The Practice of 'Liberated-ness': An Education Model for Protestant Spiritual Practice (개신교 '자유케 됨'의 영성에 기초한 기독교 영성교육 모형: '자유케 됨'의 실천)
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- Journal of Christian Education in Korea
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- v.68
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- pp.375-415
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- 2021
Although the interest in Christian education of spirituality has increased recently, the practice of the education of spirituality in the Korean Church has been fragmented in the contents and methods without any clear educational purpose of the Protestant tradition. This requires a creative study to seek out the contents and method best suited to realizing the educational purpose of the Protestant tradition, through a rigorous academic methodology. This study proposes just such a creative model for the education of spirituality with an educational purpose based on the core ethos of the Protestant spirituality, integrating the long tradition of spiritual practices of Christianity. First, I survey the teachings on 'the life of faith' of the main leaders of the Protestant church, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley. Through this process, I reveal 'liberated-ness' to be the common purpose of the Protestant leaders, and the core of the practices for that purpose are 'the means of grace,' which has a different meaning from that of the Roman Catholic tradition. I construct the meaning of 'liberated-ness' in a dynamic manner, which begins with the 'liberating will' of God, and is followed by the 'self-giving will' of the believer as the response to the 'grace' of the 'liberating will.' The contact point of these two 'wills' is what I call 'the living membrane of faith.' As a creative synthesis of the above discussions, I propose a model of 'the practice of liberated-ness' for an education in spiritual practice. The purpose of this education is for the learner to become a person who continuously experiences ever-increasing 'liberated-ness' through continuous personal 'encounters' with God, and to become ever more faithful in carrying out practices for the 'liberated-ness' of her or his neighbors. The relationship between the teacher and the learner is that of personal 'encounter' as put forth by Sherrill, and also incorporates elements of 'co-authorship' as conceptualized by Kim. I transform and rename major practices of spiritual discipline according to a principle of 'liberated-ness' based on the Protestant tradition, and these comprise the main content of my spirituality education model. They include: 'lectio divina of encounter,' 'prayer facing the Lord,' 'service in liberation,' 'reflection of liberated-ness,' and 'mutual spiritual direction.' The teaching and learning process draws on Dykstra's methods of coaching and mentoring. The key environment is that of a 'sacramental community' as defined by Moore. Evaluation can be performed only by the learner her/himself. The significance of this model is that it creatively inherits and succeeds the tradition of Christian spiritual discipline from the early church onwards by transforming it through a Protestant spirituality of 'liberated-ness.'
The oracle of the I Ching, divination can be understood as 'synchronicity phenomenon' in analytic psychology. In order to experience divination actually, it requires a religious attitude that asks questions with a serious mind when a person is in trouble that consciousness reaches its limit. It is not just a passive attitude, but a modest, active attitude to ask what I can do now. The experience of the oracle of the I Ching connected to supra-consciousness is similar to 'active imagination'-talking with the archetype of collective unconsciousness-and is 'the process of finding the rhythm of Self-archetype, the absolute wisdom of unconsciousness.' One month before my father's death, I took care of him who couldn't communicate verbally and I divination with a question 'What can I do for my father and me now?' The I Ching's answer was hexagram 19 Lin 臨, nine at the beginning. It's message was '咸臨貞吉 joint approach. perseverance brings good fortune.' 志行正也 we must adhere perseveringly to what is right.' Through this phrase, I learned the attitude of waiting for life after death as if 'joyful obedient' to the providence of nature that spring comes after winter. And I found that keeping the touching emotion of meeting infinity (in analytical psychological terms, 'Self') with perseveration is to do the true meaning of life beyond popular money-mindedness. And six months before my father's death, I had a dream about the afterlife. In the process of interpreting that dream, I learned not only from the shock of the direct message that 'it is a truth that there is something after death,' but also the regeneration of the mind through introversion from the similarity between the closed ward and '黃泉'-chinese underworld through amplification. And I learned the importance of an open attitude to accept new things through the 'window to eternity' symbolized by the white iron gate. In my father's catholic funeral ritual, I had hope that the catholic doctrine 'Communio Sanctorum'-A spiral cycle in which the living and the dead help each other may be real as well as a symbol of the individuation process in which consciousness and unconsciousness interact in our minds. Through the consolation received through the funeral visit of many people I met in my life, I found the answer that the path to contact with infinity begins with loving the beings in front of me. I tried to understand this continuous experience by the perspective of analytical psychology.
The Korean government ranked 3rd among 193 UN member countries in the UN's 2022 e-Government Development Index. Korea, which has consistently been evaluated as a top country, can clearly be said to be a leading country in the world of e-government. The lubricant of e-government is data. Data itself is neither information nor a record, but it is a source of information and records and a resource of knowledge. Since administrative actions through electronic systems have become widespread, the production and technology of data-based records have naturally expanded and evolved. Technology may seem value-neutral, but in fact, technology itself reflects a specific worldview. The digital order of new technologies, armed with hyper-connectivity and super-intelligence, not only has a profound influence on traditional power structures, but also has an a similar influence on existing information and knowledge transmission media. Moreover, new technologies and media, including data-based generative artificial intelligence, are by far the hot topic. It can be seen that the all-round growth and spread of digital technology has led to the augmentation of human capabilities and the outsourcing of thinking. This also involves a variety of problems, ranging from deep fakes and other fake images, auto profiling, AI lies hallucination that creates them as if they were real, and copyright infringement of machine learning data. Moreover, radical connectivity capabilities enable the instantaneous sharing of vast amounts of data and rely on the technological unconscious to generate actions without awareness. Another irony of the digital world and online network, which is based on immaterial distribution and logical existence, is that access and contact can only be made through physical tools. Digital information is a logical object, but digital resources cannot be read or utilized without some type of device to relay it. In that respect, machines in today's technological society have gone beyond the level of simple assistance, and there are points at which it is difficult to say that the entry of machines into human society is a natural change pattern due to advanced technological development. This is because perspectives on machines will change over time. Important is the social and cultural implications of changes in the way records are produced as a result of communication and actions through machines. Even in the archive field, what problems will a data-based archive society face due to technological changes toward a hyper-intelligence and hyper-connected society, and who will prove the continuous activity of records and data and what will be the main drivers of media change? It is time to research whether this will happen. This study began with the need to recognize that archives are not only records that are the result of actions, but also data as strategic assets. Through this, author considered how to expand traditional boundaries and achieves reterritorialization in a data-driven society.
The study examines how the environmental factors of store influence service brand personality and repurchase intention in the service environment. The service industry has been experiencing the intensified competition with the industry's continuous growth and the influence from rapid technological advancement. Under the circumstances, it has become ever more important for the brand competitiveness to be distinctively recognized against competition. A brand needs to be distinguished and differentiated from competing companies because they are all engaged in the similar environment of the service industry. The differentiation of brand achievement has become increasingly important to highlight certain brand functions to include emotional, self-expressive, and symbolic functions since the importance of such functions has been further emphasized in promoting consumption activities. That is the recent role of brand personality that has been emphasized in the service industry. In other words, customers now freely and actively express their personalities or egos in consumption activities, taking an important role in construction of a brand asset. Hence, the study suggests that it is necessary to disperse the recognition and acknowledgement that the maintenance of the existing customers contributes more to boost repurchase intention when it is compared to the efforts to create new customers, particularly in the service industry. Meanwhile, the store itself can offer a unique environment that may influence the consumer's purchase decision. Consumers interact with store environments in the process of,virtually, all household purchase they make (Sarel 1981). Thus, store environments may encourage customers to purchase. The roles that store environments play are to provide informational cues to customers about the store and goods and communicate messages to stimulate consumers' emotions. The store environments differentiate the store from competing stores and build a unique service brand personality. However, the existing studies related to brand in the service industry mostly concentrated on the relationship between the quality of service and customer satisfaction, and they are mostly generalized while the connective studies focused on brand personality. Such approaches show limitations and are insufficient to investigate on the relationship between store environment and brand personality in the service industry. Accordingly, the study intends to identify the level of contribution to the establishment of brand personality made by the store's physical environments that influence on the specific brand characteristics depending on the type of service. The study also intends to identify what kind of relationships with brand personality exists with brand personality while being influenced by store environments. In addition, the study intends to make meaningful suggestions to better direct marketing efforts by identifying whether a brand personality makes a positive influence to induce an intention for repurchase. For this study, the service industry is classified into four categories based on to the characteristics of service: experimental-emotional service, emotional -credible service, credible-functional service, and functional-experimental service. The type of business with the most frequent customer contact is determined for each service type and the enterprise with the highest brand value in each service sector based on the report made by the Korea Management Association. They are designated as the representative of each category. The selected representatives are a fast-food store (experimental-emotional service), a cinema house (emotional-credible service), a bank (credible-functional service), and discount store (functional-experimental service). The survey was conducted for the four selected brands to represent each service category among consumers who are experienced users of the designated stores in Seoul Metropolitan City and Gyeonggi province via written questionnaires in order to verify the suggested assumptions in the study. In particular, the survey adopted 15 scales, which represent each characteristic factor, among the 42 unique characteristics developed by Jennifer Aaker(1997) to assess the brand personality of each service brand. SPSS for Windows Release 12.0 and LISREL were used in the analysis of data verification. The methodology of the structural equation model was used for the study and the pivotal findings are as follows. 1) The environmental factors ware classified as design factors, ambient factors, and social factors. Therefore, the validity of measurement scale of Baker et al. (1994) was proved. 2) The service brand personalities were subdivided as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness, which makes the use of the brand personality scales by Jennifer Aaker(1997) appropriate in the service industry as well. 3) One-way ANOVA analysis on the scales of store environment and service brand personality showed that there exist statistically significant differences in each service category. For example, the social factors were highest in discount stores, while the ambient factors and design factors were highest in fast-food stores. The discount stores were highest in the sincerity and excitement, while the highest point for banks was in the competence and ruggedness, and the highest point for fast-food stores was in the sophistication, The consumers will make a different respond to the physical environment of stores and service brand personality that are inherent to the corresponding service interface. Hence, the customers will make a different decision-making when dealing with different service categories. In this aspect, the relationships of variables in the proposed hypothesis appear to work in a different way depending on the exposed service category. 4) The store environment factors influenced on service brand personalities differently by category of service. The factors of store's physical environment are transferred to a brand and were verified to strengthen service brand personalities. In particular, the level of influence on the service brand personality by physical environment differs depending on service category or dimension, which indicates that there is a need to apply a different style of management to a different service category or dimension. It signifies that there needs to be a brand strategy established in order to positively influence the relationship with consumers by utilizing an appropriate brand personality factor depending on different characteristics by service category or dimension. 5) The service brand personalities influenced on the repurchase intention. Especially, the largest influence was made in the sophistication dimension of service brand personality scale; the unique and characteristically appropriate arrangement of physical environment will make customers stay in the service environment for a long time and will lead to give a positive influence on the repurchase intention. 6) The store environment factors influenced on the repurchase intention. Particularly, the largest influence was made on the social factors of store environment. The most intriguing finding is that the service factor among all other environment factors gives the biggest influence to the repurchase intention in most of all service types except fast-food stores. Such result indicates that the customers pay attention to how much the employees try to provide a quality service when they make an evaluation on the service brand. At the same time, it also indicates that the personal factor is directly transmitted to the construction of brand personality. The employees' attitude and behavior are the determinants to establish a service brand personality in the process of enhancing service interface. Hence, there should be a reinforced search for a method to efficiently manage the service staff who has a direct contact with customers in order to make an affirmative improvement of the customers' brand evaluation at the service interface. The findings suggest several managerial implications. 1) Results from the empirical study indicated that store environment factors have a strong positive impact on a service brand personality. To increase customers' repurchase intention of a service brand, the management is required to effectively manage store environment factors and create a friendly brand personality based on the corresponding service environment. 2) Mangers and researchers must understand and recognize that the store environment elements are important marketing tools, and that brand personality influences on consumers' repurchase intention. Based on such result of the study, a service brand could be utilized as an efficient measure to achieve a differentiation by enforcing the elements that are most influential among all other store environments for each service category. Therefore, brand personality established involving various store environments will further reinforce the relationship with customers through the elevated brand identification of which utilization to induce repurchase decision can be used as an entry barrier. 3) The study identified the store environment as a component of service brand personality for the store's effective communication with consumers. For this, all communication channels should be maintained with consistency and an integrated marketing communication should be executed to efficiently approach to a larger number of customers. Mangers and researchers must find strategies for aligning decisions about store environment elements with the retailers' marketing and store personality objectives. All ambient, design, and social factors need to be orchestrated so that consumers can take an appropriate store personality. In this study, the induced results from the previous studies were extended to the service industry so as to identify the customers' decision making process that leads to repurchase intention and a result similar to those of the previous studies. The findings suggested several theoretical and managerial implications. However, the situation that only one service brand served as the subject of analysis for each service category, and the situation that correlations among store environment elements were not identified, as well as the problem of representation in selection of samples should be considered and supplemented in the future when further studies are conducted. In addition, various antecedents and consequences of brand personality must be looked at in the aspect of the service environment for further research.