Saffold, Guy S., III. (1988). Culture traits, strengths, and organizational performance: moving beyond "strong" culture. Academy of Management Review, 13(4), 546-558.
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"Some scholars have claimed that positive cultural traits boost performance in proportion to the strength of their manifestation. This view has been called the strong culture hypothesis (Dennison, 1984)...Strong culture firms are said to generate an almost tangible social force field of energy (Mitroff & Kilmann, 1984) that 'empowers' employees (Pascale, 1985) and drives the organization toward superior performance." (p. 546-547)
Did the Vienna mission administration and board think in terms of strong culture intentionally? I'm not sure, and I could go either way with it. They were definitely thinking in terms of security, but I'm not sure if they were thinking in terms of strong culture like this, but it's possible. But even if they didn't intentionally plan a "strong culture" in this sense doesn't mean it wasn't there, and we'll see later that there's another term that we've dealt with before that also fits them.
For the Vienna mission, they needed 100% reliability, trustworthiness, and bonding, so they built a culture heavy on that, but subtle, too - not necessarily, in your face. The bonding and trustworthiness was reciprocal so there were a lot of warm fuzzies and everyone, as a result liked being there and this could have generated what Mitroff & Kilmann called the "almost tangible social force field of energy."
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"Strong cultures have been defined as homogeneous..., stable and more intense...., thick and widely shared..., cohesive and tight-knit..., characterized by congruent rule-based expectations..., fully articulated and highly differentiated..., coherent." (p. 548)To me, that is from my perspective - based on my experience of the mission, the Vienna mission was very homogeneous and the leadership sought to make sure that all the departments maintained strong central cultural bonds with the core so that we all shared that main culture. I was the sole individual where there was position change by a full time missionary so there was a lot of stability. It was intense, because it often involved 24/7 attention.
The culture was cohesive and tight-knit largely, I think, because of the security issue, where they had certain limitations regarding their relations with outsiders, so they gravitated towards eath other. As to "congruent rule-based expectations," this one is a little stickier, because, these kinds of things were generally, I think, understood once you were socialized and an insider, otherwise, for people like me, they could be unclear or even seem to be a moving target. In any case, the rules, as such, weren't written down in black and white (because any rules that were written down didn't matter, as I learned early on, so the rules that did matter were something else not written down).
The mission was articulated and differentiated and information was also, so that information was only available to individuals on a tighly secured need to know basis. The home office information was generally pretty guarded, but different individuals from different departments did go on trips for different teams. They just generally (with a few exceptions) couldn't cover for each other in their office positions.
Based on this, it seems that the Vienna mission seems to fit the descriptions of a strong culture.
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"But if cultural controls multiply too greatly, resistance is likely to develop, causing performance to decrease. Total institutions... are extreme examples of this trend, and they may be similar in significant respects to strong culture organizations where 'nothing is too trivial' to be subjected to cultural manipulation..." (p. 549)This is in the context of a discussion of how strong culture might be formed in organizations. I already discussed in this blog how the Vienna mission was a total institution, so it's interesting how this subject is brought up here. I assume that when the Vienna mission started up, it had a bunch of people that understood how work in Eastern Europe was done (according to the 5 founding missions) so they could hit the ground running at a total institution and no one would bat an eyelash over it. There would be no "causing performance to decrease," for example, as this text suggests. As a matter of fact, the early missionaries may well have thrown themselves on the pyre fully expecting nothing to be be too trivial 'to be subjected to cultural manipulation.' I, on the other hand, did not come with that attitude, never did have that attitude, still do not have that attitude, and do not think that attitude is biblical, and do not think there is a biblical justification for this kind of thing.
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"Shared meanings can even manifest themselves as shared delusions ... or group think..." (p. 549)It seems beyond question that the Vienna mission folk had shared meanings. They especially had shared meanings of the East Bloc countries. I think that's the main one. They also had a shared meaning of the Christians in the East Bloc countries. But they also had a shared meaning of who they (the mission) were. It was a shared meaning because it was sort of convoluted and not, I think, a straight forward meaning. So it was a manufactured shared meaning.
So the big one is the shared meaning of the East Bloc countries. I might be here a while. To begin with, I should say that we weren't told about monstrosities of Communism, except that we just knew we had to protect out student in the countries we were working and the missionaries that worked regularly in those countries especially knew first hand what was going on, so we didn't need a lot of propaganda and the like. But since were a couple decades away from when this all happened, I'll quote some literature that presents the tenor of the thinking of the day.
From
Beresford, Brian. (1978). The House that Lenin Built. North America: European Christian Mission: [United Kingdom].
Here's from the chapter, "The Essence of Communism."
"The departure point of Communism theory is a metaphysical world view which has no use for God whatsoever and in which man is the measure of all things. Atheism is the basis on which all Communist theory rests; it is not just a by-product of Communism, it is the very essence of Communism." (p. 15)
You have to remember that I was with the Vienna mission in the late 1980s and that was the hay day of the Moral Majority, who thought Evangelical Christians should pretty much run America. And they were at the same time also more or less hysterical over anything to do with Communists, so adding atheism to the mix would just fuel the fire. But I agree with the author, and I think this is not very controversial, what he says here. There is, however, a liberation theology that unites Christianity and Communism, but I I'm just going to acknowledge it and move on. I have no reason to doubt that the mission leadership believed this also, but we never discussed in specifically, except my sending mission in candidate's school.
Also, you will note that this is written by someone in my sending mission, although I didn't know the person (I might have met him, but I don't remember).
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In this next text, you'll see how the author grants a special status to the Soviet Union in its wickedness."Nowhere does the essence of communism come out more clearly than n the attitude of the Soviet State towards the Church. In this respect it so closely resembles the attitude adopted by the Roman State towards the Early Church that this can hardly be a coincidence. One cannot help wonderly whether the Soviet System is not basically the old paganism reappearing under a new guise. The following comparison of how the Church has fared under both systems serves to illustrate the analysis under both systems serves to illustrate the analysis offered in the previous chapter." (p. 23)
The previous chapter discussed how the Soviet Communists had counter points to the Christians (e.g., something to offer instead of heaven). The only reason I can think of for wanting us to see that the Soviet Union compares to Rome in its treatment of Christians is because everyone already agrees that Rome treated the early believers notoriously badly. So if Mr. Bereford can prove that the Soviets treat believers similarly than we should be convinced that the Soviets are in the same category of Christian haters as the Romans. So it's apparently important to Mr. Bereford that we know that, right? That's how the Vienna mission thought, too, in my opinion, and that's the kind of thing you might include in your newsletters and deputation speeches, although it wouldn't be the main highlight, because you'd be talking mainly about what you do and what the mission does, but you might need to talk about the countries themselves too, and this is the kind of information you might share, with the Vienna mission's blessings I might add. [I think the mission thought that way because it would fit their security push. I don't remember hearing a lot of talk about Communist ideology per se however, though.]
I won't go through all the various comparisons between the Soviet Union and Rome.
Here's another one, written by a former professor of mine:
Hill, Kent R. (1989). The Puzzle of the Soviet Church. An Inside Look at Christianity and Glasnost. Oregon: Multnomah.
I'm in chapter 4 "Marxism and Religion," beginning with the section, "Are Marxism and Chrstianity Reconcilable?"
"On the basis of a serious study of Marx's specific views on religion, one must conclude that, in their core beliefs, Marxism and Christianity are irreconcilable. To some, such a statement indicates a kind of knee-jerk intolerence, an absence of ecumenism, and hostility to pluralism... It is only necessary that a scholar take seriously the basic tenets of the orthodox statements of each position and then apply faithfully the 'law of noncontradiction" to decide whether those basic commitments are compatible with each other or not.
It is not a matter of ideology, it is a question of logic. If one system believes in God, and the other considers belief in a transcendent being wishful thinking, then there is a disagreement. If one system asserts that human beings are inclined to evil and in need of God's divine help to overcome their inclinations, while the other system holds that human beings are basically good and capable of moving towards perfection in their own strength, then there is a basic disagreement. If one system views human beings as a complex mix of spiritual and material components, while the other sees only material and economic factors at work, then again you have a fundamental disagreement.
Does this mean that a Marxist and a Christian cannot dialog together? Of course they can. There is nothing wrong with Marxist/Christian dialogue if what is meant by this is an honest and civil attempt to discover the common ground and differences which do, in fact, exist." (p. 77-78)
I'm including this because I really agree with this and this. The Vienna mission would too in principle. HOWEVER... at a different time, in a different place, because they were so security conscience that they didn't want anyone talking to any Communist unless they absolutely had to, such as if the border patrol asked them a question they absolutely had to answer. Otherwise, stay away from anyone who could maybe, possibly in any chance be Communist. Dialog is a no go. Uh-uh, no way, no sir.
See, that's the fear thing. That's because they didn't trust God and they didn't know the Bible as well as they should. It's too bad Peter Deyneka, Sr. wasn't around (he might've been dead by then - last I knew around 1984 he was in a nursing home) and give them one of his "much prayer, much power" sermons. He would have told them, yes he would have, and he might have even had some black people shouting Amen! Preach it brother! As to the Bible...
2 Timothy 1:7
New King James Version (NKJV)
7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
Forget the fear stuff - leave it behind; be wise, take reasonable precautions and trust God, but don't make fear your god, your prison.
They wanted me to fit into their narrow-minded security-obsessed world. There's no way. I couldn't fit, I wouldn't fit, sorry.
I have other books, but some of it is hard to take exerpts out of. And the thing is that I think that a lot of the shared meanings were through the stories that missionaries told each other regarding their work and also their mission newsletters which they sent to each other, so that the different missions knew what each other were doing and so they developed a shared meaning regarding the mission field through what in library science we might call "gray literature." A lot of them I don't know and couldn't have known because I never became an insider.
But I hope you get a bit of an idea. I have to go because it's 4:00 and I haven't had lunch and I have physical therapy in an hour and I have to leave in 15 minutes.
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I'm writing this the next day, having taken a second look at what I wrote. I can't say whether or not the folk at the Vienna mission were deluded or had delusions, per se, although we all can in one way or another in the sort of every day sense. If looked at that way, rather than in the lunatic way, they might have had some, perhaps.
From the standpoint of a secular person, it might not have been completely so delusional to take the security precautions they did. After all, what they were doing was a real threat to Communist ideology and I did have information that one of the key missions working with us was probably receiving money from the CIA (for other work, not what we were doing there) and we did have two US military chaplains working with us. So there would certainly be lots of reasons for the East Bloc governments to not like what we were doing and take active interest in pursuing us if they found out about us.
And it was true that this was the only place on the planet where there were so many missionaries from different missions together so if something happened all of the missions represented could be put at risk not just us (not to mention the people in the countries we worked with). So I don't tend to think the mission was delusional.
I do tend to think that they have little faith that they don't know God and they didn't know the Bible well enough because they had gone so far as to use deception for security and the Bible clearly forbids that, so in such a case they lost their faith in God and put their faith instead in deception and in man's machinations.
So their shared meaning warped this whole thing so that they were somehow able to justify doing these things and new people could make that leap which is the kind of thing they had to grapple with - "can I accept this thing? or can I not?" If they verbalize their doubts then someone will conveniently guide them through the process that will make it all clear to them until they are convinced that it is all okay and they can live with it and they can internalize the new norms and values of the group. I never verbalized my doubts. Instead, I verbalized that I had a lot of stress, so they sent me back to the States. It's possible that not everyone grappled with it, I don't know. It's not as if this kind of thinking is rampant in churches back home, or that they probably came prepared for that kind of thing. The thing is that you had to get into a regular ongoing deception mindset because you had to be in a constant security alert, and that meant deception; security virtually meant deception. So you had to get used to the idea to becoming a deception machine. I'm sure they don't tell the seminary graduates that before they get to Vienna. But that's not the kind of shared meaning you might expect from a Christian mission under normal circumstances.
That's more or less a good part of why I couldn't submit to them. It's not the only reason, but it's a significant part of why.
