Story.<\/p>\n
The Gospel is incarnational.\u00a0 It is primarily a story about the ultimate Other making himself one of us, putting on our flesh and walking in our shoes (or sandals as it were) so that we could be reunited to him and ultimately reconstituted to perfection.\u00a0 It is a powerful story.\u00a0 Incarnation.<\/p>\n
In his important book The Secret Language of Leadership, <\/i>Stephen Denning proposes that the best, most effective way for a leader to move a person, group, or even an entire organization into a changed way of thinking and being is through the use of a compelling story.\u00a0 This is challenging to western thinkers because we don\u2019t naturally think in narrative terms.\u00a0 We generally seek to sway opinions and gather support by way of proposition.\u00a0 It is expected that if one can simply present the most powerful set of data based on irrefutable research that the listener, or opponent in may cases, will be won over and change his position under the crushing weight of an insurmountable argument\u2026 Well, that isn\u2019t always the case.\u00a0 Actually, more times than not that IS NOT<\/i><\/b> the case.<\/p>\n
The ever present confirmation bias, with which we all must contend, causes us to be entrenched in our thinking, and can even drive us to misinterpretations of propositional arguments and data.\u00a0 I have seen with my own eyes (and ears, and nose\u2026) how cleverly statistical data can be twisted and spun to provide support for diametrically opposed sides of an argument!\u00a0 Whether intentionally or not, this kind of behavior takes place every day in board rooms, conference rooms, back offices and even pulpits all as a result of the confirmation bias.\u00a0 I will see whatever I believe and choose to see.<\/i><\/b>\u00a0 <\/i>Proposition as a means of changing people\u2019s minds will never overcome the confirmation bias.\u00a0 It\u2019s just too strong.<\/p>\n
A compelling narrative on the other hand\u2026\u00a0 Now THAT will change a person\u2019s view!\u00a0 If I know your story, walk a mile in your shoes, carry the wearisome weight of your burden, live in your crowded home, sleep on your dirty floor, eat your gruel, cry at your funerals, all of my propositions and data about you can go jump in the lake!\u00a0 I know you.<\/i><\/b>\u00a0 <\/i>And what\u2019s more, you know me.\u00a0 Your story moves me, mine moves you.<\/p>\n
No longer do I look down on you for piling up your trash in heaps on the corners of your dirt roads, rotting, decaying, incubating bacteria and disease because I understand WHY <\/i><\/b>you pile it there.\u00a0 And more importantly, I know how you came to the place where your best decision regarding rubbish is to heap it up into mountains of festering death because I know you, I know your story.\u00a0 I have come to the place where I know, not just about you, but I know as you know and \u201cas we enter into new ways of knowing in and engaging with our environments both our self-identities and understandings shift.\u201d1 \u00a0It takes much more than information to bring transformation; emplacement is required.<\/p>\n
This is the task of ethnography in all of its sub-disciplines, emplacement, to know and be known.\u00a0 I put myself in your world so that I can know and understand it, you and you in it.\u00a0 If I take the time, and respect you enough to hear and truly know your story, perhaps you will grant me the privilege of hearing mine.\u00a0 If I wrap myself in your world then maybe, just maybe I can share the narrative of the quintessential ethnographer \u2014 Jesus.<\/p>\n
1. Sarah Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography <\/i>(London: Sage, 2010), 54.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Story. The Gospel is incarnational.\u00a0 It is primarily a story about the ultimate Other making himself one of us, putting on our flesh and walking in our shoes (or sandals as it were) so that we could be reunited to him and ultimately reconstituted to perfection.\u00a0 It is a powerful story.\u00a0 Incarnation. In his important […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,504,505,264],"class_list":["post-2468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-ethnography","tag-incarnational","tag-pink-se","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2469,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468\/revisions\/2469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}