxis is what I'm speaking to here in our responsibility as leaders of a para church would be to define these non-negotiables and hold open hands for the number of things that are secondary and tertiary. One being the very definition of discipleship which will get into then the objectives and the goals and expectations those can be different and we can all still be Christian however it is essential that our definition be vetted out properly and communicated well. in the beginning I knew there was quite an ignorance gap in this regard so I did not as frequently and quickly defined these things thinking that as the participants became members and then were moving towards leadership they would come to a better and more succinct understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Christ within our organization. practice and experience is shown that it's better to go ahead and define it closer to the beginning and practice it with excellence and grace as our participants are coming from various backgrounds and experiences and once again what is essentially nonnegotiable our fewer items but we hold them strongly.