6 Clues Ethnography Could Help Your Ministry

Ethnography has been used in Christian Missions, but it is a relatively new toolkit for a missionary or pastor. Often, Ethnography is used for academic dissertations, and sometimes it can come across as too theoretical. However, when Ethnography design and methodology have immense benefits for the missionary and minister. Here are 6 practical clues a solid Ethnographic research project can help in your ministry context:

1. A Missionary or Pastor Moving to A New Culture. Cultural Immersion: This could be a near-culture context where a pastor from Georgia moves to Boston, or a far-culture context where a missionary moves to India. Listening comes before understanding. My mom used to tell me God gave us two ears and only one mouth, so we need to listen twice as much as we talk. Oftentimes, when we are too quick to apply the medicine of the gospel, we are treating the wrong wound. Ethnography allows researchers to immerse themselves within the community to listen deeply to the causes, concerns, hopes, and pains of the people.
   

2. You didn’t grow up in the majority religion, or you live in a multiple-religion context. Understanding Belief Systems: The nations and cities of the world have different idols. We need to understand our city’s idols specifically. Often, the religious beliefs of the city will make historical sense—a reaction to a certain environment. For instance, the Catholicism found in Puebla, Mexico, is very different than in the Southern Cone of Latin America. One of the many reasons is the mixture of indigenous belief and culture the Catholic religion has experienced in Mexico. However, in some places like Chile, European culture was more adopted or forced during the conquest of the area. Therefore, today in Mexico, there is an openness to pre-Hispanic belief when someone drifts from the Catholic faith. However, in Chile, they adopt a more European trend towards secularism, agnosticism, or atheism. The process of Ethnography allows us to understand subtle nuances of our city even if it has similarities to other parts of the world.
   

3. The Gospel isn’t mentally clicking when you share it. Contextualized Evangelism: Along with a deep understanding comes profound communication. Every culture and city will have rites, rituals, and rhythms that the local church needs to address. What does a local congregation do with Day of the Dead in Mexico? Forms of prayer in Casa Blanca? Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice in Islam, in Dubai? Or Songkran in Thailand, a national holiday of water with an original religious meaning? Not only does the substance of the rituals require an answer, but each city may have different reactions or rhythms to which we need to adapt. I recently had a conversation with a minister in a predominantly Muslim context. As he was talking with a friend, the man asked him, “I have a question for you about your religion. Did Jesus actually die, or is he still alive?” Of course, the answer is both! But he understood them as mutually exclusive. This simple example shows that if the minister only said Jesus died for your sin, the man would not have understood the power of the resurrection and only had half of the gospel. A contextualized approach will take care of common misconceptions as we share the good news.
   

4. You put a lot of effort into advertising an outreach event, but not a lot of people showed up. Building Relationships: The need for a wider social reach is obvious if you have just moved into your city to plant a church. However, pastors who feel comfortable in their context can have this problem too, “We want to reach out, but don’t know where to start.” The process of ethnography is useful to gain entry into certain social networks of the city. Legitimate access is always an obstacle to outsiders. The process of research will open relationships to missionaries with key informants in their target city. The research design will build trust (because good ethnography should have a reciprocal design where the “researched” are blessed as much or more than the “researcher”). Simply put, Ethnographic methods can enable missionaries to build deep and meaningful relationships with community members, fostering trust and acceptance of their presence.
   

5. You notice your congregation is being discipled by social media more than the Bible. Mapping Social Structures: Ethnography assists in understanding the social structures, hierarchies, and relationships within the community; or simply put, who the people listen to as authority figures. It also helps us understand the nuances of our city's social structures that may differ from the stereotype of our larger context. For instance, North, Central, and South America all share a Latin culture. However, near cultures can rival one another as they jockey to understand the friction that can still exist between near cultures. Just think about the California vs. Texas divide in the United States. Likewise, there was a Spanish-speaking band from the Northwest of the US that came to visit Mexico City. They were widely popular due to TikTok fame. However, when granting an interview about how they were adapting to a Mexican context, the language alone did not help them navigate or connect with the social structures of Mexico as they talked about how they preferred customs and food in the Northwest. They deeply offended the people of Mexico and ended up canceling their concerts due to angry fans demanding refunds for their tickets. This band quickly found themselves from riding a cultural current to being crashed under the cultural waves.
   

6. There are immigrant communities that shop at the same grocery as your congregation that aren’t represented in your church. Adapting Communication Styles: Sometimes a shared language is not enough to communicate effectively. Let me illustrate. If an American from rural Tennessee were dropped into the middle of London, there would be communication issues. In fact, I have a great friend from rural Tennessee. We took a trip to New York City together (that’s even the same country rather than England). We decided to ride the Staten Island Ferry as good tourists. During the trip, my friend offered a Little Debbie Cake to a passenger beside him. He thought it would be rude to eat in front of her without offering. The lady looked at him, shocked, and blurted, “What do you think you’re doing?” She immediately thought he was trying to scam her. These two shared the same language, but they did not communicate effectively. Cultures have different rhythms and styles of communication (even if they use a common language) to build relationships and explore new ideas (like the gospel). Ethnography informs missionaries about the preferred communication styles, languages, and symbols used within the community, aiding in effective communication to build relationships for ministry.

The above 6 ideas help promote the understanding in Christian missions that reminds us to listen to our context before acting. Ethnography will help you listen.

In short, Ethnography will change the missionary or pastor by causing them to swim in the current of a new community. The process will help connect to people inside this new current. In other words listening will help inform our cultural understanding with the nuances of our specific context. The results will affect how the missionary views ministry, but the methodology can also affect their quality of both their life and service in their ministerial setting.