Date

6-26-2025

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (EdD)

Chair

William J. Higley

Keywords

discipleship, formation, relationships, network, social identity, group identity, spiritual formation

Disciplines

Christianity | Educational Leadership

Abstract

In His earthly ministry, Christ tasked the church with the responsibility of making disciples. Today, God calls leaders into professional ministry to discern specific means of doing so. The calling does not make that task easy and the methods for making disciple vary greatly, leaving Christian leaders overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to disciple the people in their care. A mountain of sources suggest that a relational approach has remarkable potential for making disciples. The purpose of this quantitative research study was to explore the potential relationship between relational networks and quantifiable habits of spiritual formation for adult, communicant members of congregations of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). In the research that follows, relational networks are defined as the number and quality of relationships an individual has within a congregation. Similarly, habits of spiritual formation are identified as measurable actions that contribute to or result from growing discipleship. The theory guiding this study comes from Wilder and Hendricks (2020) who found that the pinnacle of identity and character resides in the relational aspects of the brain, a lesson readily applied to the growth and practice of discipleship (p. 82). This study sought to ascertain the potential relationship between the robustness of one’s relational network and discipleship, as well as to explore potential practices for church leaders to employ in fostering relational networks in their contexts. The proposed methodology for this study was a survey developed by the researcher disseminated through congregations in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

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