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For assignment 8, you were required to address some of the ways your concepts

related to your observational, participation, and/or interview data. For this

assignment you should:

1. Select ONE of your theoretical concepts.

2. Go to the website of your faith community.

a.) If your specific community does not have a website that is unique

to that particular community, then you should use either its

“parent’s” website or an equivalent “sister” community. For

example, if I had selected Royal Oak Lutheran Church, but it did not

have its own website, I would look at the website of the Lutheran

Church (that would be its “parent”). Or, I might find a suitable

equivalent and use its website as a substitute. For this example, that

might be the website of the Ferndale Lutheran Church.

3. Using any portion of the website (e.g., a video recorded message, a podcast,

the images you find of the site or the people who worship there, a mission

statement, etc.), you should explain how the concept you selected in step 1 of this

assignment is apparent in that portion(s) of the website. One approach to this

step is to consider what you learned about content analysis (without actually

conducting any coding).

This should be a well-written narrative, a minimum of 1 page in length, and

written as though it is a section of your final research project.

If I were to use an example from my work on megachurches, I might use the

images of the interior of the church to discuss “implosion” (perhaps the way the

auditorium looks like a cinema and what that means sociologically). Or I might

look at documents on the website that lay out the church’s organizational

structure and talk about McDonaldization. Or I might watch a video of a service

and discuss collective effervescence, etc.