{"id":2738,"date":"2014-10-16T11:54:59","date_gmt":"2014-10-16T11:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=2738"},"modified":"2014-10-17T07:05:13","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T07:05:13","slug":"exit-voice-loyalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/exit-voice-loyalty\/","title":{"rendered":"exit, voice, and loyalty"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his book, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses To Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States<\/em>, Albert O. Hirschman argues the inevitability of failure at times in any institution. Hirschman contends, \u201cNo matter how well a society\u2019s basic institutions are devised failures of some actors to live up to the behavior which is expected of them are bound to occur, if only for all kinds of accidental reasons \u201c(pg.1). In order to repair the lapses of economic actors, Hirschman suggests society \u201cmarshal from within itself forces which will make as many of the faltering actor as possible revert to the behavior required for its proper functioning\u201d(1). Does this theory work in developing countries where there is no freedom of expression? From what I know in my context, when the community arises to bring about change, they often face rejection by authorities. We do not have leaders who care enough to listen to our society\u2019s deep cry. My country was founded on colonialism and continues to oppress its citizens. Our leaders come to power to divide, rule, and control the resources, not to serve. Where do we go if we exit? <\/em>To whom do we voice <\/em>our concerns? The best coping mechanism to survive within my country\u2019s divide and rule politically oppressive regime is to be quiet and do what we can with patience. This too shall pass someday.<\/p>\n

When it comes to Protestant churches in my community, they also struggled for many years, ignoring the need to incarnate Jesus in the language and culture of the people they serve. Consciously or unconsciously, the Protestant churches adapted into Orthodox Church\u2019s colonial mentality that forced the ruling tribe\u2019s religion, language, and culture upon all nations at the expense of theirs. Consequently, Christian religion has been identified with colonialism; the Good News of Jesus became irrelevant for societies like mine.<\/p>\n

In my understanding, one of the challenges to growth churches in my community face is their lack of ability to build relationship, to love and listen to others. In my current church, we have community leaders come to us all the time and urge the church to participate in community matters. However, our leaders are always reluctant to go or encourage believers to go to the community meeting where people from different religious and political backgrounds gather to discuss issues that matter for all of them. Why would this make believing communities uncomfortable? Do churches really know what they are missing? When they detach themselves from the very people they want to share the gospel with, how can they possibly share the transforming message of the kingdom? My church\u2019s mission strategy is to organize evangelist conferences and invite others to attend which is not a bad thing. However, Jesus called us to go, and make disciples of all nations, this requires us to be strategic and intentional in how we address our society\u2019s spiritual and physical needs.<\/p>\n

A couple of months ago, I had a conversation with a young Oromo businessman who told me he stopped going to church because he found Ethiopian Christianity to be anti his culture. As an Oromo nationalist and social justice activist he could not fit in the church, so he had to leave. This is true for many young Oromo nationalists in America who enjoy the privilege of freedom of expression and join the community of their choice. Strangely, this does not seem to be a big concern for many church leaders to evaluate their ministry approach. Leaders are too busy to set times to listen to their members. How do we do ministry without listening to God and others we serve?<\/p>\n

One time, I asked a leader in my church about a sister who left the church, his response was \u201c she is a mature Christian and able to find her way back to community if she wants.\u201d I wonder why he thinks she will return someday? Is it because there are not many Oromo churches in the area? Now it has been four years since she left our church. From what I heard from a leader who lived in the States over a decade, often when our people leave the church, they end up not coming back because they cannot bear the shame of being outside of the church community for so long. For me, this experience made me very careful in how I share my opinion with leaders in my church because I felt opinions are not valid.<\/p>\n

In my opinion, the mission of the church is different from that of a salesman, where the focus is only on selling stuff not so much in connecting and building trusting relationship. The truth is we are not getting anywhere. It is just a shallow spirituality, which has minimal, or no impact on our neighbors. There is hope for churches in my community to revitalize the transforming message of the kingdom, if they are willing to gear their strategy from primarily focusing on membership production to listening and building loving relationship with those within the church and others in their community. May the Lord help His church.<\/p>\n

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In his book, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses To Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, Albert O. Hirschman argues the inevitability of failure at times in any institution. Hirschman contends, \u201cNo matter how well a society\u2019s basic institutions are devised failures of some actors to live up to the behavior which is expected of them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"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":[251],"class_list":["post-2738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hirschman","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2738"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2744,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738\/revisions\/2744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}