How can mission research better serve local leaders’ agendas? | Stan Nussbaum

This is a repost of the CMIW (Community of Mission Information Workers) quarterly bulletin for January 2021, written by Stan Nussbaum. It is short and provides a concise typology of the various kinds of research with attention to movements.

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Recent discussion in the new Motus Dei forum on new Christian movements flagged the problem that so few members of the movements were participating in the research network. So far, it is mostly white male outsiders like me. One wrote:

I am in touch with a number of movements that may . . . want to understand and be better equipped to do research. I don't think any of them would be interested in the sort of movement research that helps the wider world know how many movements there are or what their characteristics may be, though two groups of leaders did agree to participate in a project or two like that in the past. My sense from reading the threads here is that the sort of research being proposed . . . is about the internal needs of movements for their own growth and health.

The discussion brought back memories of my 24 years at Global Mapping International (GMI) and our constant struggle to explain our ministry, because “mission research” meant such different things to different groups. I offer the following typology of “mission research” in the hope that it may help CMIW readers explain themselves as well as promote greater attention to a crucial but neglected type of mission research.

Let us classify mission research by the gaps that are driving it. For simplicity, I mention only four common types:

1. A gap in a local leader’s or organization’s discernment of what to do next;
2. A gap in a strategic database;
3. A gap in the academic literature;
4. A gap on a donor’s checklist.
   

Gap 1 is the neglected gap mentioned earlier. Gap 2 is UPGs (unreached people groups), language mapping, etc. that GMI was initially designed to serve. Gap 3 is the academic world. Gap 4 is evaluative research, increasingly common.

The critical problem in the mission research community today is that the four types of research are siloed. Western strategists and mobilizers see that Gap 2 gets addressed. Western academics take care of Gap 3. Western donors demand attention to Gap 4. But the “local leaders” are out of sync with the West on all three points:

• Their mobilization is based more on social networks than geography;
• They want short useful case studies instead of bulletproof dissertations on niche topics;
• They want evaluation that rings true to local realities, not evaluation in terms of a foreigner’s categories.
  

Why don’t local leaders promote research that addresses Gap 1 themselves? Because it is an unknown type of “mission research.” What they know of research that addresses Gaps 2, 3, and 4 does not serve them. Can those of us involved in mission information work help these local leaders imagine research for Gap 1??

I am starting a couple of attempts at that, one of which is for experimental research that local leaders help design themselves. The other is a possible micro-research project in four African countries, focusing on research topics updated monthly by a handful of leaders in each country.

There are also encouraging signs that Silo 3 is reaching out toward Silo 1. For example, the mission statement of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies includes, “responding to issues identified by the church [my italics] with timely, strategic and rigorous research.”
I am less optimistic about the other two siloes but would be happy to be proved wrong there. Let’s see how we can spur each other on toward more “Gap 1” research.