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Okay, I'm writing this now after church (the preceding was written before church). Unfortunately, I lost my sermon notes, but I asked pastor for his notes. But in the meantime I think I can remember at least a primary issue regarding tentmaking, and then I'll revisit it when he sends me his notes.
I've written about tentmaking before and there's a keyword for it, so you can pull up the previous discussions on it.
The main text today was Jeremiah 29:4-14. The the primary take-away from that text is that we are supposed to pray for and work for the success of the land we are strangers/pilgrims in, although we are to live according to the values of our heavenly citizenship and not the values of our earthly residence.
I could say this better if I had my notes in front of me, but the issue just hit me as he was saying all this that tentmakers - what modern missions call tentmakers, I mean - generally would not be living according to this principle. That is they would not be praying for and working for the success of the land they go to work in. Not hardly! Rather, they are more likely to pray for the demise of the country or regime or country. So this is another issue I could add to my tentmaking article.
For the reader who is not aware of this, "tentmaking" in the last 100 years or so has come to mean someone who uses a profession to get into a country that otherwise won't let religious workers in. So these missionary-tentmakers use deception in hiding their missionary intentions even when they might have an intricate and even sizable mission agency backing them, even if only very surruptitiously. So it can be quite an underworld of these missionaries and more or less invisable organizations - at least they're invisible within the country, or have some other persona in the country. In this kind of a setup they're more or less an antithesis to the government, something contrary to the government, even illegal. How hidden this all might be would depend on the country, of course, but the very fact that it exists like this at all really irks me as being not a biblical way of doing things at all.
I spoke with pastor about this after the service and at least he did seem in agreement about the tentmaking application of his sermon, although he was thinking more in terms of local outreach. If I were healthier it would be easier to be more involved in ministry, but then I'd be working too. Maybe we'll figure out some way I can do something reasonably within my limitations. My faith in Christianity is gaining a glimmer of hope through this church. So often I've felt like I'm just a oddball or a voice in the wilderness where all these churches are wilderness to me. I don't think pastor thinks that way though. He's not disillusioned like I am. I'd really like to meet Jacques Ellul though. I should read more of him, I think.
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The next sub-heading in our text under the main heading "CONCEPTS OF THE INFORMAL ORGANIZATION" is "Communication Systems."
I have become convinced that communication is super critical and the first job where I'm living now is a fantastic example of that. When I was brought here for an interview (I'm a librarian) and during a group interview with the entire cataloging department I directed a question to the department head about her approach to departmental communications. She said she didn't really have one that it wasn't really that important and she just made sure everyone knew what they needed to. Whoa!! Red lights went off big time in my head and when I got back home I mulled that one over big time. No communication system? C'mon! You can't be serious! Well, let's see what this text has to say about that, before I go on and on about my job here... basically I think that informal communication leaves the door open for more manipulation and formal communication, and that's exactly how she operated. When she did call meetings it was ad hoc and unpredictable.
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"We have previously described the informal communication system known as the grapevine. It is important to view this system within the context of power and status systems, as the three together constitute the major social processes that are characteristic of informal organizations.The general principles of informal communication systems closely parallel the concepts discussed in power and status systems. In other words, interpersonal communication tends to follow established status hierarchies, and communication content is influenced by power relationships." (p. 443)
I decided to break this section up because it would be too much to discuss at once. So, just to reiterate what is stated in the text, the grapevine, power and status systems are what comprise the informal organization.
Status: how the group values the individual, based on such things as demographics, skills, knowledge, congeniality, or whatever the group values (or disdains, for a lower status)
Power: the ability of a person to influence others in the group; there are different kinds of power
Grapevine: status affects flow, but power relationships affect content of communication.
So going back to Vienna, when I first arrived there I was (as I've said before) overwhelmed by the welcome I received, so I felt valued, but I don't think I let it get to my head, especially since there soon came to be glaring inconsistencies in my treatment. Since I wasn't given any work to do, and only computer manuals to read, I felt my skills were underappreciated and that this was intentional (even then I thought it was intentional because I'd offered to take a computer class and the North American office of my sending mission had passed my offer on to Vienna, who had responded that it wasn't necessary, that I could learn on the job.) So I felt of moderate status as the secretary of the vice president, but of very low status based on the work itself.
Regarding power, I had no idea I'd come to Vienna being so powerless because in other circles I was reasonably accepted as competent and versed in work in Eastern Europe so now to come there as a career missionary and be in a position where I felt like I had almost no power was difficult. The main area I might have had some power was socially by initiating social events, but as far as anything in the office I felt powerless almost the whole time and certainly in the beginning, although in the beginning I was trying to watch and figure things out too.
So now on to the grapevine. Where would I have fit in the grapevine? The thing is that in Vienna the grapevine had another aspect to it and that was the issue of trust. If you weren't a trusted member, (i.e., one of the initiated) than you probably weren't even part of the grapevine, or maybe just part of it for certain inconsequential or non-security issues. But I also think that the grapevine could be used there for disinformation and misinformation as needed, and that would have to come from management, I'm sure and probably just travel down carefully guarded communication paths. I think I was a victim of this kind of thing at the end of my time in Vienna though. But than are we dealing with the formal or informal organization if it comes from management?
I think the status thing, now that I think of it, was part of what really killed me emotionally. It was like they never really cared that I got a B.A. in European Studies with a minor in Russian, did a short-term ministry with Russian emigres in the States one summer, spent 2 years in Bible School, did a short-term ministry in Eastern Europe one summer, volunteered at a research center, studied German in West Berlin and did some things in Eastern Europe, visited a ministry team in Hamburg, etc. They didn't care that I was serious about this work and ministry and they really didn't give a rip about it or about me. I was a big 0 on their status rung and it didn't feel like there was anything I could do to change that.
But then if you go home people probably think that, oh well, she's a woman anyway and she'll just get married and settle down and forget this all happened and everything will be okay.
Didn't they understand that this was my life? I gave everything for this and this is what I wanted to do and that's why after I returned home a year later I turned around home and I went back to school and I was able to go back to Russia (still the USSR then ) without any mission to tell me I'm a big 0.
So what happened then? I met with politics. Thanks, dad. Star wars trumps missions any day, doesn't it, now? My dad was a program planner & "controller" at Boeing.
That's my life in a nutshell. Let's continue.
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"Although power and status systems are first established through communication as the social system evolves, once the system is in operation, communication tends to be the result of status differences rather than the cause of them. Subordinates, for example, communicate differently to managers than to peers, both because the manager is in a position to exercise authority and power and because the manager has higher status than the subordinate. " (p. 443-444)I think that since I was never firmly established in a position in the mission they probably had to do a fair amount of the "establishing." Exceptions, however, to this would be when I was temporarily filling in for someone or in the position before I left the mission, in which cases they wouldn't really have needed to establish me per say although maybe what they would have done would have been something like pseudo-establishing or something.
Another thing is that I'm generally not very intimidated by authorities and if I really want to I'll come up and talk to someone even if they might otherwise be thought of as having great authority. I mean, really, look at what I'm doing with this blog - I'm taking on some pretty great minds - so I can't be too timid, right? (Although, that doesn't mean I might not be in person.)
Here are examples of my not being timid.
One time when I was living in northern Indiana a few years back I attended a church and I believe in the separation of church and state because I think it corrupts the church and biases the state to that it doesn't serve everyone equally as it should (that's a nutshell version of why I believe this). So I sit down in the pew and open the bulletin and what should I see but an insert from the state version of the Moral Majority. Other than that I liked the church, so after the service when everyone shakes the pastor's hands as they leave I asked him about this and we ended out having a bit of a talk about it and I think I maybe got him thinking more about it in ways he hadn't before. It sounded like he just used the flyers because everyone else did too kind of thing.
Also, in Russia one time I was curious about the central office of the Znanie, the adult education organization. I had finished my adult education master's degree while living in Russia and had attended and given a presentation in Moscow at a conference, so I wanted to see the headquarters. When I got there I was actually invited to meet the director and had a chance to sit and chat with him about adult education in Russia.
Similarly, when I was living in Seoul, South Korea about 10 years ago now I was trying to find an adult education program there - that is where they trained professionals. In my search I met some very interesting people. I joined ASPBAE and had to have a local current member vouch for me so I met a director of a women's shelter, but her membership had lapsed, so then I met a woman who had created these literacy programs for women all over the country. And so much more... I even went to the Seoul National University of Education, their top education school and spoke with some leadership there and got some leads. Very fascinating, let me tell you.
So I'm just telling you that I'm not timid and I don't care whether you're President Obama or someone living on the street. But, of course, if a communication system doesn't operate like that then I could be asking for trouble.
Ostensibly, communication was very open in the Vienna mission, the administration had open doors, etc. But there was a limit to that and there were certain things what were communicated to certain people, and undoubtedly along certain channels. Since I was never really an insider, however, I can't really say much, about how that operated. Whenever I learned anything of substance I think it mainly came from my boss' boss' secretary, who I believe was supposed to be my mentor. And I'm not talking just about work-related information but stuff like how it's hard for my boss's wife to be home all day and it would be nice if I became friends with her and things like that. That could have come from my boss (maybe worded a little differently) or another secretary or even my boss' wife herself (say by taking the initiative to get to know me), but it didn't. And I think that how it happened was generally the way things were planned and it was a test too as to how I would react, what I would do, etc. My boss didn't give me that much new to do, other than letters to write or maybe preparing for something new he had coming up, so mostly it was him telling me he didn't know what to do with a secretary and his boss' boss' secretary telling me everything. So that was the main communication channel, via the secretary, and communication with my boss was some work and some bonding (described elsewhere).
So although the social system was fully evolved (although it was constantly changing) when I arrived, I never really assimilated into it, so communication had to serve the purpose to assimilate me.
In addition, I'm not very status conscious and not liking some of the things I saw in Vienna I wasn't going to let myself be fully assimilated, although I did try to respect the aspects of status that I could reasonably respect. But the fact that I made an independent determination about some aspects of the mission meant that I rejected aspects of their authority which would have been intolerable to them, I think. However, I'm not sure they knew I was thinking like this, questioning their authority (in as much as I felt like they were asking for comprehensive trust that only God deserves). If I had told them some of the things I've written in this blog (and that I was thinking at that time) I would have been sent home as soon as they found out about it or as soon as they could arrange a viable cause - insanity, most likely. That's why I stayed quiet, since I didn't want to go through again what I went through some 5 months after I arrived in Vienna.
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This is all for now and I think it's a lot. We have about 10 pages left of this chapter. My computer is jumping around a lot. I think it's because of some tab(s) open, but I'm not sure which. sometimes when I type it skips the typing and I try to catch it, so hopefully I've caught them all.
