The Coronavirus-19 (Covid-19) pandemic took the whole world by surprise and caused unanticipated changes in people’s life. The effect of this global pandemic on the religious, economic, political and ...social lives of people has been enormous. In Ghana (the context of this study) many churches experienced great challenges for their members could not fellowship together physically because of the restrictions that were imposed by the government. Churches whose members tended to depend solely on their leaders to access God’s blessings learnt a bitter lesson as their members could not have any meaningful encounter with God without their Pastors. Many studies have been conducted on the effects of the pandemic on Church life with a greater focus on adult members of the Christian community. There is just a little attention paid to the impact of the pandemic on the Children’s Ministry. This paper contributes to filling that gap by examining the impact of the pandemic on the Children’s Ministry of the Methodist Church Ghana using the Emmanuel Society of the Konongo Circuit as a case study. It is an empirical study that gathered data through questionnaires, interviews and participant observation. The responses received revealed that there was a huge gap created between the children, other believing friends and Sunday School teachers. The paper made recommendations for the Christian community.
Keywords: Covid-19, Children’s Ministry, Methodist Church Ghana
Background: Shortly after the Covid-19 oxygen crisis in India, the Sri Lanka Ministry of Health started investigating and analyzing gaps in oxygen production, supplies and demands.
Aims: This study ...aimed to evaluate the preparedness in Covid-19 cases management and recommend strategies to prevent oxygen crisis in healthcare facilities.
Methods: This study used information on oxygen source redundancy and delivery methods to assess whether a healthcare facility is prepared to provide the necessary oxygen demand for patients in need and to estimate the number of patients that can be treated with the currently available oxygen supplies. The predicted oxygen supplies and demands were assessed with a panel of experts using qualitative and quantitative methods. Data were collected using the Health Information Update System.
Results: Sri Lanka had 39,529 designated hospital beds including Intensive Care Unit and High Dependency Unit beds for Covid-19 patients. Even though an average number of patients were reaching 30,000, the actual oxygen demands were around 1,200 which were easily manageable with the current capacity of 80 tons per day.
Conclusions: Sri Lanka has made progress to increase access to oxygen by using novel methods to procure and increase oxygen availability, storing, and carrying capacity.
How can institutions of higher learning in theological education respond to an increasing need for bivocational ministry preparation, training, and support? This article presents detailed findings ...from one US, mainline Protestant seminary’s effort to evaluate current and perceived needs in this area. Data from surveys of students, staff, faculty, and trustees at Lancaster Theological Seminary and learnings from a six-session student focus group are presented. Explored are questions of perception and relevance of bivocational ministry, distinct stressors of bivocational ministry, opinions about current educational programs at the seminary, and opinions about institutional changes designed to better support and prepare seminarians for bivocational ministry. These findings are indicative rather than definitive, inviting further research involving more schools and a larger set of respondents. The article concludes with a discussion of challenges and opportunities facing this seminary in its strategic effort to educate for a thriving bivocational ministry.
The Board of Rites and the Making of Qing China presents a major new approach in research on the formation of the Qing empire (1636–1912) in early modern China. Focusing on the symbolic practices ...that structured domination and legitimized authority, the book challenges traditional understandings of state-formation, and argues that in addition to war making and institution building, the disciplining of diverse political actors, and the construction of political order through symbolic acts were essential undertakings in the making of the Qing state. Beginning in 1631 with the establishment of the key disciplinary organization, the Board of Rites, and culminating with the publication of the first administrative code in 1690, Keliher shows that the Qing political environment was premised on sets of intertwined relationships constantly performed through acts such as the New Year's Day ceremony, greeting rites, and sumptuary regulations, or what was referred to as li in Chinese. Drawing on Chinese- and Manchu-language archival sources, this book is the first to demonstrate how Qing state-makers drew on existing practices and made up new ones to reimagine political culture and construct a system of domination that lay the basis for empire.
Background and aims: The importance of developing physical training and the need to expand it among students increases when the social harms and anomalies observed in this space are carefully ...analyzed. Knowing the pattern and model governing this matter helps prevent social anomalies. Since no study was done to discover this model, the present research was conducted to investigate the design of the development model of physical training for students of Iranian medical sciences universities. Methods: This study was conducted with an exploratory-fundamental nature, a qualitative approach, and the foundation’s data strategy in 2021-2022. The data collection method was a semi-structured interview with 19 specialists and experts using purposeful sampling. The method of coding and forming concepts from the interviews was used to analyze the data. MAXQDATA2020 software was used to analyze the data. Then, the codes were categorized, and a conceptual model was presented. Results: The codes extracted from the interviews included 191 codes in 6 categories of causal conditions, central phenomenon, contextual conditions, intervening conditions, strategic conditions, and consequential conditions, as well as 38 components. Causal conditions include seven components and 27 codes; central phenomenon includes three components and 11 codes; contextual conditions include seven components and 36 codes; intervening conditions include eight components and 41 codes; strategic conditions include eight components and 43 codes and conditions a result includes five components and 24 codes. Conclusion: The developments of physical education and sports for students of medical sciences in Iran, taking into account its causes, axes, contexts, obstacles, and consequences, can inform the managers and planners of sports students of the Ministry of Health about its development process and trend. Students go to physical activity to prevent the wastage of available resources, including financial, human and physical, with careful planning and organization.
This article is the result of an empirical study conducted in the student congregations of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa and the Reformed Church in South ...Africa. The study has been done to answer the question: What are the miniserial needs of Afrikaans-speaking university students in South Africa? The research problem that necessitates this study is a lack of knowledge and understanding of the ministerial needs of Afrikaans-speaking university student members of the Reformed student congregations in South Africa. Recent research on student ministry to support student ministers and congregations in the South African context is scant. The research question is formulated to determine the ministerial needs of university students and the implications those needs have for ministry to university students. The goal of the research is to identify the ministerial needs of university students in South Africa and to empower the student congregations to minister to these students more effectively. From the research, three primary ministry needs have been identified: (1) the need for faith formation; (2) the need for mentoring; and (3) the need for a faith community.
How did Asia come to be represented on European World maps? When and how did Asian Countries adopt a continental system for understanding the world? How did countries with disparate mapping ...traditions come to share a basic understanding and vision of the globe? This series of essays organized into sections on Jesuit Circuits of Communication and Publication; Jesuit World Maps in Chinese; Reverberations of Matteo Ricci's Maps in East Asia; and Reflections on the Curation of Cartographic Knowledge, go a long way toward answering these questions about the shaping of our modern understandings of the world.
This article provides a comprehensive examination of the current state of research in Polish practical theology, focusing on the significant pastoral challenges confronted by the Catholic Church in ...Poland today. Comprising two parts, the study begins with a descriptive analysis of the institutional framework of Polish theology. It highlights the contemporary landscape of Polish ecclesiastical universities and theological faculties, addressing concerns regarding didactics and the declining enrollment of theology students. Additionally, the article explores the recent evaluation principles employed by the Ministry of Education and Science for assessing Polish theological faculties. The second part of the article presents a research-based investigation into the primary pastoral problems in Poland, drawing on selected literature sources. These issues encompass: (1) the decreasing number of
and
, (2) the Church’s engagement in the digital realm, (3) challenges associated with youth ministry, (4) the decline in student participation in religious education classes, (5) the absence of adult catechesis, and (6) the complexities surrounding the use of religious language. In response to the titular inquiry regarding Poland’s status as a bastion of Christendom, the study offers a cautiously affirmative response, considering certain reservations. Research findings demonstrate that the profile of Polish Catholics has undergone an inevitable evolution towards secularization in recent years, with Polish pastoral care not always keeping pace with this shifting mentality.
How are spiritual power and self-transformation cultivated in street ministries? InAddicted to Christ,Helena Hansen provides an in-depth analysis of Pentecostal ministries in Puerto Rico that were ...founded and run by self-identified "ex-addicts," ministries that are also widespread in poor Black and Latino neighborhoods in the U.S. mainland. Richly ethnographic, the book harmoniously melds Hansen's dual expertise in cultural anthropology and psychiatry. Through the stories of ministry converts, she examines key elements of Pentecostalism: mysticism, ascetic practice, and the idea of other-worldliness. She then reconstructs the ministries' strategies of spiritual victory over addiction: transformation techniques to build spiritual strength and authority through pain and discipline; cultivation of alternative masculinities based on male converts' reclamation of domestic space; and radical rupture from a post-industrial "culture of disposability." By contrasting the ministries' logic of addiction with that of biomedicine, Hansen rethinks roads to recovery, discovering unexpected convergences with biomedicine while revealing the allure of street corner ministries.
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