Organization of the study Essay Example for Free

Organization of the essay EssayThe study will be organized into four chapters in accordance with the Action query, as table 1 displays. TABLE 1 Organization of the study based on action research Action Research Steps Chapters 1 2 3 4 Planning/Conceptualization X Fact determination X X X Evaluation X Chapter 1 has stated the problem and purpose, explained the importance of the study, and stated the method.Chapter 2 will survey the literature to identify and report behaviors required to effectively analyze the characteristics of the perform leaders, church service service building building members and surrounding neighborhood. Chapter 3 will report the validated behaviors for the role of the church. Chapter 4 will go off and summarized the study, offer appropriate conclusion and discuss recommendations for change and future study.A review of literature easy regarding the lightlessness church and the intricacy of the church in the fellowship reveals a pattern of strong involvement of the church in the community. African presence in the Bible shows a win participation in the early church service as s swell up as a respect for African involvement. The early news report of the church, as well as its mid-20th century involvement in the civilised rights vogue, sets a precedent for community involvement in layman matters for the church of today.Modern involvement of the Black church in secular life and the wider community touches solely aspects of secular life, including physical and psychological health of its parishioners, juvenility advocacy and youth programs, economic development, community volunteering, and literacy. Additionally, more traditional areas of pastoral involvement, such as bereavement counseling, may accept some overlap with secular counseling due to increasing involvement in secular mental health providers in life events previously handled in a primarily pastoral manner.BIBLICAL context of use Blacks have a strong presence in the Bible, and there is no evidence of the modern opinion of racial inferiority to other peoples in the books. Both Old Testament and New Testament writings refer to Africans who were highly placed, and do not show any evidence of the discrimination or incarceration African the Statesns have faced. When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt (Hosea 111) The queer of Sheba was a notable Biblical African she was treated as an equal and given full honors as a head of state.And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and treasured stones and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him all that was in her heart (1 Kings 102) The genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew lists some(prenominal) African women And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab and Booz begat Obed of Ruth and Obed begat Jesse (Matthew 15) Rachab and Ruth were African women, as was Thamar. The gathering of Jews at Pentacost cer ebrate in Acts included those of African origin.Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of ibya just about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. (Acts 29-211). Two of the teachers at Antioch were alike African Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brough up with Herod the tetrarch, and capital of Minnesota (Acts 131).Of these teachers, Simeon (called Niger, Latin for the unrelenting) and Lucius of Cyrene were African. The wealth of African presence and importance in the Bible makes it clear that the African American church has a strong Biblical precedent.HISTORICAL CONTEXT The African church was active and important in the history of the early church. The Synod of Hippo, held in 393 in Hippo Regius (corresponding to northern Algeria) was implemental in forming Christianity as we know it today that is where the first canon of the New Testament was ap shewd.Several other synods were also held in Hippo Regius, as well as councils in Carthage and Alexandria (Hendrickson, 2002, 320). Egypt and Algeria were centers of Christian worship. Major historic events in Christianity, including the Reformation, spread Christianity further into Africa. When Africans were captured and sent to the New World as slaves, they brought with them a melange of apparitional practice, including Christianity, native religions and others. The black church in America was established during the 1700s, during which time many African Americans were restrained suffering under the yoke of slavery.The first uniquely black church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, was established by Richard Allen in 1816 m embership in the new denomination exploded, reaching close 6,000 members by 1820 and spreading to the south and west quickly (Simms, 2000, 101). The Black Methodist church immediately took on the characteristic role of the black church, fighting oppression and slavery, providing loans and business advice and other social services to their worshippers (Simms, 2000, 101).The church was instrumental in abolishing slavery David Walkers work Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, make in 1829, which castigated the institution of slavery and used Scriptural quotation and traditional Christian morals to prove the immorality of slavery and the moral bankruptcy of the slave owners, provided a galvanizing force to the Abolitionist endeavour as well as encouragement to those still enslaved (Simms, 2000, 102).Simms relates the spread of the Black church throughout America to the exodus of Southern blacks at the start of World War I given a sharp chance at employment and expansion, S outhern blacks moved north into the industrial heartlands of Michigan, Illinois and Indiana as well as into the Northeast, and they brought their religion along with them. One notable congregation was the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem, which provided political, social and economic reinforcing stimulus to its 14,000 members (2003, 102).Blum remarks on the position of the church in the Black community, the Black church has been the enduring center and focal point of Black communities and the refuge from racism and poverty the church provided Blacks with a shelter, and indeed, was the most significant of all Black institutions (1993, 609). At the time the Black church differentiated from snow-covered denominations, slavery and oppression against Blacks was rife.The churchs establishment was a form of protest against the ruling white majority and a weird refuge from the larger world. Because the congregants of the Black church have never had the luxury of a coherent, secular so cial support structure, the church has taken on the role of social caregiver as well as spiritual caregiver. According to Gadzekpo (2001, 609), the church had from its inception a distinct, African-American culture, and was not an attempt to mimic the white church as is often assumed.The major aspect of Black Christian belief was freedom for the African in America as a slave, it meant release from bondage after emancipation, it meant education, employment and freedom of movement for the Negro, and for the past forty years it has meant social, political and economic justice for the African-American (2001, 609). According to Gadzekpo, a call to Gods service was seen as a call to freedom it is a sanctioned tenet of the Black Christian church that God wants Black Christians to be free because they, too, are make in his own image.The involvement of the Black church in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and sixties was notable, not only because church leaders precipitated a major c hange in the secular culture, precisely because it set a pattern of involvement of the church in secular matters, including political, social and health. Leonard Gadzekpo discusses the involvement of the Black church in the civil rights movement. He states One may present the Black church as an institution that gives some direction to the aforementioned aspects of African-American life and influences them, particularly in American company at large.The core values of Black culture such as freedom, justice, equality, an African heritage and racial parity in all aspects of human life were inherent in the Christian ethos that gave birth to and nurtured the civil rights movement. (2001, 609). With the founding doctrine of the Black church creation religious, political and physical freedom, the involvement of the church in the civil rights movement was inevitable. Likewise, involvement of the church in the political and social problems that African-Americans face today is inevitable. As Gadzekpo notes, the Black church, therefore, has reached the point in the last decade of the twentieth century in which searing demands are being made for a return to the tradition of self-help and agitation the development of new and creative approaches has become timeworn in the face of internal pressures involving changes within African-American society, external pressures involving prevalent and persistent racism, and the hostile surround in which the church exists.(2001, 610) The history and current position of the church within the Black community intelligibly indicate that there is a need for involvement of the church in secular matters as well as spiritual, and that the church, by providing this involvement, would be continuing the tradition of service which the church was founded in. However, as Simms notes, the church struggles with the bifurcation of the black community.More affluent blacks who have managed to escape the traditional economic and social confines of t he African American experience have not remained within the church to continue to support its mission. The modern black church is a divided entity, rather than a united whole, which weakens its efforts and causes difficulty in determining its path (Simms, 2000, 105).