scholarly journals Understanding the Effects of Diversity in Missionary Teams: Insights from the Social Sciences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Robert Dunaetz
Keyword(s):  
Team Performance ◽  
Work Teams ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Spiritual Gifts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Tower Of Babel ◽  
The Social ◽  
Similarity Attraction ◽  
Diversity Studies

This study presents an overview of the results of empirical studies concerning diversity in work teams. Although these studies have most often been carried out in secular contexts, they support perspectives of human nature that are consistent with the biblical themes found associated with the Tower of Babel (the Similarity/Attraction Perspective) and Paul's metaphor of the Body of Christ and spiritual gifts (the Information/Decision Making Perspective). Key concepts are explained, including the measurement of diversity and team performance, task and relationship diversity, faultlines, cultural versus non-cultural diversity, and status. When the results of the various diversity studies are combined, it appears that diversity in itself has little effect on team performance. However, under certain conditions, diversity can be very detrimental or very beneficial to team performance. These various conditions are examined in light of situations that missionary teams are likely to encounter.

The Role of Resources in the Success or Failure of Diverse Teams: Resource Scarcity Activates Negative Performance-Detracting Resource Dynamics in Social Category Diverse Teams

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyu Yu ◽  
Lindred L. Greer
Keyword(s):  
Team Performance ◽  
Work Teams ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Resource Scarcity ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Power Struggles ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Resource Dynamics ◽  
And Behaviors

Increasing the social category diversity of work teams is top of mind for many organizations. However, such efforts may not always be sufficiently resourced, given the numerous resource demands facing organizations. In this paper, we offer a novel take on the relationship between social category diversity and team performance, seeking to understand the role resources may play in both altering and explaining the performance dynamics of diverse teams. Specifically, our resource framework explains how the effects of social category diversity on team performance can be explained by intrateam resource cognitions and behaviors and are dependent on team resource availability. We propose that in the face of scarcity in a focal resource (i.e., budget), diverse (but not homogenous) teams generalize this scarcity perception to fear that all resources (i.e., staff, time, etc.) are scarce, prompting performance-detracting power struggles over resources within the team. We find support for our model in three multimethod team-level studies, including two laboratory studies of interacting teams and a field study of work teams in research and development firms. Our resource framework provides a new lens to study the success or failure of diverse teams by illuminating a previously overlooked danger in diverse teams (negative resource cognitions (scarcity spillover bias) and behaviors (intrateam power struggles)), which offers enhanced explanatory power over prior explanations. This resource framework for the study of team diversity also yields insight into how to remove the roadblocks that may occur in diverse teams, highlighting the necessity of resource sufficiency for the success of diverse teams.

Mercy triumphs over judgment: James as the social gospel

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-406
Author(s):  
LeAnn Snow Flesher
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Retributive Justice ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Church Culture ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Law

The pericope in Jas 2:14–17 has become iconic in our modern church culture. Although we quote from it regularly—“faith without works is dead”—we do not live it faithfully. In reimagining the body of Christ, the theme of this issue, it seems that the book of James and Luther’s response to it reflect the tensions we live in today. We are a society with a legal system built off the ideology of retributive justice. We are a society that claims to be built on Christian principles, yet James points to a very different justice system. James 2:13 states that “Mercy triumphs over judgment!” Although James never condones breaking the law (2:10–11), he does encourage mercy in place of judgment (2:13), especially when engaging the poor. Luther called biblical James a “book of straw,” as he touted his own mantra, sola fide, leaving us with a very significant dilemma. How should we understand saving faith? Does it simply require praying “the sinner’s prayer and shaking the pastor’s hand?” or ought it to be coupled with “works” becoming to one who has chosen to follow Jesus?

Why clothes matter: the role of dress in the everyday lives of older people

2018 ◽  
pp. 181-196
Author(s):  
Julia Twigg
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Material Constitution ◽  
Frail Elders ◽  
Consumption Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday

Dress is part of the material constitution of age, providing as it does the vestimentary envelope that presents the body to the social world. Drawing on a series of empirical studies, this chapter explores the role of dress in the embodied lives of older people. It argues that a focus on dress is relevant not just to the younger old and to arguments concerning the new role of consumption culture among this group, but also for the day to day embodied lives of frail elders, in this case those with dementia.

From Being to Love: Reconceiving the Trinity in Light of Jean-Luc Marion's Phenomenological Shift

Horizons ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-48
Author(s):  
Heidi Russell
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Human Person ◽  
The Body ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Parallel Shift ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Trinity

This article uses the work of Jean-Luc Marion, emphasizing his shift from Being to Love as an analogue for God, to make a parallel shift from Person to Love in Trinitarian theology, thereby addressing some of the issues raised by the social trinitarians. The article then focuses on the work of Catherine Mowry LaCugna as particularly congruent with the shift suggested by Marion, but adds to LaCugna's work a conception of the immanent Trinity that is grounded in Marion's phenomenological shift. Conceiving of God as the unoriginate source of Love that is revealed in Word and enacted in Spirit allows one to understand personhood and community, not in and through the relationships between the Trinitarian Persons, but in and through Love incarnate in the human person of Jesus Christ, and Love enacted in the Spirit present in the community, forming it into the Body of Christ.

scholarly journals Lederskab og spiritualitet i en missional kirke

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Knud Jørgensen
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Maturity ◽  
Spiritual Gifts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Missional Leadership ◽  
Biblical Perspective

The thesis of this article is that leadership and spirituality in a biblical perspective are intertwined and closely connected. In the life of the leader this has to do with calling, discipleship, a life of faith, and a discovery of one’s spiritual gifts. The same pattern applies to the congregation: The growth and spiritual maturity of the congregation depend on an understanding of leadership where the center is equpping the saints for service, to build up the body of Christ. The thesis is thus that the precondition for developing a missional congregation is to develop the spirituality of the congregation. This calls for a missional leadership which is able both to develop missional congregations and able to bind together missional with a living congregational spirituality.

scholarly journals Attachment to Mobile Phones across Social Contexts

2015 ◽  
pp. 222-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burçe Çelik ◽  
Fırat Erdoğmuş
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Literature

This article presents a critical literature review of the major works on mobile phone culture, which examine the whys and wherefores of this technology's popularity in different socio-economic and cultural landscapes. Thus, it focuses particularly on how these multiplicities and varieties have been discussed, analyzed and researched in the existing mobile phone literature. There are different lines of research which can be categorized as following: the major works (mostly empirical studies whose findings are based on fieldwork) that demonstrate the mobile phone's use and instrumental value for people who are physically mobile and need instantaneous and spontaneous connections with others; the works that focus on the social promise of the mobile phone such as providing a means of social acceptance, through implying social status and particular lifestyles to polish one's face and gain recognition in social relations; and finally the studies that emphasize the sensing, affecting and affected, and fantasies of the body and the collective in contemplating the bond between body and mobile phone.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Joshua S. Easterling
Keyword(s):  
Religious Life ◽  
Spiritual Gifts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Alternative Conceptions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The One

The introduction brings together the various intellectual formations which structure the book and which constellate within the anchoritic and para-anchoritic writings explored throughout each chapter. It discusses alongside Paul’s images of the body of Christ and the spiritual charismata (1 Cor. 12) the emphases within late medieval orthodox culture on the authority of reformed and (sexually) purified church elites. Those priorities enlisted the apostolic conception of Christ’s body and marginalized alternative conceptions of spiritual grace, particularly those implied within the Pauline model of the charisms. The cultural and textual negotiations that this rivalry elicited anchor the book’s central contentions regarding the angelic image and the spiritual gifts, which powerfully structured late medieval religious life. These images also operated within anchoritic texts as an immensely flexible shorthand for the intersecting but also rival ideals of corporate and hierarchical authority, on the one hand, and personal inspiration and charisma, on the other.

Reviews

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-304
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Gifts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
P Content ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Disability Theology

Summary <p content-type="flush left">Wondrously Wounded sets out to reconfigure our theological idea of what disability is. It moves away, not only from charity or medical models, but also from some current thinking in disability theology (that those labelled disabled reveal humanity’s true vulnerability) to a starting point of all life being a gift, so all capable of mediating God’s goodness. Brock grounds his argument in patristic ideas of a radical Christian human solidarity, and a convincing exegesis of 1 Corinthians 12, the body of Christ and spiritual gifts. The whole is brought to life by an account of Brock’s son, Adam, who is labelled disabled, but who under this analysis is perhaps the healthiest of us all. This is an important next step in the development of a convincing Christian theology of disability.

scholarly journals Spiritual gifts for biblical church growth

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian A. DeVries
Keyword(s):  
Church Growth ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Spiritual Gifts ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church

This article examines the use of spiritual gifts for church growth, particularly in relation to the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. The article begins with a definition of spiritual gifts and by highlighting their purpose for growing the church. This is followed by two practical considerations: How should Christian believers use spiritual gifts for church growth, and how should church leaders motivate gift use for this purpose? Since the Holy Spirit works though believers to build up the body of Christ, advocates of biblical church growth should seek to employ his means to motivate spiritual giftedness in the church.

The Body of Christ: Church as the Site of Formation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Stewart-Kroeker
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Social ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
The Church

For Augustine, formation for life with Christ happens in the context of the church. The sacraments and the fellowship of believers are integral to how people are formed in holy love for God and neighbor. For Augustine, the social and sacramental foundation of the church is Christ, iterated by the frequent imagery of the church as the body of Christ. The moral and aesthetic formation that happens in the ecclesial community includes the social structures of admiration, imitation, and leadership amongst the members themselves under the guardianship of Christ and the shared celebration of baptism and Eucharist. This chapter examines how these practices, in particular in their sacrificial aspect, support the traveler along the road to the homeland.

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