The church exists as
community, servant, and messenger of the reign of God
in the midst of
other kingdoms, communities, and powers that attempt to shape our understanding
of reality. The world of those kingdoms, communities, and powers
often opposes,
ignores, or has other priorities than the reign of God. To that world,
the missional church is apostolic – sent out
on behalf of the reign of God.[1]
--Guder and Barrett
The purpose of this blog is to
inspire ecclesial/church leadership to adopt the Positive Deviance Approach in order
to empower ecclesial contextualization of the Gospel with theological praxis
amid marginalized people. The purpose is demonstrated in the thesis of this blog that alternate missional ecclesia is able to create and
sustain ecclesial communities amid marginalized people, in society where other
ecclesial methodologies have experienced more failure than success. The alternate
missional ecclesia, provide support for empowering
contextualization with theological praxis to create and sustain ecclesial
communities amid marginalized people through their uninformed use of the
Positive Deviance Approach, coupled with their unique strategies and practices.
This blog has explored the intractable problem of the institutional
church’s attempt to share the Gospel amid the marginalized people of Portland.
The problem and cultural issues were discussed and the probable solution is
suggested as engaging a deviance approach that would allow the creation and
sustaining of ecclesial communities through adopting the Positive Deviance
Approach. This paper went on to demonstrate that the practices and strategies
of Jesus followed a discernible pattern of cultural deviance within the Judaic
culture similar to the Positive Deviance Approach. Jesus’ methods, recorded as
a narrative descriptive Christology form a theological praxis, modeled an
approach of engaging the marginalized people amid his culture through positive
deviance. He practiced his theology praxis amid his community and culture.
Further, this paper demonstrated the history of the early church followed a
trajectory of ecclesial contextualization with a theological praxis that
followed Jesus’ example. The cultural ecclesial contextualization in the book
of Acts showed the trajectory of the church moving from an exclusive Judaic
cultural context and expanding to Gentile cultural context in Antioch. Next
this blog demonstrated that a basis exists for a theological praxis for the
Positive Deviance Approach in ecclesial contexts, as found in the descriptive
Christology in the Gospels. Next this paper presented a research methodology.
In this section of the paper the research and the conclusion are presented with
recommendations for engaging the Positive Deviance Approach amid marginalized
people and ecclesial contexts.
The research presented in this paper
shows how the alternative missional ecclesia has created and are sustaining
their individual expressions of ecclesia amid the marginalized people of the
Portland Metro Area. The research presentation includes a review of the data
collection process, the criteria for the selection of participating ecclesia, a
brief biography of the ecclesia, and an evaluation of the practices and
strategies in comparison with the Positive Deviance Approach.
Data
Collection
The data collection for this paper
was through a process of personal interviews and a first-hand observation of
the alternative ecclesia amid their cultural context. A one-on-one interview
was arranged with the practitioners. Questions were open-ended questions such
as: what, how, why, when, why now and why not? The interview questions were
meant to facilitate or refocus discussions in order to bring out the expression
of each ecclesia’s contextualization process and their positive deviance
approach. The initial interview process did not yield decisive information that
fully revealed their positive deviance approach. The initial lack of
transparency was due to apprehension of being criticized and condemned. I
decided to reformulate the interview process to accommodate a narrative format
by asking fluid questions that led to storytelling. Each interview was recorded
via a digital recorder. The narrative interview strategy produced a much fuller
interview process by revealing the participants’ strategies and practices as
Positive Deviance practitioners.
The practitioners were observed
engaging in their practices and strategies. In some cases this involved
observing the gathering of the ecclesia. Other times it was observing interaction
in various social settings including streets, coffee houses and parks. In
addition the internet was explored for websites, blogs and social media
whenever it was available as a potential source to reveal practices and
strategies. The data was collected and according the methods of grounded
theory, processed and codified. The categories that emerged from within the
research are 1) Intuitive; 2) Innovative; 3) Adaptive; 4) Counterintuitive and
5) Indigenous. The categories represent the nature of the Positive Deviance
Approach utilized amid the research group.
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