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The purpose of this thesis is to examine the health and spiritual maturity of a new startup church, namely People of Destiny Healing and Deliverance Ministries (PODHDM) and identify ways in which PODHDM can grow spiritually and numerically, in the 21st century. The thesis will supply characteristics of a healthy church from the writer’s viewpoint, and from suggestions by notable scholars. The thesis will also explore hindrances to church growth, looking through the lenses of the church, as well as scholars, and provide insights and strategies to foster healthy church growth. This study will suggest that Sunday sermons are not enough to feed the flock and spur them on to spiritual maturity. This thesis project will share how the characteristics of a leader and his/her role in ministry can affect church health. With the use of questionnaires, spiritual growth of congregants, and the health of the church can be assessed. Compiling this information will help to bring to the forefront the issues that a startup church faces, while trying to grow its congregation numerically and spiritually.

This thesis examines the figure of the female spendthrift in seven novels from the combined literary opus of Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921) and Benito Pérez Galdós' (1843-1920), all published between 1881 and 1905. A significant social phenomenon of this period, apparent in most aspects of Spanish society, culture and politics, was a pervading sense of collective decline, and the attempt by the Regenerationists to counter it through a spirit of reform, aimed at bringing about Spain's regeneration. One of the primary concepts inherent in this movement, and to the efforts of a number of non-Regenerationists (including Pardo Bazán and Pérez Galdós) who were nevertheless influenced by it, was a perceived dichotomy between Spain and Europe and their corresponding concepts of old and new. It is against this backdrop of contrasts-specifically the tension between tradition and modernity-that I have analysed the women who shop, or consuming women, as portrayed in the following novels: Pardo Bazán's Las memorías de un solterón (1896); El Niño de Guzmán (¿1897?); El tesoro de Gastón (1897) and La Quimera (1905); Pérez Galdós' La desheredada (1881); La de Bringas (1884); and Lo prohibido (1884-85). Drawing on critical perspectives offered by disciplines such as history, feminism, sociology, political economy, art and literary studies, fly study attempts to portray and explain the relationship between the everyday act of shopping and the Regenerationist concept of Spanish decadence. In support of this approach, I have focused in different chapters on the following range of topics: disease, landscapes of regeneration, political stagnation, emulative consumerism, the pursuit of artistic authenticity, economic decline and nineteenth-century constructs of femininity. By working across boundaries, my thesis seeks to add an innovative dimension to the existing nexus of insightful scholarly criticism of Pérez Galdós' fictional female spendthrift, and to draw attention to the similar, yet all but ignored, figure in Pardo Bazán's novels. In doing so, this work also sheds light on the complex and often contradictory beliefs held by two of nineteenth-century Spain's most important authors, in regards to their nation's pervasive sense of collective decline, or decadence.

tudent Learning and Action Journal includes 50 classroom-ready activities in Literacy, Social Studies, Math, Science, Media Arts, Games, and Assessments. Also includes 3 major Project guides.

2017 marked the 20th anniversary of the founding of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles. We commemorated this occasion with a special edition of our journal. Lunch Ticket Special: Celebrating 20 Years of Antioch¿s MFA in Creative Writing features new and previously published works by Antioch MFA alumni.