Date: July 27, 2004
Prayer Update from Waldeckers
Thank you for you continued prayer for my doctoral studies. I have
finished the two plus years of classes, passed the comprehensive
exams, presented a first draft of my dissertation proposal, and am
trying to decide on the details of where and when I will conduct the
research.
When I say "research" I don't mean academic research in a library.
I've already done plenty of that. What I mean is gathering
information on a particular problem that faces MTW. My research will
focus on how organizations learn (or don't learn) in cross-cultural
situations. It has a lot to do with the contextualization of the
gospel.
The research will be done somewhere in Latin America in conjunction
with MTW's work there. This, of course, will require me to be present
in that place for a significant amount of time. My hope is that the
research will be helpful not only to the place where I conduct the
research, but to all of our work in Latin America.
Here are the next steps in the process:
1. Defend my dissertation proposal. This basically consists of
writing the first three chapters of the dissertation in which the
theoretical foundation and plan for conducting research is laid out.
Defending it means successfully answering questions about it from the
dissertation committee. The chair person of my committee thinks I
will be ready to do this very soon.
2. Get approval from the "Institutional Review Board" of George
Washington University to conduct the research. They want to make sure
everything is done in a way that preserves the integrity of the
people involved in the research. This would include such things as
written permissions from the organizations involved (MTW and local
church or denomination).
3. Gather the Information/Data according to the plan.
4. Analyze the Information/Data according to the plan.
5. Present the results of the research in written form, which will be
chapter 4 of the dissertation.
6. Write chapter 5 of the dissertation, which involves interpreting
the results and drawing conclusions.
7. An oral defense of the dissertation before the dissertation committee.
So I ask for your prayer in this process. I would like to get done
soon so I can get back to full time ministry as soon as possible.
Also, I ask you to pray that my work will be helpful to MTW.
Thanks for praying about the meeting of the MTW University Resource
Team. I think the first meeting went very well and we are off to a
good start in planning ways to provide for the life-long training of
MTW personnel.
Thank you also for praying about my talks at the MTW Summer
Conference. I conducted two seminars: one on the contextualization of
the gospel, and the other on leadership training for church planting
movements. The seminars were well attended and the participants had a
lot of good questions. I will be presenting these same seminars at
the MTW Global Missions Conference in November.
Now that I have made it to this point in my studies, we will probably
be more flexible in terms of our ability to visit churches. If you
would like us to visit, let's talk about the possibilities. We would
no doubt give preference to those churches we have not yet visited
since returning from Chile.
I recently added some email addresses that had somehow disappeared
from my mailing list. If you think you've missed some of our updates,
most of them are posted on the web at the following address:
http://www.mtwla.org/people/gwaldecker.htm
Seth recently returned from an internship in Chile. Micah is there
now. Andrea and Audrey went with their church youth group to New York
for a week. Pray that these trips will prove to be useful in the
lives and spiritual growth of our children. Phyllis works as an RN
about 4 days a week at the Miller Eye Center in Chattanooga.
Please pray also for needed increases in our support account.
Thank you very much for your prayers.
Gary