Date

5-20-2026

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (EdD)

Chair

Mary Lowe

Keywords

Disciple-making, Digital Disciple-making, Female Ministry Leaders, Digital Technology

Disciplines

Educational Leadership | Leadership Studies

Abstract

A global pandemic in the winter of 2020 forced the faith community to close its doors in the interest of public safety. Due to the closings, the faith community resorted to digital platforms to continue to make disciples, according to Matthew 28:19-20 (King James Version, 1991). Jun (2020) asserts the current digital age is poised to be the next industrial revolution used by the church to make disciples. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to investigate female ministry leader’s digital disciple-making experience. According to Leedy and Ormrod (2019), “the term phenomenology refers to a person’s perception of the meaning of an event, as opposed to the event as it exists external to the individual” (p. 232). The phenomenological approach and iterative design was used to discover the meanings that were revealed from the rich narratives of ten female ministry leaders located in the southeast region of the United States. To collect data, the researcher implemented the Interview Questionnaire, guided by three research questions during 45-60-minute semi-structured interviews. A manual application of Creswell’s Data Analysis and ATLAS.ti computer analysis software called forward ten themes for interpretation of the thick narratives offered by the respondents. From the themes, the researcher drew implications to expand to the current literature on the phenomenon. Transformational Leadership Theory was used to guide this study.

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