Date
3-2019
Department
Rawlings School of Divinity
Degree
Doctor of Ministry (DMin)
Chair
Malcolm O. Hester
Keywords
Korean-American Christians, Unchurched Christians, Churchless Christians, The Parables of Jesus, Bible Study, Church-Leavers
Disciplines
Christianity | Religion
Recommended Citation
Cha, Junyong, "An Expositional Approach to the Parables of Jesus and Applications for Unchurched Korean-American Christians" (2019). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 1997.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/1997
Abstract
Korean-American churches like many immigrant churches often play a role as the ethical and cultural refuge for members. This failure to be a faith-based spiritual community causes ripple effects, in a negative sense, that pastors should not preach uncomfortable messages to the congregation and not to focus on spiritual matters and that this spiritual downspin leads to conflicts and frustrations in church and ultimately to numeral declining in either form of a church split or leaving church. While the reasons for leaving the church are varied, the ultimate source of individual believers’ healing, restoration, and growth is the Word of God. Within this truth, the author of this project chose the parables of Jesus for they teach significantly fundamental lessons that are necessary for unchurched Christians’ revitalization. The author of this thesis project aims to help unchurched Korean-American believers especially those who live in the Richmond, Virginia, area by teaching and sharing the parables of Jesus and applications from an expositional approach. The expositional approach will give individual believers a better and richer understanding of the parables than the allegorical approach. Lessons from expositional teaching will nurture and mature them for the readiness of their reaffiliation with a local church which is an ultimate goal of the author of this thesis project. Within and towards the ultimate goal, two research methods will be used in this thesis project: taking two surveys from unchurched Korean-American Christians before and after the 20-week Bible study and researching academic sources on the parables and unchurched Christians.
