Newcomers and narrative: an exploration for lay leaders

William Gray Lesesne

Etd

Newcomers and narrative: an exploration for lay leaders

Public Deposited

MLA citation style (9th ed.)

William Gray Lesesne. Newcomers and Narrative: an Exploration for Lay Leaders. Virginia Theological Seminary (Alexandria, VA). rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/251d24cb-e0ac-44dd-ac99-a478a1ecef28.

APA citation style (7th ed.)

W. G. Lesesne. Newcomers and narrative: an exploration for lay leaders. https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/251d24cb-e0ac-44dd-ac99-a478a1ecef28

Chicago citation style (CMOS 17, author-date)

William Gray Lesesne. Newcomers and Narrative: an Exploration for Lay Leaders. Virginia Theological Seminary (Alexandria, VA). https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/251d24cb-e0ac-44dd-ac99-a478a1ecef28.

Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.

Creator

William Gray Lesesne

Keyword

Congregations--Self-evaluation

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Abstract

As many modern congregations struggle to attract, welcome and integrate newcomers,one of the challenges the church faces is how we share pieces of our identity and spiritual narrative with newcomers. Lay and clergy leaders in congregations must find ways to share key pieces of not only denominational identity, but also fundamentals of the faith. As well, we must embrace ways of sharing our individual and collective spiritual narratives with newcomers so that they can both connect with our larger spiritual narrative and tell their own. This paper describes the efforts of one congregation's attempt to work with key lay leaders to help them identify pieces of their Christian and denominational identity, to train them in telling their own spiritual narratives to each other, to help them experiment in interacting with and welcoming newcomers (offering those newcomers threads of identity and narrative), and to see what connections, if any, happen between the leaders and the newcomers and in the larger congregation. This thesis tests the proposition that lay leaders will feel more comfortable,competent, and authoritative in welcoming and integrating newcomers into a congregation if they are grounded in core components of denominational identity, can articulate their own faith narrative, and have engaged in Action-Reflection experiments/exercises with newcomers within the context of a formational small group. This project engaged key lay leaders in a multi-stage formation program, tested their interactions with newcomers and their perceptions of themselves in doing so, and discovered that formation activities alone produced limited, mixed results in improving relationships with newcomers.

Publisher