Since I'm not sure where I want to go next in my discussion about my family, I'm going to leave that discussion for now.
***
We're still in the "Proposed Model" sub-section of the article, but now we're moving on to the "Socialization as Acquisition of Group Norms and Values" sub-sub-section. Since we already know that norms and values were very important to the Vienna mission, we should be ready for some interesting discussion here.
"The more realistic the picture of that job applicants have of an organization, the greater the likelihood they will be able to choose an organization that can meet their needs. For instance, applicants can choose not to accept employment with organizations that make products or provide services they find offensive, or organizations that demand significant modifations in their style of dress or way of living." (p. 314)
We also already know that I didn't have a realistic picture of the the organization, so if this statement is true (or at least true for my experience of the Vienna mission) I should have had at least one of the problems mentioned in this text. I didn't have any problem with the product or services (textbooks or instruction) that the mission offered, unless you count the way it was offered. I most definitely did find issue with the mission's "significant modifications in [my] ... way of living." And what I mean by way of living wasn't something that I thought missions normally objected to, such as attending a German-speaking church or taking a German conversation class. It's not like I was going out gallivanting around or something. And there was another mission staff that attended the same small church (it was a church-planting effort), so if I did anything security-wise out of line he could have caught it, right? And the quality of my work didn't suffer either; at least there was never any indication that this was an issue, and heaven knows the work was generally so undemanding that I could practically have done it in my sleep.
But since, as I've mentioned and will mention again I'm sure until you're probably sick of hearing it, it seemed the mission was more concerned with attitude at that point than actual actions (unless I suppose an action itself was out of line - irregardless of the attitude issue), these things were offensive to the mission because I was demonstrating that I wasn't adequately dependent on the mission and so their sphere (and/or level) of influence over me was thereby limited. I felt like they really wanted my soul, and I don't care how godly someone appears to be, I don't give that kind of allegiance to anybody.
Regarding the allusion to goods and service, I'm not sure whether to include the method of delivery, which would include all the obsessive (I thought) security measures that I did object to.
***
"Vroom (1964), Strong (1943), and Brill (1949) are among those who have presented evidence that people in particular occupations tend to share certain values and attitudes, and that there are patterned similarities in the interests of individuals in the same occupation." (p. 314)
I would like to take this one step further and demonstrate that there are times when this statement might be truer of sub-occupations; that is, sometimes occupations need to be broken down further. I'll use the field of adult education as an illustration. Adult education includes (but is not limited to) the following sub-groupings: adult basic education, human resource development, environmental education, extension education, military education, non-traditional higher education students, community education, instructional programs in museums and zoos, information literacy (in libraries) and religious education. I hope it is not necessary to go to great length to prove to you that among these various settings and types of adult education there are some quite different cultures. My contention here is that there is some of this type of thing in the world of missions too, and I would separate out not just missions to Communist countries, but missions to "closed" countries of all kinds as bearing a certain likeness to one another, and that is the basic values and approaches vis a vis how to work in these kinds of countries. After my experience in Vienna I came to believe that there is more likeness among such missions than there is variation; in other words, it's a pretty cohesive group, and cooperative ventures like the one I was part of in Vienna contribute to that cohesiveness.
Before I went to Vienna I mistakenly thought that, first of all, the mission I had had part-time and short-term experience with to date was an anomaly and that most missions to Eastern Europe were more like, say, Wycliffe or SEND International, for example. After my Vienna experience, however, I came to the belief that missions to closed countries were more like each other than they were like other Evangelical missions. Among the 15 missions that comprised the Vienna mission, there were some differences (such as one mission having all its workers take on pseudonyms for purposes of work-related relations), but they were similar enough to be able to work together and agree to the various aspects of the work. One thing I'm not certain about is how some of the missions who worked elsewhere (i.e., in countries not considered "closed") managed the apparent divergent mentalities of the dissimilar work contexts. In forming this question I'm assuming that there are divergent mentalities, which, if there aren't there is, in my opinion, even more cause for concern regarding missions as a whole and most likely Evangelical Christianity as a whole also. But running with this assumption, it seems that missions working in both open and closed countries (and my sending mission was one such mission) would entail some way to keep the two areas of work separate and/or somehow juggle the two diverse mentalities.
In any event, I thought I had obtained the "certain values and attitudes" held by the majority of missions to Eastern Europe (in assuming that the majority weren't tainted with the kind of thing that disturbed me in my earlier mission experience), but I hadn't obtained the proper "values and attitudes" because the mission I already had experience actually typified missions to that part of the world rather than being an aberration.
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"Also, recruits will resist attempts to change their values and attitudes when their sense of self-control and self-determination is threatened. Most work groups cannot invest the energy to obtain complete compliance, but complete compliance is usually not necessary for a group to function smoothly." (p. 314)
Do I need to tell you that the Vienna mission was not among the "most work groups" category here? Actually, to apply the last sentence to the Vienna mission I might put it like this:
The Vienna mission will invest the energy to obtain complete compliance, because complete compliance is necessary for the mission to function smoothly."
I'm not saying in the subordinate clause (the part after the comma - can you tell I taught English as a second/foreign language?) that such compliance was necessary for the mission to function smoothly, but rather I'm only saying that that is the reasoning (at least in part) that the mission would use to justify their investing "the energy to obtain complete compliance" of its workers.
Now I'll turn my attention to the first sentence in this quote. In terms of my experience in Vienna, it appears that this statement might express more certainty that is warranted. For example, I might be the only one in the Vienna mission (ever, at least up to 1987) to have resisted "attempts to change their values and attitudes when their sense of self-control and self-determination is threatened." Why might this be?
I'm glad I asked that, because now we've opened a Pandora's box. You have to remember that of the approximately 60 workers at the mission, maybe about 10% were what we consider "non-professionals" in the library world (I'm now a librarian too with an ALA-certified Master of Library Science degree). So that means that 90% of the workers had a Master of Theology degree or higher. Amongst all of those intelligent people I was the only one to resist.
One possible explanation is that their studies and other advance preparations had somehow socialized them in such a way that made their values and attitudes coincide closely with the mission's values and attitudes. (Should I feel gypped or relieved that somehow my education didn't prepare me that way? And where did these people go to school that gave them these values and attitudes, anyway?) So in this case, the others didn't resist because they they didn't really feel the demands because of the pre-existing close correlation between their values and attittudes and those of the mission.
[4/15/2011 Comment: At least when I lived in a house with ivy-league (University of Pennsylvania) university international graduate students the lawyer from Switzerland joined my protest about the house being mouse-ridden, although my Polish medical doctor roommate did not join me, saying mice didn't bother her because she was used to using them in research. Maybe we needed more lawyers in Vienna so that I wouldn't have been the only one at least trying to resist these things I saw and experienced there. There weren't any lawyers in the mission.]
Alternately, they might not have viewed efforts to change their attitudes and values as being excessive. In this situation, self-control and self-determination are readily given up as being reasonable demands. I expect that in this case using the terms "self-control" and "self-determination" would be seen by those fitting this explanation as overstating the situation, as being loaded language. [4/15/11 note: That is, the terms "self-control" and "self-determination" might be seen as pushing the mission's control over a person too far, meaning the mission might be viewed as not having that much influence on the individual. I would attribute such a claim as being based on the person's having internalized the mission's norms and values, so it wouldn't feel like they'd lost any "self-control" or "self-determination."]
So on one hand little change might have been needed because there was already a close match between the values and attitudes of the new members and the mission, or, on the other hand, if there was a difference in attitudes and values they at least believed the mission had the right to change their attitudes and values. In either case, the person might not feel threatened by these kinds of demands of the mission. And since I fit neither of these exceptions, I did indeed feel threatened.
But I don't think that it was just that I felt threatened, because I disagree with what I saw as the basic premise on which such demands might be placed. I did also feel threatened, however, to the extent that I didn't trust the mission and where they might take the kind of demands I was sensing. So I didn't accept the reasoning that led to the demands and I also didn't trust the mission because not only did I disagree with the basic premises of the demands but I also didn't know what the end result of conceding would be - what the substance of the demands were.
There are a couple other aspects of my background that might have prepared me to think for myself and not be afraid to disagree with church leadership. One is that I was raised in a church that named itself for the city of Berea (Acts 17) and we were encouraged to think for ourselves as our namesake (the early Bereans) had: "[T]hey received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." (Acts 17:11). The other is that my parents encouraged critical thinking when I was growing up. So I wasn't raised with a view of authority as being absolute and unconditional (with the exception of God, which isn't the same as earthly religious leadership, which can err.)
***
That's all for this article. I missed church again. I woke up with my cold making me extra tired, and I'm still listening to my body in the recovery process from the surgery. It's a bummer though; I would like to have gone.
