Ethnograpy 1: Living the Strories We Tell

“You shall make this response before the Lord your God: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labour on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm (Deuteronomy 26:5-8a, NRSV).”

The stories we tell create the reality we experience and the future we move toward.

Every culture has its own stories, icons, and images. Icons, images, and stories weave together into a fabric, so familiar to those who live in it, that it is not even noticed or seen to be remarkable. Often one can find codes of behavior which become an unwritten code of right and wrong – lists of dos and don’ts - which result in limited imagination and possibilities never considered.

For several years I worked with Church Innovations Institute as an Associate Consultant. One of the skills I learned there was doing ethnography. We would ask a congregation to use a process of appreciative inquiry to develop an understanding of the ethnography of the congregation. Ethnography is the fancy word for finding out about a people’s culture through the stories they tell.

Rather than asking questions which would elicit a simple “yes” or “no” response, appreciative inquiry prompts people to tell stories. These prompts were planned in order to uncover some key areas of the congregation’s shared life. A team of listeners would invite a number of participants to engage in telling their own stories. The listeners would carefully record the responses to the prompts. The stories were compiled and then shared with a third-party group to identify key words, repeating themes, frequently alluded to events, names, and other elements. But unlike a simple tally, the “right” answer wasn’t necessarily where the majority of responses echoed each other. We always had a sensitive openness to the odd, unique, and isolated “voice crying in the wilderness” by itself.

This process lifts interesting insights and stories. Which when shared back with the congregation often provides information they had not noticed before. There were two congregations with whom I worked that had interesting stories revealed to them through this process. One was a congregation in a quiet rural area of Kansas. The other in a suburb of a major eastern US metropolis.

The Kansas church told stories of the diminishing number of children, of young adults not returning after college, of a looming death. The stories were similar to many in rural communities. They had trouble seeing a mission that would motivate them forward.  As they told other stories, generated through appreciative inquiry, they still were not able to see the larger narrative in which they were living. The smaller, individual stories were about gifted young people, who upon graduation did not return to the community, yet began living generative lives, contributing to their communities, and serving to make God’s reign known.  The congregation then discovered a new story: they were a sending church, a missionary incubator, preparing people to leave and share God’s love. They unearthed their mission and ongoing motivation.

The suburban church had a similarly discouraging story they were telling themselves. While they were not a diminishing congregation, they were a sheltered congregation seeking sanctuary in a violent neighborhood.  Again using appreciative inquiry, we discovered that the some of the experiences of conflict in their shared past had turned them into a congregation deeply educated and practiced in many conflict resolution and peacemaking skills.  Skills that transcended congregational politics, and could transfer to families, work, and school. As this story emerged, the congregation began to struggle with their sheltered posture in the neighborhood and began to believe God had been gifting them to make a positive impact in a conflicted neighborhood.

Our futures are shaped by the stories we tell. Oddly enough, often the life-giving stories have been there all along, untold.

Digging up icons in stories

Doing anthropology through ethnography (or archaeology by digging up buried stories) at the local congregational level uses a mixture of conversations, statistical measurements, and a view to the trajectories of history.  Usually a community “norm” emerges.  Frequently, what is called “normal” may not be normal to anyone else. Granted there may be shared commitments, and a shared language for articulating faith, but that does not mean each community is meaning the same things. The shared meanings of the community are not external measures, but rather “meaning systems-- rules, common intra-cultural understandings, shared aims, etc.-- in which they are imbedded” (Feinberg, 2006). We don’t create these meanings so much as we discover we have been swimming in them. As a fish is the last to discover water, we are often last to discover the meaning, language, and cultures in which our imaginations and ethics have been formed. Frequently, we can be at odds with the meanings in which we are embedded and the actions and choices we make. 

Several years ago, while consulting with a group of churches within one specific denomination, we discovered high levels of conflict.  Many congregations had chosen to adopt a popular set of assumptions about church being promoted by publishers, authors, and leaders outside the denomination.  As congregations proceeded down that path, the problems were not with the results, it was with the meaning of the results.  As the saying goes, “dance with the one who brought you”, these congregations were dancing with someone else.  The result was an incongruity between espoused belief and the behaviors of the new adaptation.  It didn’t fit. Even though everyone else was doing it.  Moving forward meant moving backward, to understand, re-embrace where possible, and retell the stories of their theological heritage. Recovering their community of faith origins provided context for the new realities to which they had come.

Ethnography enables one to discover the way in which the beliefs held are matching with the beliefs espoused.  Time and again, belief changes, and the content of belief needs to be considered with the way a belief is carried out.  Sometimes, the discontinuity between what is professed and what is acted out is too great to not be addressed. The meaning of the community life requires belief strong enough to hold it together, but also a flexible belief in order to adapt, to grow, and to develop (Martos, 2010). 

What are the stories you hear, or tell? If the only stories told are those of problems and struggles, things that need fixing, then we can become focused on problem solving.  Problems become the story and the story of hope and mission and imagination are left underground and unheard.

What stories are being told to move you forward in to God’s preferred and promised future? How many unearthed stories are waiting to provide a new future, and do you know where to dig for them?

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References:                                                                                                                                      Feinberg, W. (2006). Philosophical Ethnography: or, How Philosophy and Ethnography Can Live Together in a World of Educational Research. Educational Studies in Japan: International Yearbook, No.1, pp.5-14.

Martos, T. B. (2010). It’s not only what you hold, it’s how you hold it: Dimensions of religiosity and meaning in life. Personality and Individual Differences, 49.8: 863-868.

Comfortable and Careless Divides

I just had a weird experience. I kind of fell into it and wanted to kick myself for even trying it. It is one of those experiences that I warn others not to do. But I did.

I (almost) got into a Facebook debate with someone I didn't know. Now I know them virtually, and virtual is good enough, for now.

But like most all Facebook politically oriented posts, this person placed a link to a new article. The news article lacked citations, did not define key terms, provided no discussion or alternative views, and made spurious conclusions without following the rules of reason. And I was like a trout with a woolly-bugger calling my name. I took the bait. I pointed out the intellectual faults and lack of sound reason used in the posted article. An I thought I was not only right, but had actually helped set someone straight.

Within a few minutes I had people accusing me of hate and support of nefarious individuals of whom the article in question had spoke disparagingly. Another suggested that if I didn't agree with the original person who posted the article I should unfriend them rather that being critical of them.

The message was clear, which I knew all along but had forgotten. Facebook loves echo-chambers in which your own thoughts are liked and then reflected back to you. Comments are intended only to elaborate the agreement.

It is sad. Because I think I could get along with most anyone. I find that there is common ground with almost everyone.

If we take time to build a relationship, even if it is about mundane stuff, we're better prepared for disagreement on substantial stuff.

There are lots of people I would not agree with in politics and religion. But we also see each other every Friday night at high school football games. Our love of our kids who play, the joy of the sport, and the fun and the excitement are unifying. I'm happy with that. And as long as we share the common ground of caring for our kids, about the school and the way it creates student-athletes, then I don't really care as much (or the same way) about the things which would divide us.

The difference being that I am among friends. People with whom our relationships are stronger than the differences which separate us.

Many years ago I read Stan Grenz' book, Beyond Foundationalism. After reading it, I had the pleasure getting to know Professor Grenz. We first met at a Friends pastors gathering. With his Baptist persuasion and my Anabaptist persuasion, we enjoyed bearing the anomalies of ritual among our friendly non-ritualistic Friends.

In the months after that weekend retreat, I began to look forward to the bridges that might be built between divergent streams of Christianity through the work of Grenz and Franke. Though not lined out in Beyond Foundationalism, there seemed to be realizations, or awarenesses that could heal many of the rifts that exist between traditionalists and progressives, between liberals and conservatives, between fundamentalists of various stripes. What was lacking were the practices to put those convictions into action.

One of the immediate confusions that arises, even among this concern, is the use of the language. We have many terms we can use to either positively identify ourselves. The statements simply begin with "I am" and give a description of ones self, a belief, or an experience. I am a guy that likes to cook and ride a bike. There is no real statement being made about anyone else. Just me. I could go further into the things I believe, my theological convictions, my voting practices, and how I get rid of squash beetles. And all of this provides a good deal of information. Alternatively, we also have lots of descriptors we use to negatively identify ourselves. "I am not" begins the sentence and one goes on to use language to similarly clarify.

But then there seems to be divisive language. Where we assert who we are by making it clear that we aren't like those others. In fact, too readily speaking of "traditionalists and progressives" or "liberals and conservatives" become a shortcut to pigeon hole and divide. I have never felt like I am fully part of one camp or the other. As we struggle with a culture caught up in polarities, slogans, and brash responses, I worry that I too get sucked into this familiar, comfortable and careless divide.

Alas, Stanley Grenz left this world before this important missiological and ecclesiological work could be completed.What kinds of settings, encounters, and activities would help us to look more deeply at the ideas laid out in Beyond Foundationalism and begin to generate Christian leaders whose practices reach beyond the comfortable and careless labels of "liberal" and "conservative"?  Looking forward to living the reality of actually being one in Christ.

Purity

A few mornings ago, as I was walking to, for some reason I started to contemplate "purity".

I usually contemplate more immediate issues like:

• what will I make for supper?
• are hard wood floors easier to clean than carpets?
• do I have enough in the checking account to pay all the bills?

So this line of contemplation was very different.

My church, like so many others in the USA is dealing with a variety of difficult issues. However, when one comes up against an interpretation of the bible or of tradition or of experience that is at odds with the prevailing understanding, there are fissures and fractures that take place. The splits are often out of a desire to continue on a more "pure" understanding the scripture and principles of faith. And there is usually an event or a decision that serves as the tipping point (see "Gulf States Conference to vote on withdrawal"). A desire to become, or to remain, untainted. A desire to be pure. And this is happening everywhere. Perhaps it always has.

So as I walked, I found myself asking more questions.

• What if "purity" has more to do with loyalty and steadfastness to God rather than achieving moral perfection?
• Is being a steadfast follower of God more pure than is attempting a wide variety of moral actions?
• Can purity be God's outcome in our lives by our proximity to God's glory and having received God's grace? 
• If purity is an outcome of a process with God, when, if ever, will we see the ultimate conclusion to this refining process? And even then, could we judge it correctly?
• With our need to judge and discern rightly, shouldn't the main issue be to judge the degree to which we are leaning into God?
• If purity is about God's grace in our lives, might we already be pure, even if our actions don't always measure up?
• If any of the above "ifs" are answered in the affirmative, even only partially, how can we break fellowship with our brothers and sisters on account of their lack of purity? How can denominations split and congregations divide?
• If my fellow Christian is seeking Jesus and practicing trust in Christ's abiding love, pursuing intimacy with God and discerning God's will daily, then how can I separate myself from that person for their lack of purity? 

If I need to break away from the impure (those lacking moral achievements), I need then to break from myself, for not even I am satisfied with my own moral decisions and actions.

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Lord, let my purity be, let our purity be that which you are creating in us as we seek you.