Hearing and Listening: A Minister's Journey with a Congregation

A hermeneutic phenomenological study that looks at the question: can this minister listen closely enough to a group from the congregation to make a comparison and contrast between the experience of people in the congregation and his own experience? Three Faith Conversations are studied carefully to allow the researcher to understand the congregants’ experience of three aspects of congregational life. The researcher then enters a structured theological reflection so that he can compare and contrast his own experience of church life with that of the congregants. Although the researcher anticipated a significant disparity between their experience of church and his own, he discovered that the gap contributed to by differences between his experience and educational level and theirs was significantly reduced by similarities in social context.Doctor of Ministry (DMin