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Kirsten Bolinger/Anjuli Cruz
Connections editorial assistant and intern

Wayne Miller and Pastor John Skrzypaszek are the latest Avondale College lecturers to receive their doctorates.

The leading authority on empowerment evaluation recommends Wayne, a senior lecturer in heath and physical education and outdoor education in the Faculty of Education, receive his without revision and with special commendation.

Examiner Professor David Fetterman says Wayne's thesis is among the best he has read-he has even invited Wayne to write a chapter in his next book. The thesis, entitled "Practical methods to evaluate school breakfast programs: a case study," examines the use of empowerment evaluation with the Australian Red Cross's Good Start Breakfast Club. Wayne served as facilitator and "coach" as club personnel engaged in a process of self-evaluation and developed practical evaluation tools to evaluate the program. This "generated a high level of cooperation and commitment to the ongoing evaluation process from those who participated," says Wayne.

Wayne has presented his findings at three international conferences of the Australasian Evaluation Society, at one conference of the American Evaluation Association and had a paper published in the Evaluation Journal of Australasia. He will graduate from the University of Wollongong in December.

The Australian College of Theology awarded John his Doctor of Ministry for "Examining trends in contemporary conversion patterns in the Seventh-day Adventist tradition in Australia: suggested strategies for arresting the inertia which impacts conversion growth in the contemporary Australian culture."

In his study, John, the director of the Ellen G White/SDA Research Centre, interviewed church administrators, including conference presidents, Ministerial Association secretaries and church planting leaders, and those who have joined the church as new members. He discovered a tension between the two groups.

"The top-down approach produces a maze of complex barriers that leads to a cultural distancing between the church and the secular 'unchurched' society," says John. "This contributes to congregational malaise and to the scrutiny that overrides the liberating qualities of the gospel. So, while society has made a transition, we want to maintain our traditional 19th century identity. We have not shaped what it means to be a Seventh-day Adventist in the context of 21st century culture."

John identified three phases of a new member's journey toward conversion: reorientation; turbulence; and adaptation. He found an absence of community in the early stages of the journey to conversion, one that is critical to the transformational journey and the one in which John feels God's missional presence. The remedy: unconditional friendship and relationships. "God is a missionary God," says John. "He does not need us, but He wants us."

Caption: Dr Wayne Miller
Credit: Ann Stafford

Caption: Dr John Skrzypaszek
Credit: Jacqueline Ward