Disputes about the word "so"

So, some people really don't like to read or hear sentences that begin, unaccountably, with the word "so." To me it suggests a continuing conversation. To the purist, it's a conjunction, and should no more lead off your sentence than a "but," "and," or "though." Now you know!

An odd assignment in a biblical hermeneutics class I'm taking as part of my seminary studies had me exploring uses of the little word in various contexts in the book of John. What does John mean when he says so?

There are some variations in meaning for this word. The Greek version of it shows up in John 3:8, 14; 4:6; 5:21, 26; 7:46; 8:59; 11:48; 12:50; 14:31; 15:4; 18:22; and 21:1,  and in most these passages it means (and may be translated into English as) "this is how" or "in this way." Not "to this degre." So, more "thus," less "very." John's using the word as a conjunction, not a modifier.

The reason for this assignment? Turns out that when "so" sneaks into the uber-famous King James Version of John 3:16, there's good reason to believe it means the same thing there, despite tradition and appearances. Not like this:

"I asked Jesus, 'How much do you love me?'
And Jesus said, 'This much.'
Then He stretched out His arms and died."

Sorry! (Actually, I'm not sorry. Always found that Christian T-shirt sentiment a little creepy.)

Some scholars disagree, but how John uses the word elsewhere suggests that here, too, it refers to the manner and expression of love (this kind of love), not the degree of it (this much love). Small difference? It's enough to use a different translation. English a few centuries ago, in the day of ol' King James, used "so" primarily in the same sense as the book of John ("this happened, so that did"). Today's English, though, tends to use "so" primarily as an adverb indicating degree. ("I am so totally ready for the weekend, what about you?")

That renders the King James version of this verse - and translations that do homage to it - a bit misleading. For 21st century American readers, ol' John 3:16 might be better rendered "this is how God loved the world," not "this is how much God loved the world."

Does that change the meaning much? I think it moves the emphasis from God's warm fuzzy feelings to God's world-shaking actions, from the greatness of his heart to the greatness of his gift. As the saying goes, love is a verb.

For more on this translation issue see So, What? John 3:16 and the Lord's Prayer (God Didn't Say That: Bible Translations and Mistranslations).

Talking about Church Planting

Someone reminded me the other day that they don't understand some of the things I talk and write about, even though it's good to hear from me. It stung just a little - I wondered how often I'm simply not connecting with people, too enthralled with my own voice to realize I'm not making sense. Happens too much!

On the other hand, the ways I'm trying to grow as a research and  missiologist may not be enough to get me into a crowd of academics and experts. Every now and again I test those waters, show up at a conference or something. Sometimes I find more welcome than I expect. Other times, less. My social anxiety tends to increase the chances that whatever comes out of my mouth will sound awkward and come from a place of fear and uncertainty. It would be better, I know, if I learned to relax and listen and adjust a bit more.

And meanwhile, such pursuits may also cost me the opportunity and ability to be make sense to people who walk around more in the "real world," who are more concrete and relational. Hmmm.

Resources on church-planting

With that said, though, here a couple of things you may find interesting, if you're still reading, and interested for some reason in the missiological questions I've been exploring lately.

Church Planting and the Mission of God (article)

Planting Churches and Planting the Gospel | Ed Stetzer

When we talk about church planting it can be a little different than church starting. What's the difference? Well, I think church starting happens a lot of ways. The most popular church starting strategy involves a group of people getting mad, leaving their home church, and starting another church. In most cases I wouldn't advise this strategy.

Church planting, on the other hand, involves an individual, mother church, and/or a group of people going out to start a church for the purpose of engaging a community through gospel proclamation and demonstration.

Church planting, unlike church starting, should/must be mission driven.

Church planting grows in the soil of lostness (hence "planting") where men and women far from God are challenged with the claims of the gospel of Jesus Christ by a group of intentional believers.

Read full article.

Church Planting Movements: Making Disciples and Planting Churches in Hard Place (video)

This video from a webinar explores some of the practices and assumptions that characterize a few common church-planting approaches being attempted in some of the places where there are few followers of Jesus - among the least reached. Production values on the video are a tad low, but the content is significant. Watch it in full-screen mode to view the charts clearly.

A Fresh Look at Exploring the Land

Last month I spent just under two weeks in a major European city which has long been home to a large and growing immigrant population. The Europe-focused ministry that sponsored the trip brought me along to help train some of their staff in the principles and practices of ethnographic field work (as well as beginning such work in that city). Doing ethnographic surveying is one of the first 2-3 steps in their plan to try to launch rapidly reproducing church movements there among the immigrant peoples there and in dozens of other cities in the next five years. The subsequent steps involve a well-developed strategy for prayer, a structured evangelism blitz, and following up all who respond by organizing discovery Bible studies and simple, reproducible churches - ultimately encouraging those who are part of the movement to begin taking it back to their homelands.

One reason I wanted to participate in this project was to help me re-think my assumptions about culture. Specifically, I'm struggling to understand what place cultural differences and cultural learning have in ministries that are operating with pre-determined strategies and tactics. These guys knew exactly what they wanted to see happen and how they were going to go about it. Why would they want to learn about culture?  Were they prepared to change anything on the basis of what they might learn? If not, was the research really necessary? Ethnography - seeking an insider's perspective by learning about a culture from face-to-face interviews with the insiders - is something I haven't been willing or able to let go of, over the years. It's something I love, and who else will wave the flag for it? But maybe I should look for other avenues and give up my ideas that church planters should be interested in this kind of stuff.

I realized, as my questions crystallized, how much my early training in ethnography was focused on developing strategy. Our big questions were 1) who are the people groups (stratification), 2) what are they like (social structure) and 3) how can they be reached? The last question we usually explored through the lens of social dynamics and the studies of receptivity, ministry history, and church growth.

The thing is, as the years have gone by, those three big questions seem to resonate less and less with people I train. The mission community as a whole has found answers to question #1 and has relatively little felt need for people group studies. I would like to see missionaries hold their people-group lists a little more lightly; they don't tend to reflect many of the sociologically significant divisions that really exist on the ground - functional "tribes" - because language and ethnicity don't tell you everything or reveal the ways communities are affected by social dynamics like globalization, government policies, and immigration. At any rate, as the lists of sociolinguistic peoples have improved and gained acceptance, interest in stratification studies of any kind has waned.

Interest in question #3 has also declined. For one reason or another few seem interested in developing strategies highly informed by cultural research. Even the whole area of "contextualization" is often discussed in broad sweeping terms (what words should we use for God when we talk about him with Muslims?) as if it has little to do with on-the-ground contexts, the ways in which one community, city, or region differs from another. And here I thought that was the point of contextualization!

So, more than a decade ago I stopped thinking of our research reports as strategy reports, and focused more on writing them as cultural descriptions. And if I'm honest about it I have to admit that even in our earliest days of ethnography for church planting, few of those who embraced the research used it in any great degree to develop their strategies (though they did use it; see below).

One factor in our lack of influence over vision and strategy was that most of our researchers had little training in ministry models. They did not know how to use language that would show respect to their readers' training and assumption and still make a difference in how missionaries pursue church planting. Since I had learned everything I do more or less on the job, it was hard for me to see beyond the models I'd inherited. I sensed they were limited or broken or waning in relevance, but I didn't know what do do about that. That's one reason I decided to go to grad school, actually.

One thing I noticed was that even those who did not think we had anything to contribute to strategy development often ate up our prayer materials, videos, and cultural descriptions. There's still a niche market for people group profiles, National Geographic style articles, prayer guides, great photography and all that. As long as those things were part of the picture, both those who had very loose ideas about strategy - maybe considering it arrogant to go in thinking they knew what they were doing - and those who had their strategies all figured out in advance - like my colleagues on this trip to Europe - could see the value in doing ethnography. They wanted us to do it, or to do it together with us. Maybe it was time for me to let go of my high-minded ideas about why.

Here's what remains. I think it's more than enough. Even for those who don't see ethnography as a building block for their strategies can experience the following benefits:

1. Doing ethnography and/or reading the results of it still provide anyone involved in a church-planting effort with valuable help in loving and understanding the people they want to reach.

2. Ethnography also uncovers moving and significant stories to share in raising up prayer and more workers.

3. Ethnography can uncover anticipating obstacles and opportunities for ministry efforts - felt needs, hopes and fears, and patterns of relationship.

4. Ethnography can reveal  a better idea what stories and principles are likely to mean the most to people, informing evangelism, discipleship, and teaching efforts.

In my book, that’s plenty. Maybe we were just taking ourselves - and the role our work could play in strategy! too darn seriously. 

NEXT STEPS

Our ethnography training sessions in Europe were all videotaped and the ministry plans to use them in creating a curriculum to train teams in other cities. The video team also got footage for promotional materials they’ll be able to use in raising up prayer teams and evangelism teams. They’ll probably use some of the stories we heard to create a one-week prayer guide for supporters of the prayerwalking teams to use back home.

Maybe it won't all happen. Maybe it won't all work. (I'm not the only one carrying around models that may not be sufficient for their purpose!) I could turn my hands to other things, but I am no longer haunted by a fear that I must, that the model would have to be thrown out all together. I can rest easy that my investment in passing on what I do know about ways to explore another culture was worth it. I got some answers to my questions.

"Many drowning victims go down unheard"

In a recent newsletter, a friend of mine serving in sort of a pastoral role overseas described an "aha!" moment he had when reading about how people people drown:

"While TV and movies typically depict drowning victims thrashing about, yelling for help and waving arms to get the attention of anyone who can help, in reality the opposite is generally true. When someone is drowning, they struggle quietly, with little energy to attract attention as their body and mind instinctively act to reserve energy just to try to keep afloat. In fact, there are many victims of drowning who are within earshot and perhaps even within reach of someone who could help but who isn’t even aware that someone is in trouble. With no energy to hold up that arm to signal that they’re in trouble, many drowning victims go down unheard, unseen, and sadly, unhelped."

(Read an article about this here.)

So basically, when people are most in trouble may be when they are the least able to cry out for the help that they need. See an analogy that goes beyond the beach or pool? Ever seen it in your own life? What are the applications to us for our lives and ministry? There could be people near us who are close to going under but can't get our attention. How might we train ourselves to be better lifeguards, more alert to the subtle signs that someone's in trouble, and prepared to take the initiative to follow through with a response?

Church-planting movements and my questions about culture

A Wind in The House of Islam

Recently I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by David Garrison. It was a small group so I was able to corner him with some of my big questions, ones I struggle with every time another ethnography project comes along.

More than a decade ago Garrison wrote a book called Church Planting Movements. It sent a lot of ripples through frontier mission world. Although he definitely came out with a model (the basis for many of the models frontier mission agencies are using today) he built it on pretty solid phenomenological research. That's a fancy way of saying he's thinking descriptively, not prescriptively. Lots of stories, lots of case studies... then look for the patterns that emerge, after. He basically "reverse engineered" the movements he found and looked for best practices. Plenty of people responded negatively though, and some accused him of developing a formula and saying it would work anywhere. I don't think that's what he meant to do, but it came across that way, especially in the hands of folks looking for a "silver bullet."  

Now Garrison is writing another book about these movements, with similar methodology, and this time focusing on movements to Christ taking place in the Muslim world. According to Garrison, though hundreds of formerly Christian people groups turned to Islam in the first 1300 years after Muhammad, we only find one or two movements in the other direction during that time - a movement of Muslims becoming followers of Jesus. All along there have been individual conversions, but not growing, reproducing movements.

This though, has now changed. From 1980 to 2000 there were eight movements like that around the world. Since 2000 he's been able to document about 70! Continuing research suggests the number of these movements is growing. This is historically unprecedented, and a lot of people in the circles I move in are pretty excited about it.

Garrison defines a movement to Christ as being voluntary (not a matter of coercion) and involving at least 1,000 baptized believers and/or 100 churches within a ten-year period. And for this research, he's been careful to confirm that these churches were made up of people from Muslim backgrounds, not animistic or Christian elements within a Muslim culture or country.

Movements, Models, and Diversity

With my background in cultural research, my ears perked up a bit as he explained that his title, A Wind in the House of Islam, alludes to a global "house" with nine rooms, the nine major affinity blocks - I realized he wasn't talking about cookie-cutter movements that all had to look the same.

"Nine Rooms in the House of Islam"

I think this a healthy step back from what Stone described as "essentialism," (see previous post) which would lead Christians to think Muslims are all alike and that there may be some common strategic key to reaching them.

Garrison says on the book website,

"Though Muslims everywhere share many common bonds... Muslims are by no means a monolithic culture. Muslims vary widely in their culture. From West Africa to Central Asia to Indonesia, Islamic cultural practices are as diverse as the people themselves.”

"For this reason, we have chosen to examine what is happening in the Muslim world with special respect to each of those distinct cultural regions or affinity blocs. These nine regions share mutual history, languages, geography and intertwining ethnicity. By examining movements within each of these distinct cultural zones, we are better able to understand how God is uniquely at work within each one.”

After hearing Garrison's presentation, I introduced myself and told him I was trying to figure out how cultural differences, cultural understanding, and cultural training might fit into the church-planting, disciple-making movement models currently being adopted by more and more mission agencies and Christians working cross-culturally (CPM/DMM). He was aware of some of the ethnographic work I've been part of and did not seem to see a conflict at all.

But he did make this distinction:

The now traditional model for incarnational missions focused heavily on training and sending out foreign missionaries to the least reached places, where they attempted to contextualize their message and their way of life out of love for the people in their host culture and in hopes of being able to say, "follow me as I follow Christ." The end goal, though maybe seldom realized, has been to reach those who will reach others; to work oneself out of a job and gracefully exit as the church or ministry becomes self-sustaining.

The new models place much less emphasis on the role of missionary, but work to empower and encourage highly reproducible local leadership from the get-go. It doesn't work like magic, but if it works at all, the problem of missionary contextualization quickly fades away in favor of indigenization (which I am pretty sure nobody disputes is much more effective; and it's the goal of the incarnational/contextualizers, too).

Cultural training, cultural understanding, are still crucial, Garrison told me. "Keep doing it!!" he urged when I asked flat out. If an outsider is involved in the movement at all, he or she will need that cultural savvy to establish credibility. And probably to navigate the issues that arise, though they may be - perhaps always have been - out of our control. Just because we're not putting so many eggs in the incarnational basket doesn't mean we don't need to appreciate cultural dynamics, he said. They still play a significant part.

This was helpful, but I still don't "get it." I need to ponder these things more, I think. I am not entirely convinced that what I've been taught - and what I've taught - about the importance of culture meshes with the CPM models. I'm trying to figure out what we need to rethink and revise, at least in teaching culture to folks who have fully embraced CPM models and assumptions. And off I go to Germany to teach it one more time with a colleague asking the same questions. Please pray for breakthrough in our thinking on these questions.

Another thing I'm trying to keep in mind is Matthew Stone's warning in Reaching Muslims with Love and Logic against cultural determinism - itself a form of essentialism, it seems. May our research never become dogmatic and directive, assuming that people always do what their culture tells them to.

"Muslims are not products of cultural factories; Arabs are not all the same. Understanding someone's culture is tremendously helpful in understanding that individual, but I shy away from embracing cultural determinism that glosses over differences and can, in its worse form, view individuals as merely an expression of culture."

Models for Ministry (and their limitations)

Every Christian model for evangelism and discipleship claims to be grounded in scripture and yet often these models contain contradictory recommendations or approaches, points out Matthew Stone in the book Reaching Muslims with Love and Logic: A Non-model Model.

One problem with models is that they tend to leave out personality. God gave you a personality, and he wants you to use it. Maybe the best way to do that is to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and effectiveness of the models that exist and the practices and perspectives of others... and sort out what you think will work for you. Or try it and find out. Just trying to work the model without alteration, to force it, may be an exercise in frustration and futility, simply because of who you are.

Similarly, ministry models usually fail to adequately account for the individuality of those you are trying to reach. When your assumptions and generalizations don't accurately describe the person in front of you, your model will not fly. It doesn't respond to who they are. And in spite of the many observable patterns that describe the thoughts, feelings and behavior of members of the human family, few principles apply to all of us all the time.

For example, you've probably experience discomfort at some point attending an event designed to please people like you but based on assumptions that didn't ring true. I've felt the rub, myself, from the belief that teens are supposed to love rock music and playing sports, or that you can touch women's heart by appealing to them as wives and mothers and doing crafts together.

Stone, who has a background in philosophy, cites the distinction between essentialism and nominalism as a key factor in how we approach models for ministry. I found this very helpful. Basically, these two deal with the question of whether we see abstractions and theories as being the "really real," more real than the individual or specific (essentialism - we focus on what we consider the 'essence,' I guess)... or we see abstractions, theories, and labels as being helpful tools for communicating, and possibly quite applicable, but not as fully "real" as what's individual and specific, such as the person in front of us (that's nominalism).

Where you are on the spectrum between the two will have a great affect one how you understand and approach Muslims, says Stone:

"If you tend to see Islam as the primary reality and groups of Muslims as somehow participating in that larger reality... you might be predisposed to expend your energy trying to get at the essence of Islam and its message, trying to understand 'the Muslim mind' or 'Arabs,' etc. If you see particular expressions of religious beliefs and practices of Muslims as primary and view Islam as merely a word that is helpful to communicate with others... you might then try to study specific beliefs of particular Muslims, the diversity of expressions of Muslims as they live and believe, the multiple interpretations of the Qur'an and Sunnah (the example of Muhammad as captured in the hadith), etc." 

"When we think that Islam is the really real, we tend to lump Muslims together and blur diversity."

Models are helpful, but they are like maps, drawing a picture of reality by simplifying it.

"Models of mission are helpful when viewed in a big brush stroke kind of way, but they are not helpful to the degree that they get in the way, when they have us focus too much on the model and our loyalty to it and too little on the uniqueness of the [person] in front of us."

In the circles I move in, it seems pretty easy for people to get a little carried away about their strategies and techniques, so I found Stone's explanation of his reservations about models very helpful. Do you?

Tomorrow: Movements, models, and cultural diversity

How Not to Sabotage Your Efforts

One of the objectives of the class I'm taking this summer is to develop a personal awareness of the ways one is most likely to sabotage relationships. Well, specifically, cross-cultural relationships with people who happen to be Muslims. Seems a lot of us get a little touchy when others - Muslims, or anyone - look at the world very differently than we do, open their mouths and talk about what they think and feel, and reject or even criticize things about how we think and feel. We think we're being attacked. We may have the same reactions in marriage, or getting along with our coworkers, or being riled up about things on the evening news or passed around on Facebook.

One of our books includes a chapter called "How Not to Sabotage Your Efforts to Reach Muslims." As the author points out, Christian books about reaching Muslims tend to externalize the tension we feel, as if Muslims are the problem, and if they just wouldn't be so Muslim we wouldn't be so upset about things. But if Muslims are just being themselves, do we have to get ourselves upset about it?

It shouldn't surprise us that people sabotage their efforts to reach Muslims the same way they - or should I say we - sabotage all kinds of efforts and relationships. If we are upset, likely our communication and behavior is going to be effected. And underneath that agitation are unhelpful thought patterns like these:

• Demandingness: absolute shoulds, oughts, musts, “have to’s”, and needs (I need to be perfect, people have to listen to me, they shouldn't reject me if I tell the truth, etc.) 
• Awfulizing: believing that something is terrible, horrible, or awful (maybe dwelling on and inflating something negative and being unable to accept or let go of it).
• Low frustration tolerance: believing that you can’t stand something, that it is too much, or intolerable. (thus increasing your own sense of psychic pain - you think it's more than you can take and will make you explode or crumble or something).
• Self-downing: believing that the self is no good, beyond hope or redemption.
• Other-downing: believing that someone else or a group of others is no good, beyond hope or redemption.
• Overgeneralization: believing about a situation, person, or group that it will always be a particular way or will never change.

Source: Reaching Muslims with Love and Logic, by Matthew Stone.

I don't know about you, but I recognize those thoughts as pretty familiar ones. And they sabotage me in life, generally, and especially in relationships.

When our emotions are those of anger, frustration, anxiety, depression, and fear - rooted in such thought patterns - we then engage in unhelpful behaviors like defensiveness, blame, aggression, avoidance, rudeness, and dwelling on the negative. Those kind of emotions and behaviors may be normal and seem justified, but they don't help build relationships, do they? So we need to find a way to deal with those emotions and behaviors - and the thoughts that lie beneath them - if our goal is to build effective relationships or have a "ministry."

I found it helpful to hear my professor, who is a practicing psychologist, talk about "upsetting ourselves" instead of "being upset." That kind of language helps me take responsibility for my own emotions and emotional reactions - I have to acknowledge that nobody is forcing me to be upset, to worry, to be stressed out. Those things are not mandatory.

One problem, he said, is that we don't have an effective theory of emotions. Most people believe that circumstances, people, or the way we are raised are the causes of our emotions, despite the fact that research and other sources of authority (e.g., the Bible) do not support this theory. So our instructor offered us what he called the "ABC model of emotions." This is easy. I think I remember it. And, in digging a little deeper, I see it comes from cognitive behavioral therapy.

A = Activating event, or trigger. The situation or experience (past, current, or anticipated).
B = Beliefs about that event. Thoughts we have when the situation or experience happens.
C = Consequences. Our responses, both emotions and behavior.

Most people believe A causes C. (e.g., that situation frustrates me; that person makes me mad, etc). But A triggers B, and B causes C. Our emotions and behaviors are largely caused by our thoughts and beliefs about the way things are supposed to be. And that is good news, because we can't change other people and often cannot change our situation. While changing our thinking is difficult, it can be done if we're honest with ourselves about what we think, willing to work at thinking differently, and ask for God's help in doing so.

So, how can we avoid sabotaging our relationships and other efforts? Stop and consider what things are getting us upset - or, more precisely, what things we are upsetting ourselves about. What are our unhelpful responses when we are upset? What are we thinking? Is what we are thinking true? Is there another way to think about it or something else we can focus on that might be more productive?

Note: I've queued up several more posts on significant ideas from my latest grad school class - come back tomorrow for the next one.