Theological School of Caution - Missiometrics

      Yesterday I posted on a couple of theologians who throw their support behind the use of statistics for the development of missiological strategies. Here are a couple of well-known theologians who caution against the potential misuse of the science.

Edward Rommen

Edward Rommen correctly argues that missiology is more than just one aspect of its qualities or

disciplines. However, he believes “we must pay attention to the propositions that we are importing into the exercise.”[1] Rommen warns against over-sophistication in our approach to integrating missiology with the social sciences in particular. He suggests that the church has become comfortable in its successful applications of social science for missions, but he whimsically admits “it is amazing what can be accomplished without the Holy Spirit.”[2] His approach is one of caution. And he believes that it can only be remedies through a proper dependence upon the Holy Spirit’s work instead of organizational management.

David Bosch

David Bosch is also cautious in his opinions about the use of statistical analysis in missions. This appears to be partly because of how some have made extreme applications as they integrate statistics and theology or eschatology. He seems to suggest that a strong adherence to an imminent parousia or second coming of Christ has led some to their greatest motive for mission, more so than a love for people. Admittedly, Hudson Taylor was motivated by this premillennial belief, and it did result in his own employment of statistical study. But many missiologists in the twentieth century began to see Matthew 24:14 as an eschatological proof text for doing missions. If the gospel could just get preached to all nations, then the Lord’s return could be hastened. “Some have even borrowed huge amounts of money and mortgaged their homes to invest in evangelization for the purpose of bringing back the King.”[3] A. T. Pierson “estimated the number of pennies and the number of right-hearted evangelists required to bring the millennium.”[4] Thus, statistical analysis became crucial for completing the task of hastening the end. Bosch believes this is dangerous.

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[1] Edward Rommen, 2009. Lecture presented for MIS 9950 PhD class at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Wake Forest, North Carolina, January 7.

[2] Edward Rommen, 2009. Lecture. 

[3] Frank Caleb Jansen, “When Theology, Missiology and Futurology Clash,” International Journal of Frontier Missions 12:1 (January/February 1995), 3. Cited on 19 February 2009. Online: http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/12_1_PDFs/Jansen.pdf.

[4] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2007), 316–317.  

Historical Applications of Statistics: Secular

Statistical Analysis has historically played a role in mathematics, but it also has had wide

applications in varied academic disciplines. Mortality rates, birth rates, and marriage activities for governmental census purposes have been the traditional application outside of academic fields. However, recent demographic studies have demanded more from statistics than just factual numbers.

            John Naisbitt, author of MegaTrends, MegaTrends 2000 and MegaTrends 2010 has well-known for the last two decades for his ability to study current trends and use those observations to draw strategic conclusions for the business world. More recently, his use of statistics has entered into another realm, that of planning future trends and creating possible scenarios. These applications are widely accepted in the area of business management and organizational leadership. According to Naisbitt, these “pictures of the future are not speculation or a reach into the unknown. They are based on an analysis of the present.”[1]

            Malcolm Gladwell, as a staff writer for The New Yorker for the last 15 years, has documented the use of statistics in epidemiology and how those same statistics can be applied in other disciplines like business, marketing, and education. In his bestseller, The Tipping Point, Gladwell applies epidemiological statistics to studies in the social sciences in order to posit that “social epidemics work in exactly the same way” as communicable diseases and infectious viruses.[2] The amazing popularity of his applications for statistical analysis only reiterates the fact that the science of statistics can bring validity to many other scientific fields.     

          I highly recommend your reading both of these books, now staples in any study of statistical analysis.

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[1] John Naisbitt, Mind Set!: Reset Your Thinking and See the Future (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), xx.

[2] Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (New York: Back Bay Books, 2002), 21.  

Biblical Use of Statistics

All the way through the entire Bible, God reveals his care for humanity as individuals, as groups and as a whole. Scattered throughout the pages of biblical historical narratives, chronicles of God’s lists disclose his overarching interest in divine measurement. In the Garden of Eden, Adam is tasked with managing the reproduction of the world. An entire book in the Old Testament is devoted to its title Numbers. Israel is chosen as a special group among many nations and must devote itself to careful adherence to measurement. Many are called, but few are chosen. As the conquest narratives reveal a systematized eradication of other ungodly nations as per God’s edict, vigilant lists of kings and kingdoms are recorded. The Book of Revelation culminates the story with numbers of specific groups and days. A careful look at Joshua, Job and Jonah in the Old Testament and the Gospels and the Book of Acts in the New Testament divulges the larger elements of statistics in the Bible.

Old Testament Examples

Joshua was greatly used in the conquest of Jericho and the surrounding nations that had inhabited the land promised to the people of Israel. As the land needed to be divided among the twelve tribes of Israel, geographic statistics played a great part in that distribution. To properly apply those allotments, Joshua sent out surveyors to write statistical descriptions of the land including any major cities within given regions (Josh 18:3–5). These completed statistics were compiled and the land redistribution was hailed as fulfilled promises from the Lord (Josh 21:45). In this way statistics were used as a corporate blessing as fulfillment of God’s promises. 

            Job was a man who loved his God above all else. Because of Satan’s proposal that Job’s devotion was based on his material and social blessings, God allowed these things to be stripped from Job. Interestingly enough, the writer was mindful to make exact lists of what Job had before his trials (Job 1:1–4) and with what God blessed him after his proven obedience (Job 42:12). Job was reinstated with physical health, another family and twice as much material wealth as before. These statistics are seen as personal blessings for individual obedience.

            The story of Jonah, however, provides a unique look into God’s heart for the nations. After a tedious bout between God and his missionary, Jonah finally obeys and speaks God’s truth to Nineveh. Upon their repentance, Jonah sulks in his anger. But God uses population statistics to reveal his missiological heart (Jonah 4:11). According to the text, 120,000 people are a statistic that warrants God’s concern.  

New Testament Examples

Sometimes the Bible uses specific numbers to describe divine events, while at other times there are generic statistical references to quantified groups. The Gospels reflect varied biblical uses of statistics. In Mark 8:1–10 and Matthew 15: 32–39, the writers record the miraculous distribution of bread and fish to four thousand hungry recipients. Another passage, Luke 9:10–17, is an example of feeding five thousand.

            Jesus was cautious to choose the exact twelve disciples he wanted, a statistic to which he later referred as God-given and protected. But Jesus often employed parables that made statistical reference to a number of protected things where not a single one of the group is ever lost.[1] These types of statistical references are spread throughout Jesus’ teaching and prayers.

            In the Book of Acts, Luke attentively records the statistical growth of believers from the ascension of Jesus to the rapid increase throughout the Greco-Roman world. What begins with 120 believers quickly becomes 3,120 at Pentecost (Acts 2:41). Subsequent additions are described with words like “more” (Acts 5:14), “large number” (Acts 6:1), “grew in number” (Acts 9:31), “many” (Acts 9:42), and “great number” (Acts 11:21). Luke’s choice of words, albeit in the generic sense, describes a statistical measurement of increase in the church population. Even Paul’s choice for missiological bases for operations, according to Luke, became statistical starting points for unprecedented growth. John Mark Hicks, Harding University professor, posits that there is a “theological motive behind Luke's fondness for statistics. The growth of the community is grounded in Luke's theology of restoration. Just as Israel multiplied and increased in number in the Old Testament, so restored Israel would multiply and increase.”[2]
           What do you think: Does God really care about numbers?

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[1] In Matt 10:29 and Luke 12:6, not one sparrow falls; in Matt 24:2 and Mark 13:2, not one stone falls; in John 19:36, not one bone is broken; and in Matt 18:4, John 6:39 and John 17:12, not one of the given disciples are lost.

[2] John Mark Hicks, “Numerical Growth in the Theology of Acts: Part One,” Church Growth Magazine 11 (April – June, 1996): 8-10. Cited 19 February 2009. Online:  http://www.4churchgrowth.com/chur4140.htm#ft001.

Missiology as Science: Missiometrics Discussion Continued

Missiology has commonly been defined as "the science of the cross cultural communication of the Christian faith," as "preeminently the scholarly discipline underlying the task of world evangelization," and as "the field of study which researches, records and applies data relating to the biblical origins and history of the expansion of the Christian movement to anthropological principles and techniques for its further advancement."[1] Ivan Illich describes missiology as “the science about the Word of God as the Church in her becoming.”[2] In his classic missiology textbook, Alan Tippett calls it “the science of missiology” and posits that social anthropology plays an integral part in it.[3] Although David Hesselgrave qualifies his definition of missiology, he still calls it the “science of mission.”[4] These definitions identify missiology as a science and thereby expose it to scrutiny of the scientific method.

Since science is a “systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory-building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena,”[5] any systematic observation, measurement and theorizing based on those observations in missions can be classified as scientific. All scientific results must be validated, and consistent quantification of observations allows for this validation. Missiometrics is not only the act of measurement, but it also entails logic and strategy based upon what is being measured.

            Missiologists have long used such enquiry for validation of their observations.

The starting-point in the investigation is, as with any scientific enquiry, the noticing of a common form and a common pattern in a chance collection of apparently disparate events in totally different circumstances. Out of this kind of massing of instances and delineation of surprising parallels among seemingly diverse materials, something quite new has always emerged.[6]

The scientific method entails making general observations, testing those observations against a single test group to measure for a preliminary analysis and then drawing conclusions that might relate to the whole larger body. This is not only consistent with the nature of science, but it also provides ongoing evaluation for its validity. Using scientific measurements is what has helped missiologists dialogue with other social sciences.

The results of these scientific tests provide a basis for understanding missiological history, current evangelical status and potential future scenarios. David Barrett of the former Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention completed missio-scientific studies in Africa to analyze

to what extent these bodies represent unrelated and autonomous religious changes, the products of exceptional and unique circumstances and personalities which are completely explained by local and regional factors, and whose further expansion is therefore largely unpredictable; or to what extent they are explicable, and therefore predictable, in terms of common sociological categories based on their particular social contexts and histories.[7]

If these statistical expressions of missiology can be validated by the scientific method, then statistics can also provide validity to missiology as a science. The rationale for this validation is reinforced by biblical, historical and theological perspectives.

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[1] A. F. Glasser, “Missiology,” BELIEVE Religious Information Source web-site (2007). Cited 17 February 2009. Online: http://mb-soft.com/believe/txo/missiolo.htm.

[2] Ivan Illich, Mission and Midwifery: Essays on Missionary Formation (Gwelo: Mambo Press, 1974), 6 in David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2007), 493. 

[3] Alan R. Tippett, Introduction to Missiology (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 1987), 120. 

[4] David Hesselgrave contributed the preface to Edward Rommen and Gary Corwin, eds., Missiology and the Social Sciences: Contributions, Cautions and Conclusions (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 1996), 1. He posits that “’science’ in this case is being used in the more classical sense of that body of knowledge related to the understanding and carrying out of our missionary task in the world.”

[5] Emphases added. Dennis Overbye, “Philosophers Notwithstanding, Kansas School Board Redefines Science,” New York Times (15 November 2005). Cited 19 February 2009. Online:  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/science/sciencespecial2/15evol.html?_r=1.

[6] David B. Barrett, Schism and Renewal in Africa: An Analysis of Six Thousand Contemporary Religious Movements (Ely House London W.I.: Oxford University Press, 1968), xviii.

[7] Barrett, Schism and Renewal, 5. 

The Question of Missiometrics as a Science

Although much has been written on data collection and statistics for other fields such as business, economics and education, very little has been written on the integration of this science with missiology. Yet dialogue among missiologists has led some to question the role of statistical analysis in missions. Missiometrics, the applied science of statistical data collection within the field of missiology, has many cross-cultural practitioners. However, diminutive time has been devoted to studying potential applications of statistics for decision making within missions agencies. This might be in part to this underlying question as to the validity of this science when applied to what might be considered a spiritual discipline. It is not my intention to argue the ethics of missiology’s interdisciplinary junctures with the social sciences. However, taking a more narrow focus, using statistical analysis helps to give scientific validity to missiology.

Edward R. Dayton and David A. Frazer pose the question, “How might we apply management to the global task of introducing our generation to the power and person of Jesus Christ?”[1] The underlying thought behind this question is the very heart of the relational study of statistics and missions. There is a macro-relationship between theology and the social sciences, but statistical analysis’s micro-interaction with missiology provides clarity and scientific quantification that is helpful in evaluation for mission effectiveness. Biblical, scientific and historical examples justify this thesis, and a robust theology of statistics allows for this approach. While Peruvian evangelical theologian Samuel Escobar accuses modern missions practitioners of “succumbing to ‘managerial missiology,’ the belief that missions can be approached like a business problem,”[2] there are yet many practical uses for statistical analysis that provide validity to missiological applications and therefore should be maximized.
What do you think? Can you mix missions with management and/or statistics?

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[1] Edward R. Dayton and David A. Frazer Planning Strategies for World Evangelization (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 25.

[2] Stan Guthrie, Missions in the Third Millennium (Waynesboro, Georgia: Paternoster, 2002), 192. Samuel Escobar makes claim to the term “managerial missiology” in his The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone (Christian Doctrine in Global Perspective) (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2003), 167.