An online peer-based spiritual mentoring program for field missionaries

Authors: 
Thomas David Nichols
Date published: 
2011-12
Journal: 
Thesis

An online peer-based spiritual mentoring program for field missionaries focused on improving the spiritual wellness of a group of twelve Protestant evangelical missionaries by means of a six-week blog. This study has been shaped by a wellness model of missionary member care in which wellness is understood to be a multidimensional integrated construct. Wellness is not merely the absence of illness or disease but involves a positive balanced life or a life of well-being in the spiritual, physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and occupational dimensions. Due to the integrated nature of people and of wellness, change in one dimension may bring about change in the other dimensions.In order to assess the impact of online peer-based spiritual mentoring, I used a triangulated concurrent mixed-methods study. The Spiritual Assessment Inventory (SAI), a "relationally-based, psychometrically-sound measure of spiritual development from a broadly theistic perspective" (Hall and Edwards, "Spiritual Assessment Inventory" 342), provided quantitative data by means of a pretest and posttest. The SAI is comprised of forty-nine self-report items in which responses are tallied using a five-point Likert scale, ranging from "not at all true" to "very true." The SAI provided quantitative data in two dimensions (awareness of God and quality of relationship with God) on five scales. Realistic acceptance, instability, grandiosity, and disappointment scales provided measurements of quality. Validity of the SAI has been demonstrated through correlations with other empirical studies.Observation and analysis of data from within the blog, together with a weekly journal reflection, provided qualitative data. I identified themes from the qualitative data in order to reveal how online mentoring influenced the spiritual wellness of the participants. Following data collection and analysis, I compared and interpreted the results of the quantitative and qualitative data regarding the impact of the spiritual mentoring program on the spiritual wellness of the missionary participants.Although the quantitative data did not show statistically significant differences between the pretest and posttest means of the SAI, the qualitative data revealed that the Kaibigan blog had a positive impact on the spiritual well-being of the missionaries.

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