Definitions
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Church: a group of Christians with the same beliefs, form of worship,
and organization, and under the same authority (Worldbook).
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Community: a number of people having common ties and interests,
living in the same place and subject to the same laws (Worldbook).
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Core values: the most basic established goals of life; objects,
customs, ways of acting, etc. that members of a given society regard as
desirable (Worldbook).
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Denomination: a religious group represented by a number of local
churches. Presbyterian and Baptists are two large Protestant denominations
(Gage Canadian Encyclopedia).
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Faith: a believing without proof; trust, “Faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”, Hebrews 11:1. (Worldbook);
a construing of the conditions of existence (Fowler).
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Faith development: a sequence of stages by which persons shape their
relatedness to a transcendent center or centers of value. These stages
indicate that there is an underlying system of transformation by which
the self is constituted as it responds to questions of ultimate meaning
(Fowler).
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Faith nurture: a broad term that describes the whole of the effort
by adults to help a child develop a faith system. It includes teaching
of knowledge (faith education), modeling of commitment, and sharing love
and discipline. The term is a analogy that emphasizes the growth aspect
of faith development, encompassing the elements of planting, watering,
feeding, pruning, grafting, bearing fruit, being rooted, etc.
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Grounded theory study: a study which attempts to derive a theory
by using multiple stages of data collection and the refinement and interrelationships
of categories of information (Creswell).
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Hierarchy: a sequence of stages, from very simple to very complex,
through which persons have to travel in order to reach the highest level.
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Leader: an individual who influences a group of individuals to achieve
a common goal (Northouse)
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Method: a way of doing something, especially according to a defined
plan (Worldbook); a technique used in the study process to gather data
(Storey).
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Methodology: the system of methods or procedures used; the branch
of education dealing with the means and ways of instruction (Worldbook).
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Moral development: patterns of reason on which people base their
response to moral questions (Kohlberg); a mechanistic framework that is
concerned with the form of a person’s moral reasoning, not the content.
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Taxonomy: a classification of educational goals and objectives.