Content area
Abstract
The research in this dissertation is directed toward exploring the experience of house church seminary graduates in China by understanding their meaning-making during their years of study in their respective seminaries. In particular, the research focuses on what role, if any, seminary played in their own experience of transformation. To date, very little research has been done to explore the space where educational studies and theological studies in China’s house church intersect and is therefore an area of research that is worthy of attention.
Employing a qualitative methodology using interviews, participants in this study answered questions about their experiences in the areas of doctrinal development, ministry skills cultivation, and individual spiritual formation during their seminary studies. Participants in the study articulated a deep appreciation for their seminary experience describing areas of change and transformation that took place in their lives as a direct and indirect result of their coursework. To better understand the house church seminary education experience in China a tri-perspectival epistemological framework was employed (normative, situational, existential) (Frame 2017).
The normative perspective views the experience using the vocabulary of adult education while the situational perspective explores the context both current and historical. Finally the existential engages with how graduates made meaning of their seminary experience. Findings reveal the state of affairs in a segment of China’s house church seminary with participants overwhelmingly stressing the need for the church and the seminary to work closely together in the mission to equip and train church leadership. In addition, there emerges data that points toward a greater need for standards such as a philosophy of theological education and self-assessment systems within China’s house church seminaries.
Amid China’s frenzied growth and development, the research here reveals that this segment of the population, more than economic or political development, desires to see a transformation of the soul in their own lives and in the lives of others in order to further the cause of the kingdom of God.
