cultural distance

One of the most useful ways of reading our situation comes from a conceptual tool developed by the pioneering missiologist, Ralph Winter. The concept is that of cultural distance. This was developed to try and assess just how far a people group is from a meaningful engagement with the gospel. In order to try and discern this we have to see it on a scale that goes something like this…

Each numeral with the prefix M indicates one significant cultural barrier to the meaningful communication of the gospel. An obvious example of such a barrier would be language. If you have to reach across a language barrier, you have got a problem. But others could be race, history, religion/worldview, culture, etc.. For instance, in Islamic contexts, the gospel has struggled to make any significant inroads because religion, race, and history, make a meaningful engagement with the gospel very difficult indeed. Because of the crusades, the Christendom church seriously damaged the capacity for Muslim people to apprehend Christ. So we might put mission to Islamic people in a m3 to m4 situation (religion, history, language, race, and culture.) The same is true for the Jewish people in the West. It is very hard to ‘speak meaningfully’ in either of these situations. Granted, these are the more extreme examples we might face in our everyday lives, but it is not hard to see how all the people around us fit somewhere along this scale.

Let me bring it closer to home: most of us can evaluate the people around us in these terms. If you see you or your church standing on the m0, here is an exercise here is how we might interpret our contexts:

m0-m1 Those with some concept of Christianity who speak the same language, have similar interests, probably the same nationality, and are from a similar class grouping as you or your church. Most of your friends would probably fit into this bracket.
m1–m2 Here we go to the average non-Christian in our context: A person who has little real awareness of, or interest in, Christianity but is suspicious about the church (they have heard bad things). These people might be politically correct, socially aware, and open to spirituality. This category might also include those previously offended by a bad experience of church or Christians. Just go to the average local pub/bar or nightclub to encounter these people.
m2-m3 People in this group who have absolutely no idea about Christianity. They might be part of some ethnic group with different religious impulses or some fringy sub-culture. This category might include people marginalized by WASPy Christianity e.g. the Gay community. But this group will definitely include people actively antagonistic towards Christianity as they understand it.
m3-m4 This group might be inhabited by ethnic and religious groupings like Muslims or Jews. The fact that they are in the West might ameliorate some of the distance, but just about everything else gets in the way of a meaningful dialogue. They are highly resistant to the gospel.

Those who have seen that poignant movie The Mission will remember the unforgettable scene where Jeremy Irons appears as Father Gabriel, a Jesuit priest who enters the South American rainforest with the intention of building a Christian mission. His challenging task is the conversion of a small tribe of native Amazonian Indians who had previously killed a number of would-be missionaries to that point. When his first encounter with them takes place, each party is culturally very remote and very wary of the other (i.e. they are ‘culturally distant’ from each other.) They are separated by many cultural obstacles: fear, language, culture, religion, history, etc. The Indians are just about to kill Father Gabriel when he takes out a flute and plays some lyrical tune. Through a universal love for music he establishes a very tentative bridge of communication across the cultural chasm. This was to be the fragile start of a learning process whereby over time Father Gabriel and his small group of Jesuits succeed in befriending the natives, learning about their culture, language, and folklore eventually establishing an effective mission among them. That loving attentiveness to the other that was required in that situation is true for all effective mission across cultural barriers. And the time has come for us in the West to learn that all our attempts to communicate the gospel are now cross cultural. We are not in a dissimilar situation, only one more subtle.

February 3, 2007 | Filed Under missional church, the forgotten ways |

Comments

42 Responses to “cultural distance”

Dion on February 3rd, 2007 5:11 am

About a year ago I took a course called “Perspectives on the World Christian Movement” offered through Fuller (I think) At any rate, I think every Christian should take that class or something similar. Check http://www.perspectives.org for info. Winter was one of the editors of the main text and we discussed the cultural distance issue. I remember that there was also another scale called the E-scale which was developed to measure the barriers that the Gospel must cross in the “same” culture/society, which is really what you are presenting too.
The most interesting exercise is to think about our personal ministry and our churches considering which level we are reaching in our activity. I don’t remember the statistics exactly but as I recall only about 2% of missionaries in the world are working to reach the m3-m4 level and about 80% of the world’s population is at that level. I may be way off on my stats, but the point is, we must do more than just reach out to the m0-m1 group to claim all of Christ’s bride. As we shed our prejudices to associate and identify with the people around us, we can close the cultural gap as well.
brad on February 3rd, 2007 5:19 am

Winter’s scale is helpful on cultural distance, as a composite measurement of overall barriers to the gospel. (Or do many of the factors actually deal with aversion to Christians/Christianity and not necessarily to Christ?)

I’m curious as to what “reverse indexes” or tools are available that assess cultural proximity to the gospel–inherent cultural bridges of values, beliefs, and behaviors.

It seems to me that in order to contextualize the gospel wisely, we have to take into account both bridges and barriers. If we don’t consider both from the outset, are we more likely to end up either fused into the culture of the others, or expecting them to fuse into ours?

P.S. I like how you’re posting from the South Pacific, which makes you ahead of our time, Alan. Rock on! b-
Jerry on February 3rd, 2007 10:45 am

I appreciate the M scale

it adds context to our relationships and helps to frame them.

How do we break out of the m0 mode and into a mode of building relationships with those further down the scale?
Paul Walker on February 3rd, 2007 11:34 am

Is there a sense in which people in the m0 category are actually harder to impact with the Gospel -because they’ve become ‘innoculated’ through boredom, bad experiences etc.

At least with an M2-3 person we start without preconceptions
tony sheng on February 3rd, 2007 1:52 pm

I agree with Dion wholeheartedly. After over 10 years of youth ministry experience, I took Perspectives and it changed everything I thought about regarding student ministry. I’m lucky - I was able to try and do something a bit different with students based on a lot of the stuff I learned in Perspectives - this C scale as one of the paramount principles.
typer on February 4th, 2007 7:09 am

It is not so much the M category that counts.
It is all about the willingness to seek the true God. God will break through all barries if people are hungry to find Him
Alan Hirsch on February 4th, 2007 8:18 am

Yes Typer, but the effect on people when they cross cultural barriers is that when they come to your cultural space (m0) they are effectively cut off from their original cultural space. In missions theory we call it ‘extraction.’ this is why it is important.
PeggyBrown on February 4th, 2007 10:11 am

Alan, this dovetails in my mind with Peck’s stages of spiritual maturity (I-chaos/antisocial, II-formal/institutional, III-skeptic/individual and IV-mystic/communal) in his important book, The Different Drum, where it is important to recognize the inherent sense of threat between people in the different stages of spiritual growth. Peck says we usually admire people who are one step ahead of us…but if they are two steps ahead, we usually think they are evil.

The key is to remember what you were like and how you felt when you were in each earlier stage…and use that to build a bridge for the cultural/spiritual distance between where you are and where someone else is.

This, of course, requires tremendous transparency and humility and is the hardest of work. It requires that we stand in their shoes and look out through their eyes first…then we can describe the view from our perspective…but that is what Jesus did and we can’t weasel out of this work with others and call our self his disciples.
PeggyBrown on February 4th, 2007 10:44 am

Alan, this reminds me of Peck’s stages of spiritual maturity from The Different Drum: Stage I: chaos/antisocial
Stage II: formal/institutional
Stage III: skeptic/individual
Stage IV: mystic/communal

The key is to remember that there is an inherent sense of threat between people in the different stages.

If you’re not ahead of anyone, there’s no where to lead anyone…hence, the wisdom in being one step ahead of the rest. If you are one step ahead, you are usually admired.

If you’re two steps ahead, however, you’re likely to lose folks. Even worse, if you’re two steps ahead, folks are likely to think you are evil….been there, done that…really ugly!

This makes it very important to remember what you were like in each of the stages…so you can build a bridge to those you’re trying to lead without getting stoned/crucified for being evil.

And this is why storytelling is so important…and why it is so effective at bridging cultural as well as spiritual distance.

No good whining about how difficult this work is, I know, but at least it is great to have the encouragement and tools for the work being provided here.
PeggyBrown on February 4th, 2007 10:46 am

Oh, and this is why it is so important to involve the new convert in evangelism….
len on February 4th, 2007 2:00 pm

I’m writing this from a local pub.. on a new laptop.. Sweeeeeet. My old one was become antiquated. Ok, reason for writing.. Alan, please take a peek here..
http://www.nextreformation.com/index.php?s=gerry

This scale could be useful to you.. and others. I have some thoughts on contextualizing it for post-Christendom (one of the criticisms of Niebuhr’s taxonomy).. but even so it has potential…
brad on February 4th, 2007 5:09 pm

These points are really helpful fuel for thot - and thanks for the typology, Peggy, and the chart link, Ien. VERY intriguing …

Anyway, have you seen the relatively new book by Craig Carter, Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective? I’ve only had a chance to skim through it at the bookstore, but it seems to have some approaches to revising Niebuhr that make sense in the current era.

Meanwhile, it seems that a lot of us have been working independently on new or revised cross-cultural assessment tools and communication frameworks that complement (or may eventually replace) some of the older ones.

For a while, I’ve been working on a three-dimensional model that plots out the connection between an individual/team and the culture they’re interested in entering. It uses a series of paradigm and cultural systems factors to measure bridges and barriers for both sides, predict strongest points of culture clash and probable syncretism, and also plot different trajectories toward Kingdom transformation based on various approaches to cultural change. It could also suggest the types of organizational infrastructures for Kingdom life that best fit the host culture, based on the dominant paradigm(s).

Wow … that was a mouthful! But since it’s taken five years even to get it that “clear,” I suppose it wasn’t all that bad … I probably have a year or so left before it’s ready for more extensive beta-testing.

I’ve been out of the loop for a few years. Do you know others who are working on original tools or systems for contextualization? How can we best connect?
Bob Carder on February 4th, 2007 6:24 pm

Alan, helpful and easy to grasp! I spend most of my time with M2 & M3. I want to spend time with the M3 & M4’s. I reading through it and stupid or not it is starting to click!

Is it wrong to almost hate M0 and M1?

Come on brother!
Alan Hirsch on February 5th, 2007 2:37 am

Bob, nah don’t hate your own culture or cutural context. I suppose then best thing is to redeem and transform it into being more Christlike.

Brad and Len, very useful comments bruthus. I am particularly interested in the application of these ideas to Western cultural contexts.
Peggy Brown on February 5th, 2007 11:21 am

Sorry for the double entry, friends…thought I lost the first one…YIKES!
Christina on February 5th, 2007 10:01 pm

I find this way (cultural distance) of understanding why evangelism as it is traditionally done is no longer hitting the mark. To not be aware of and sensitive of these things is to almost be culturally arrogant, a stance echoed in some early missionary interventions. It is as though we need to become anthropologists in our own country.
Christina on February 5th, 2007 10:02 pm

oops didn’t finish my sentence properly - er the conclusion for the first sentence is that the perspective is helpful!
Matt Stone on February 8th, 2007 4:46 pm

Alan, I hear you brother. Here’s the thing though. I have been trying to teach this stuff to Christians for many years but to my intense frustration it has only been with limited success.

Most Christians seem to have this default understanding in which geographical distance and cultural distance are conflated, seen as one and the same thing. They may acknowledge they are two separate issues after careful explaination, but sure enough, as soon as they turn their thinking caps off they start behaving as if it were otherwise, as if the conversation never happened. Resetting that default understanding takes huge energy. I find it rarely sticks unless you have an opportunity to expose them to culture shock within their own local neighbourhood - say by visiting a Hindu temple or Kings Cross or an alternate festival or the like. The default setting is too strong to shift it without such a shock.

Problem is most Christians resist exposing themselves to such situations. If we said, ‘let’s visit a gay bar and learn about other cultures in Australia’ how many would take us up on the offer? Even within emerging church circles?
Celtic Son on February 8th, 2007 7:13 pm

…depends what beer they are serving Matt!

Part of the problem is our weak model of “teaching”! We teach in a classroom (or a pulpit) disconnected from the real world - that’s not “teaching” it is simply “informing!” Your comment about taking the opportunity to expose people to an experience connected to the learning objective IS “teaching”. It’s not an extreme, it is not “shock” it is simply what is needed to actually teach something new to someone. When we learn that lesson we might begin to be able to teach and disciple like Jesus did…

You are right though about how we all live within frameworks. Some Christians would have a hissy fit at visiting any bar… but it’s not exclusively a Christian problem… ask a gay person to visit a footy pub… The issue for those who claim to follow Christ is whether we have a missional mindset, like He does, so wherever we go, we journey in awareness of the opportunities for Mission wherever we are…

In all honesty I would choose not to visit a gay bar, unless I was directly invited by a gay friend. It may well be me excusing latent homophobia on my part, but I’m aware that I don’t fit, and any missional impetus is lost for me… Stick me in a Scottish pub or an Irish bar serving Guinness and it’s a different story… I can connect where others couldn’t, like I couldn’t connect where they do…

A Guinness imbibing Celtic Son
Niall (Neal) Taylor on February 8th, 2007 11:18 pm

I would go for a Guinness! But I must confess that I have already been to a gay night club - in Brixton, London of all places - way in my youth, and boy what a culture shock it was for this niave preacher’s kid from Brisbane! At the time I could not see myself there, but there I was - and in retrospect could not see the church I grew up in being there or even interested in mission to the people gathered there.

And alas… no Guinness was served there.:
Matt Stone on February 10th, 2007 1:07 am

You see, I would contend that there IS a culture shock problem to be grappled with in Australia and the more you traverse the M spectrum in our suburbs the more extreme it will be.

Culture shock is a well documented phenomenon in overseas missionary litrature. See this link for instance.

http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/shock.htm

Now why don’t we accept it is an important issue in local mission? In a situation of pluralism? Because of latent conflation of geographical gaps with cultural gaps! If we are in an M3-M4 situation in Australia we should expect an equivelent shock to that experienced by an M3-M4 missionary overseas, the only difference being we can run away quicker and employ avoidance strategies easier.

I know it’s a real phenomenon because I have experienced it myself in encounters with our local Tamil community and witnessed it amongst many other Christians when taking them to Mind Body Spirit Festivals for the first time. They gulp like stranded fish and have experiences of ‘demonic attack’ but inreality much of this is just classic signs of the ‘reactive response’ as per the graph. The ones who fail to integrate coping strategies inevitably proove unable to converse in a reasonable fashion with the alien others in their midst.

It is my contention that much of what passes for spiritual warfare these days is better interpreted as undiagnosed culture shock.
brad on February 10th, 2007 2:01 am

well said, Matt, that culture shock is far more prevalent a problem than we have been led or allowed to interpret.

i’ve suggested for nearly 10 years that these days, you can’t accurately predict anything terribly significant anymore about a person, based on their: age/generation, gender, race, nation of origin, first language, postal code, etc. all it takes is one choice to overthrow the standard stereotypes: joining a family of choice, a subculture. hence, the importance of cultural observation, analysis, and interpretation if we want to contextualize our communications without compromising truth or controlling someone else’s culture.

and actually, if we pondered our own spiritual transformation process, becoming more like Christ involves a series of culture shocks as we encounter Him and His “Kingdom Culture.” usually the culture shocks are in small increments so we don’t go into the usual signs of shock: anything from depression, to anxiety, to numbness, to euphoria, to demise of self-confidence, to anger, to etc. but wow, what gives when we have the BIG increments of shock …

if we can’t understand and surf that process in our own lives, how well can we actually help other disciples in their process, based on where they’re starting from culturally as they pursue Christ and Kingdom Culture? their trajectory isn’t ours, and we’re not to pull them into our flight path to make it easier on us while conforming them to us instead of both of us seeking to conform to Jesus.

oops … hitting the “rant ahead” button.

too … late … Yikes!

okay, last point and then heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work i go …

in Acts 15 , that was the key issue in the Jerusalem Council. do gentiles have to become Jews before they can become followers of Christ? no. the gentiles were to go to Jesus directly, not to Him through Judaism. so, as a cyberpunk-retrobeatnik-straightedgepunk from waaaay back, i didn’t have to “double convert,” first to fundamentalism-evangelicalism-liturigicalism-etceteralism and THEN to Jesus … thank God …

okay, work of another kind beckons, thanks to Adam and that thorn cursey kind of a thing that he left to us as an inheritance …
brad on February 10th, 2007 2:05 am

p.s. actually, cyberpunk-retrobeatnik-straightedgepunk-ecospiritual-mystic-culturalcreative-
complexsystemsanalyst-archaeologist-neoromantic and sometimes performance poet.
brad on February 10th, 2007 2:39 am

p.p.s. okay, two last things on that line of thought. (amazing how a brisk walk to the office can clean out some brain space and clarify stuff.)

1. when someone self-identifies with a particular subculture, if it is a substance thing and not just a style thing for them, then they are, in essence, giving permission for us to see a set of values, beliefs, and behaviors that they stand for. that’s why they assimilated to that culture of choice in the first place. something drew them in.

2. if we don’t really like diversity, don’t want to understand it, think everyone and everything should conform to exactly one way, then probably we are monotheists, but can we really make the case that we are Trinitarians?
Peggy Brown on February 10th, 2007 4:02 am

Thank you, Matt and Brad, for this great line of thought.

Matt, I am particularly struck by your contention that a lot of what passes for spiritual warfare is culture shock. I have recently been struggling with understanding how two persons can experience something and one benefits and the other goes off the deep end. Many are quick to see warfare…but what does that say of the other person’s experience?

The ability to be adaptive to cultural differences is an interesting place to look. Their stage of spirutual development plays a part as well: a formal/institutional person will react completely differently from a mystic/communal person. Hmm…. Any suggestions as to where I may look for more information along this line?

And Brad, it really is a huge thing to embrace diversity. Many people talk about diversity, but just don’t “get it” — and this is the same trouble experienced by many who encounter Jesus. They have to make him like themselves to accept him, without realizing that Jesus has the ability to relate to everyone in some important way. Those of us who follow Jesus must learn about and walk that same path.

The great thing is that, unlike Jesus, not one of us naturally able to relate to everyone…we must work at it. That’s why it is so very important for each of us who follows Jesus to know who we are and to whom we have a special ability to relate — and get on about the business of “infecting” those sub-cultures with the Jesus “virus”.

Embracing diversity through renewal and transformation by connecting with the mind of Christ, rather than removing diversity through conformity of human minds, is very freeing from the guilt-trip so many want to lay on others to be able to relate to every culture in every place at every moment.

Thanks be to God for each of you Jesus-followers around the world and the gifts you bring to the Body!
Peggy Brown on February 10th, 2007 4:50 am

Matt, thanks for the SNU link. Their graphic and the surrounding information is very helpful — it completely describes my experience. I could instantly see the connection to “spiritual warefare mentality” as a culture. Hmmm…would still like to hear more of the specific application you’re on to.

This may be one of the reasons that those of us who are highly adaptable (always seeking to find ways to redeem cultures for Christ, that is) are so often seen as threatening (at best) and evil (at worst).

I can see that this is precisely were the “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” as well as the “pearls before swine” awarenesses are so critical.

I don’t think I’m the only one who has learned the hard way about sharing openly about what God has been doing in my life with those who are not in the same “m” category.

I know that I have inadvertently blown people away by exposing them to things they just weren’t ready for. This makes me think a little about Romans 14 and the whole stumbling block thing. When those who are strong/weak act without thoughtfulness and then judge the stance or reaction of the other, we have a problem.

Well, that’s a load to think about today…I will endeavor to be more thoughtful…in every sense!
Celtic Son on February 10th, 2007 10:32 am

Hullo-o-o…

on reflection this thread is founded on the intellectual apprehension of experience - the cultural distance scale - but the discussion has moved to compare it with spiritual factors. It is a false comparison. Separating “realms” of existence is a symptom of the dualistic roots of Christendom married to the hedonistic materialism of western capitalist culture producing dysfunctional individualism! All are aspects in opposition to spiritual principles that Jesus Christ promotes.

From the perspective of Jesus Christ all things have a spiritual root. He deals with the root and the fruit is manifest in the natural realm. Cultural distance and “culture shock” are founded in spiritual reality first…(Granted, of course, that what is described as “spiritual warfare” in most Christian methodology has little to do with Christ either!)

In His post Alan quotes from the movie the Mission and points out “loving attentiveness to the other that was required in that situation is true for all effective mission across cultural barriers” The loving attentiveness to the other, is the fruit of a major spiritual principle of the Christ, which is a defining factor in identifying His followers. When we have the spiritual root sorted then the fruit will follow.

The cultural distance scale selects criteria from natural arenas as a way of understanding difference. However the norm on the scale is not so much “m0″ as it should be termed “mE.” A discussion based on missional/ spiritual reality would focus on the other as m0 and mE as different, with action required from mE to move towards m0 not the other way around… “Culture shock” is our excuse for rating people on a scale of how different they are from “mE” - where “mE” defines what is the norm! We say that Christ is central but the reality is “mE” is on the throne. The root of culture shock and cultural distance is the spiritual reality that we are not authentically surrendered to Christ!

A lot of what passes for spiritual warfare is culture shock… but predominantly in the sense that it is mE-centric. Relying on our own experience to define our reality is mE-centric and that is one of the predominant issues for glocalisation - to adopt terminology from another thread. Our need is to have Christ at the centre and recognise that we are ALL removed and on a journey towards Christ. When we truly get this we have the revelation that we just need to get mE out of the way to allow Christ to engage. We are less inclined to be defensive about what mE thinks/wants/believes and allow people to express themselves and seek ways to connect them with Christ, delighted if we see them take one small step towards Him.

That’s not to suggest that cultural distance and culture shock do not exist or this is not a helpful tool - simply to point out that these aspects don’t exist on their own and the “realms” of intellect and spirit cannot simply be separated. We need to seek a holistic approach that is founded on and embraces spiritual reality and not see “spiritual warfare” as a malfunction simply because it has not been well-defined and has been misused and abused.

When I said earlier that I would choose not to visit a gay bar, unless I was directly invited by a gay friend, my thinking was not that I was the m0, but that the m0 was the norm in that situation and I am culturally removed and therefore ineffective in any missional sense. What it means is that I recognise that in the body there are others closer to m0 in that situation and my role is to support them - likewise they support me in the areas where I have less “cultural distance.”

Visiting the Mind Body Spirit festival is not so much a “culture shock” as it is a challenge for me to personalise and deal with my own arrogance as I instinctively set mE up as the m0 and consequently others as “abnormal” by varying degress WHICH I ALONE DETERMINE! When that happens I need to repent (literally change my thinking) I make the choice to remove myself from the centre, to change my thinking to line up with the thoughts of Christ over my experience.

“The ability to be adaptive to cultural differences” requires each of us to choose not to put our cultural preferences first - it is a choice and act of the will, and genuinely only sustainable in Christ. The culture shock of Christ’s Kingdom is our own disobedience to die to self, to pick up our cross daily, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned… it may be “real” but it’s a journey we are on to recognise that I am not m0, the Christ is and I’m on a spiritual pilgrimage with a whole bunch of people who are dependent on Christ

Brad raises Acts 15 as a case in point. Here we read of a practical discussion with a spiritual root - Peter has already had a vision from God - the intellectual discussion and the history of Judaism are less significant than God’s grace revealed. However, Peter defaults back to his original setting and has to be confronted again by Paul, who calls him to repent and return to the way of thinking that God has revealed to him. It is also situational so the Apostle Paul changes his approach in each situation he comes into. It is not about mE at the centre for Paul either… Diversity is less of an issue when we can come at it from a place where we understand that mE is one of the diverse ones…

Slainte mhor agus a h-uile beannachd duibh

A Celtic Son
Peggy Brown on February 10th, 2007 2:37 pm

I must confess, Celtic Son, that I frequently need two or three readings (I know all the words, but struggle to understand what you mean as you have clustered them) of your more intense comments to really grasp your perspective…all the more reason I am happy to have it in writing!

But it seems to me that it is the Gospel that is m0, not Christ–is that splitting hairs? Christ himself is above/beyond the scale, isn’t he, because he has no barriers and is equally at home (able to relate) at any point on the scale. Being on any given point of the scale is neither better/right or worse/wrong, is it? Isn’t it more a matter of understanding the difference/challenge of where I am in relation to where someone I want to influence for Christ is?

The challenge, then, is for me to allow Christ to show me what I need to do and empower me to build a bridge between the distance in each different situation — some closer and others farther away from my comfort zone and context. I, then, am the primary problem/challenge and the focus of God’s actions in each situation I find myself in. What am I willing/able/ready to do in response to God’s call to go and be Christlike?

If that is so, I am reminded of the applied behavioral science tool called Situational Leadership (Hersey and Blanchard) that I have come to embrace as the model for how God leads. God, as perfectly effective leader, consistently adapts his leadership style to match whatever our readiness levels for following:

**If we are R1/unable and unwilling or insecure(unconsciously incompetent–don’t know we don’t know), he approaches with S1/telling: guiding, direction and providing structure — providing the “what” that we are to understand and obey.

**If we are R2/unable but willing or confident (consciously incompetent–aware we need help), he approaches with S2/selling: explaining, persuading or clarifying — providing the “why” for the “what” and encouraging us to begin acting our way into being (thanks, Alan, again).

**If we are R3/able but unwilling or insecure (consciously competent–concentration required), he approaches with S3/participating: collaborating, facilitating and showing commitment by the give and take of encouragment and communication in close relationship.

**If we are R4/able and willing (unconsciously competent–second nature) he releases us to accomplish and fullfill the mission, yet continues to observes or monitor in order to encourage continued growth (not stagnation)

The most important thing to keep in mind is that any given person can simultaneously be at any/all of these 4 readiness levels in different areas! And that is the challenge, isn’t it — to recognize where/when I am clueless (m2-m4?) and where/when I am competent (m0-m1?)–and recognize how and where God is leading me!

But God is not caught off guard — he is continually adapting to my readiness level so that he can faithfully provide for me whatever I need to succeed at the task he has given me.

When I am fully submitted to God’s leadership, then I can begin to lead in that same way — adapting to the readiness level of those I am attempting to influence for Christ — so that they may approach Christ unhindered by the “mE factor”.

Managers who are introduced to this theory reluctantly (if at all) embrace Situational Leadership for three reasons: (1) because it takes a tremendous amount of energy to clearly discern what readiness level is present in order to respond with the proper leadership style, (2) because they want to be able to use their most comfortable/dominant leadership style–regardless of the situation, and (3) it de-thrones them and removes their position-based power and makes them the servant to their employees needs.

Christ has successfully decompiled the “Patrix” program of heirarchy and lording it over others. (See the Dethroning Constantine thread for more context.) But there are still those out there who are still trying to run it because they don’t want to give up the power/control/glory!

But, as I think Celtic Son said, there is no other way for us to respond but to die to self and take up this cross and obediently follow Christ wherever he is leading in each situation we find ourselves.

Thanks be to God who, in Christ, has shown us the way, truth and life and will walk with us from wherever we are so that we will get to wherever he needs us to be!

May we always be willing and secure — because the Holy Spirit CAN make us able and competent!
Celtic Son on February 10th, 2007 4:16 pm

Hi Peggy,

my apologies for my lack of comprehensibility - sometimes it betrays a lack of comprehension. My clustering is often equally a flustering, as I wrestle with trying to put my internal processing into coherent sense, limited by language! AND as I’ve admitted before, I’m too often in a rush - like right now I’m heading off to a BBQ with my kids - and don’t review well enough before submitting…

Here’s where I border on the heretical… I don’t believe we can separate Christ and the gospel, any more than we can separate intellect and spirit. The good news IS the person of Jesus Christ. So in a mystical sense there is a perspective that God is beyond the scale yet the person Jesus Christ is seated at the right-hand of the Father as a human being and ought to be m0.

The point I was attempting to make is that a major issue in the failure of humanity, is that we have a core belief that the world centres around me as an individual. The scale Alan posted reinforces that assessing everything from the perspective of its difference related to me… What you’ve reflected in para 3 is my assertion that we move along the scale, depending on our own recognition of capacity for community in a given missional context, it doesn’t move around us, which seems to be the model suggested.

I’ll review your comments on Situational Leadership, but initially I agree with the concept - my synopsis is that it is based on the leader shifting to best serve the person or group they are leading. I’m [presiming you meant that managers introduced to the theory DON’T embrace it… and I can see why.

For followers of Jesus we need to learn to constantly be removing ourselves from the throne - Constantine is not the only one. I think in general we are in agreement - except I struggle with commnicating effectively and I’d be interested in your thoughts on Christ and the gospel as inseperable.

Thanks for your thoughts, I’m off…

Slainte

A Celtic Son
Matt Stone on February 10th, 2007 10:54 pm

I am glad I am not the only one who had difficulty understanding those posts - sorry Celtic son but I still have no idea what you are talking about!

I am not attempting to separate the cultural from the spiritual here. On the contrary, what I am trying to explain is that they are interrelated and that our cultural perspective can have a significant impact on how we perceive the spiritual and what spiritual forces we see in play in a given situation. Or to put it another way, our perception of the spiritual is not culture independent - there is a degree of cultural subjectivity in all spiritual discernment.

If I could continue with the Mind Body Spirit example (I like to focus on this as the history of Christian engagement with occult influenced subcultures tends to bring out the issues most clearly). Many regular people attending these events comment on the wonderful heavenly atmosphere, many Christians attending for the first time comment of the oppressive demonic atmosphere. The interesting thing is it is invariably the most culturally distant Christians (those operating from an M3 or possibly M4 distance from the New Age) that have the most extreme response. This suggests that cultural influences are a factor here. I am not excluding the fact that demonic forces are actually at work (in fact I have a story or two I could tell some other time) but I am claiming that culture shock can lead to exaggeration, sometimes extreme exaggeration right up to paranoid delusion. It renders the sufferers incapable of engagement and has all the hallmarks of the overseas missionary experience. Recall the Sydney Anglican panic attacks last year over Emerging Churches using candles – they got all worked up because of their occult associations. When I come across people with such fears I usually diffuse the situation by asking them to theologically justify why fluorescent tubes are intrinsically more holy but it highlights just how extreme the paranoia can get. We need to be able to recognize this as a situation of spiritual discernment distorted by culture shock and be able to use the M scale to pre-empt it.

To move over to the example of engagement with gay culture. A cultural creative who has engaged with cub culture, theatre and arts subcultures probably does not have as large an M gap to scale in conversing with gay friends in a gay bar as say, someone from George W’s home town. Accordingly I would judge them less likely to suffer from paranoid delusions, withdrawal and scape goating. They may feel the moral dissonance just as clearly as the other person, but without the extra baggage. So, if you were to set up a ministry in Paddington, who would you choose first to be on the team? Who would you have to watch more carefully if they were both on your team? Who’s demonic visions would you be more cautious about and test more thoroughly?
brad on February 11th, 2007 1:28 am

Wow - challenging stuff! Had to sleep on this thread overnight before finishing a post…

There were some things I disagreed with in your hullooo post, and others I didn’t understand. But I do get it about this: One of the hardest parts about participating in blogs is that entries are usually short enough to capture our enthusiasm or loathing for a subject, but not necessarily long enough to capture our clarity or complexity. And it’s harder for those reading us to interpret the material because blogs have fewer and different cues about tone, and emotion, and intensity. So it takes as much effort as an in-person conversation, if not more. But they can be worth it.

That said, then, I want to say to A Celtic Son, Matt, and Peggy, that I appreciate that you keep posting, and keep engaging in order to clarify thoughts in this thread. I’ve been out of the blogging read/write loop for a couple years while my time had to be occupied elsewhere, but am now easing back in and hope to stick around a while. And it keeps me reading when I find people like you all who seem to be engaging at the very challenging core/paradigm framework level and not just at the surface/pragmatic behaviors level.

I read your hullooo entry at least a dozen times, Celtic Son, doing as best I could to grasp what was at heart of what you communicated, from both your intellect and your passion. I find myself agreeing with almost all of what I think I understood of your paradigm approach.

Your comments about Jesus Christ Himself BEING the Core (versus not being what the core IS ABOUT) raise what I think is a critically important distinction. Christ Himself is a better integration point than Christology. If we separate our thinking from Christ, we end up integrating around other things as our hub, and perhaps even end up orbiting around Jesus, instead of moving toward Him. The fact of motion doesn’t mean significant stuff is even happening…

I also resonate with your roots versus fruits metaphor, and I have tried to steward my journey to go to the radix, the taproot, as much as possible, and keep on the trail with at least a few other people who move in the same veins (but hopefully not the same vains!).

The most complex conversations are about getting to our paradigms and presuppositions, not on listing our worldviews and “world do’s,” because the ways we integrate our theologies and methodologies are constrained by how we process information, and by what we choose as integration points around which other issues revolve.

Integration points matter. Processing styles matter. All else flows from them, and I’ve watched how they’ve affected the “ministry in emerging culture” movements since beginning my involvement with them in the mid-1990s. Then, everyone was basically asking things like, “What does GenX ministry look like where you’re at?” and “How do you guys do postmodern ministry?” The integration point was around the results of the Gospel, not around the Good News Himself. Understandable … when the frustration level got high in the midst of shifting paradigms, people wanted practical help and relief in reaching people like them who were not connecting with church as it was. But the shift didn’t go far enough back then. It moved from pragmatics in postmodernity, to worship style and worship concerts. Not a bad thing, but again not sufficient. Then on to missions, and then to missional, and then to incarnational. (Is it possible to be missionary or missional, but not incarnational? That’s a question I’ve been wondering about for a few months.) And now, the integration points seem to be on the move from incarnational to sustainable, and contextual, and doxological/stewardship, and for some, even theodicy/a framework of God’s character of righteousness and justice and mercy and grace against a backdrop of sin and evil. (Okay. Used up my theocabulary for the day on that sentence!)

I have toiled diligently in “research and development,” for lack of any better term, for 10 years to attempt to put together some ways of thinking that bring together in vital form what western reductionism has split asunder. “In ministry as in medicine, to dissect it is to kill it.” And simply reassembling the once-live parts does not bring the thing back to life … The Hebraic ways of thinking have much to offer, with a different orientation toward time and connection and paradox. But, ironically for my tastes, not everything is paradox. (We who are mystics at the core can have as much trouble with making everything NOT be black-or-white as linear thinkers can have with making EVERYTHING be black-or-white.) And so, I don’t think Greek processing modes are useless, but they aren’t the be-all, end-all that the Enlightenment and its cohorts would have us believe and bow down to.

Anyway, that’s all to say thanks again for your thought-provoking comments. And like I said, I hope I can stay in these threads for a while … maybe share some more from my transformation journey, and not just from the work I’ve been doing on complex systems and contextualization.

P.S. Peggy, still working through the Situational Leadership material – it’s interesting that the business community tends to hit on biblical concepts at least 10 years before Christian publishing catches up with ’em (like servant leadership and now, situational/contextual leadership).

Matt and Len and Alan and others, umm, yeah, it’s difficult to interest people in crosscultural expeditions. I’ve worked at a seminary for nearly 10 years in a staff role, and have a lot of contact with students. You’d think it would be the most (super)natural thing in the world to go exploring other cultures and to engage in crosscultural experiences. But - if they’re not ready, all I can do is plant seeds. If they’re ripe, can’t stop them! But I do rarely have people take me up on offers to serve as a sort of tour guide to the Whole Life Expo, the environmental educators resource fair, etc. etc.
PeggyBrown on February 11th, 2007 3:45 pm

First off, no apology needed, my Celtic brother! I have decided that we are all a little bit sesquipedalian-like (that is, we are users of big words). I sometimes think, and you all probably do too, that the more precise my vocabulary, the more suscinct I can be…but no, there seems to be no getting around using a lot of words as we fumble our ways through these deeply gratifying conversations!

And, yes, I believe that you and I are pretty much on the same page…I’m just better with the easy reader version when I can get it!

With the whole Christ/Gospel mystery…I know just what you’re saying–or I choose to believe that I know what you’re saying!

But as Brad said (and thank you for the great post, Brad–I look forward to hearing more from you!), when you dissect someting, you kill it. I’ve said this before, somewhere, I’m sure…. When we try to use human constructs to decipher the divine, we always run into trouble! So I guess this is where the scale runs into trouble with the mystery.

The whole is more than the sum of the parts. You have Christ and you have the Gospel about Christ. The Gospel is the human description of what God has done for us in Christ. And at the same time, Christ is that story incarnate. This is what happens when we try to explain mysteries, friends! And so, the whole point of this whole incarnational point is that we (miserable sesquipedalians that we are) must be first and foremost incarnational in our mission so that Christ can be clearly seen in us. After we have that working, then the Holy Spirit will help us craft the words that will nurture the seed he has been able to plant through our actions.

By the way — Robert Greenleaf (who started the whole servant leadership thing) was Christian. As is Kenneth Blanchard (with the Situational Leadership thing). It is part of the sad history of the institutional church–as Alan has said– that we have run off our apostolic and prophetic leaders…and these two had to take their pearls, clean off the muck the church trampled on them, and go to the marketplace to be heard!

The sad thing is that the church, even after the world has embraced the ideas, still rejects them! But the church will bring in all kinds of other false models…don’t get me started on this!

Thank you, Matt, for continuing to share your warfare perspective. I will tell you again that I am so grateful for it…I will continue to spend time processing it. It has come in a timely manner…God is good, because I have been in prayer for quite a long time for him to bring me some confirmation.

And Celtic Son, we all struggle with not having enough time to think through and say clearly what we want to say…so we give it the best we have and press “submit comment” with a prayer!

I will say that I was talking with my precious husband today about this blog and how important it has been — but that I recognize he feels a little like a blog widower — like so many American women are football widows. And he said that he was proud to be a blog widower rather than a football one because of the great value it is in the Kingdom work that we do. He is a prince of a man and I am grateful that he is so willing to share me here…especially because he is an introvert computer engineer and processing all of this particular conversation would really be impossible!

And Brad, being a mystic lateral thinker myself, I know what you mean about the whole black-white-gray-half empty-half full thing. I am just so happy that we here are willing to at leaset attempt to follow each other’s thoughts.

Be blessed, each of you, according to your needs!
Ranges Community Church » The Word on the street on February 12th, 2007 10:58 am

[...] I came across this article in the New York Times about a church that meets in a park in Washington. Known as “Street Church” those who attend come on foot, and are generally homeless. The service sounds as though it contains the ingredients of “traditional worship” minus the trappings – no alter, no roof, no pews, no stunning buildings. I like the rationale behind it – there is an acknowledgment that the cultural distance between church as we know it and life on the street is enormous. (For more on cultural distance, check out Alan Hirsch’s blog here). According to Rev. Anne-Marie Jeffery who runs Street Church, homeless people are often more comfortable outdoors as they do not have to worry as much about losing their things or being locked up. Nor do they feel as conscious of the difference between their physical presentation and those inside. The chasm to enter the “nice” warm sanitary church building is too great for many to cross. The congregants have a meal afterwards, and referral to supports as needed. The packaging is traditional, but at least the homeless are not extracted out of their comfort zone. They have opportunity to encounter the Gospel on their own turf, without feeling that they have to be fixed up first. Because it is viewed as a congregation in its own right, the pressure to come to “church proper” is alleviated, as is the expectation for them to shape up to belong. The article quotes show that Street Church is spiritually impacting for the participants. [...]
Steve Hayes on February 12th, 2007 5:03 pm

Someone pointed to a blog about a cultural matrix, and I found more on it here:

http://www.culturestance.ca/qry/page.taf?id=23

Very interesting, except that I thought all of them are equally important. The must useful thing about it is probably to analyse any particular activitiy, and ask “What are we hoping to achieve with this?” and then look at it in relation to the matrix, and ask how well it fits with what we are trying to achieve.
brad on February 16th, 2007 2:35 am

Okay, so I’ve been musing fo days over why the M-scale on cultural distance bugs me. I think I finally figured out an analogy for why.

It’s kind of like IQ. It’s a single, aggregated measurement that tells you about supposed intellectual “capacity.” It tells you almost nothing about how the capacity is configured, i.e., “wiring.”

On a bell curve, the center point (the “average” person) has an IQ of 100. But not all people with higher IQs are creative - even people with genius level IQs (usually considered 138 and above) can’t necessarily do anything that is highly creative. And not all people with low IQs are without creative gifts, such as autistic savants, who may have one or more areas of mental function that are at the prodigy level, but everything else is low functioning.

Creativity is found in a different mental process than just filling an empty container with intelligence. It’s got some other kinds of baffles and dividers going on that make the “product” turn out quite differently.

And so with cultural distance. Just because an overall measure shows that a society is relatively near or far from biblical standards doesn’t tell much about why they are that way, what areas they have which are more pro-biblical than anti-biblical, and which direction they may be going and at what speed toward or away from biblical. You can be far away but not antagonistic, or can be closer but starting to move away, or ….

So, anyway, measurements are useful tools, but we’ve got to figure out what they actually DO suggest, what they DO NOT tell us, and what they MIGHT tell us. Then we can work to create other tools that complement what we’re using, to help fill out the picture.
Steve Hayes on February 16th, 2007 5:15 am

A lot depends on what you want the M scale to do. It’s doesn’t really have much to do with IQ tests and bell curves and that sort of thing.

What it does is give you a rough idea of the obstacles you are likely to encounter in cross-cultural communication of the gospel. It’s a tool for planning and preparation.

It was originally basically an evangelism tool

E0 is evangelising the next generation of children in the church.

E1 - is evangelising people of the same social and culrtural groups as people in the church, so language is not a problem and so on.

E2 - would include evangelising people in thje same country, but of different social or coultural or language groups

E3 - is people in a different country, different language, differenny cultural background etc.

E3 needs more preparation thant E2, which in turn needs more than E1 and so on.
Peggy Brown on February 16th, 2007 5:50 am

Brad, I will speak a hearty “amen” to your comment. Tools are not meant to be simplistic “magic pills”. They are only really useful (should I say effective?) in the hands of individuals willing to do the difficult work of clear thinking so as to not over-generalize or -simplify what must be painstakingly individualized.

In as much as various tools help clarify and inspire the thinking process, they are effective strategies. When they replace or circumvent the process of deeply prayerful thinking and discernment, they can begin to morph into Matrix/Patrix tools of ease and comfort that turn humans (and their cultural context) into objects and variables to be manipulated for some organizational outcome. The targeted people can too easily cease to be precious individuals we love because God loves them…and they can be lost in statistics and methodologies.

Because, in the end, individuals in any cultural context are still individuals — and one size does not fit all anywhere! Use the tool to aid an effective approach (this is the Black and White part, right?) to each individual, yes; but expect to find significant variance — both obvious and subtle (this is the shades of gray, right?) — or you just may run into culture shock, eh?

That’s why we need each other…every last one of us!

And, in an admittedly over-simplified sense, some of us are more able to cross bigger cultural distances than others. When we put out a tool without an expectation for individualized application, we too often reap “technicians” when we really need to be agressively recognizing, equipping and releasing for ministry those whom the Holy Spirit has specifically gifted.

Technicians can be, and frequently are, very effective for the more straightforward B&W scenarios…but you also need the gifted ones to help with the mixed or more complex scenarios. Many of the gifted ones do not fit our expectations….do we too often reject them?

If you are sick unto death, do you want to be treated by a competent technician or a gifted healer? Isn’t the difference that intuitive the-whole-is-more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts “creative spark”?

And on returning to your ideas about the Hebraic thought process, I heartily agree. I offer a very brief overview of my current experience.

The “simplex” plan I am (hopefully, that is the great I AM who will be doing it while I tag along) on the edge of bringing into action is based on the Hebrew concept of covenant making and covenant keeping. YHWH as covenant making community incarnates his final covenant in Jesus. When we are washed and clothed in Jesus, we become part of that covenant community. But a covenant that is made must be faithfully kept or it is voided. And those who are (always striving to be) like Christ are acknowledged as faithful and remain connected (as in the images of olive tree or vine) and produce fruit that nourishes and reproduces.

In this “simplex” plan we have this simple formula: In Christ (the B&W orthodoxy) + Like Christ (the nuanced orthopraxy) = With Christ (with the very Hebrew concepts of “already”, as sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit and engaged in Kingdom mission, and “not yet”, for our future/eternal home is in heaven).

My experience with ~20 groups of ~10 persons each for ~12 weeks over the past seven years is that when these people got their brains around this simplex equation, God transformed not only their hearts but their actions and they were ready to report for effective missional duty.

My first task was to find a way to incarnationally bridge any cultural distance in order to communicate this simple plan…then I had the pleasure of helping each of them see the more complex implications of this plan for how to live each moment of each day: does this action/thought help me keep covenant with God and/or those in my area of influence? Then I may prayerfully engage. Does this action/thought cause me to break covenant with God and/or those in my area of influence? Then I may not engage. When I slip and break covenant (sin, for which Christ’s blood has also already paid), I must confess first to God and then to anyone else offended, asking for forgiveness and striving for reconciliation.

It was the most fulfilling ministry I have ever experienced. I look forward to the exciting but somewhat daunting next stage of planting a community that functions within this formula.

I’m not saying that this is the “one” way…but it is the way that God has asked me to implement. I have been encouraged by the deep and thoughtful discussions entered into by those of us commenting on this blog. Thank you.
brad on February 16th, 2007 6:14 am

I Steve raises an interesting problem with the E0 to E3 scale. Part of what has thrown preparation and strategizing into turmoil in the recent period is that the next generations are often significantly different culturally from the parents’ generation. So, even if they ’should’ be E0 because they are children in the church, in actuality they may be E1, E2, or even E3 because of influences from such factors as generational dynamics and external (non-church) cultural dynamics. (E3 could occur in specific kinds of immigrant groups, where younger generations are highly assimilated to the new/host culture, so their first language and first culture and first country is often no longer the same as their parents.)

I think this goes back to what I was attempting to say, and that is, tools can help with some features of thinking about situations but we need a holistic system of tools in order to get a more accurate interaction with and understanding of cultural groups so we can plan and prepare accordingly. As a student of subcultures, my take on things is that it’s just tooo complex anymore to ‘predict’ anything substantive about a person’s chosen culture from a his/her age, generation, gender, first language, country of origin, zip code.
brad on February 16th, 2007 6:17 am

p.s. Steve - hooray for *Harold and Maude*!
brad on February 16th, 2007 6:20 am

p.p.s. In comment #38 above, I forgot to give the context for my studies, which is the U.S., especially working on intergenerational dynamics between 20-/30-something up to 50/60-something.

Also, subcultures that generally had Western civilization origins (e.g., hippies, punk, cyberpunk, goth, eco-spiritual, zooters, hipsters, rrriot girls, yadda-yadda etc.) but are now virtual cultures world wide, with similar cultural profiles despite different countries and languages.
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Steve Hayes on March 2nd, 2007 7:58 pm

Concerning Brad’s point about generational differences being more and E/M 0.

Yes, that can be so, an the permutations are endless.

Here in South Africa students who participated in the Soweto uprising in 1976 were estranged from their less radical parents. But now they have grown uip and have kids of their own, who have a completely different set of values and priorities — cell phones, fashions and the like. To an old fogey like me, looking back on my rebellious youth, the conformist youth of today are quite horrifying, at least in the mass, which is how the mass media present them. But when you meet them they are not all that much different, and have similar hopes and fears to the youth of any generation.

The point of using such tools as the E/M scales is to look at possible obstacles and anticipate them, but also be prepared to change.