“The Make Tracks approach brought participants closer to their humanity and expanded our vision of community service. One year after the workshop, what is positive and remarkable is that societal-oriented activities are increasingly integrated into our approach to evangelism.”

Bishop Daniel Kyungu

African Inland Church Congo

When people trump abstraction

As the newly appointed Bishop of the African Inland Church Congo, Daniel Kyungu rapidly saw a need for greater community service within his diocese. Twenty-five pastors and evangelists descended on Muyeye on the outskirts of Lubumbashi for one month of training and we were asked if we could run a one-and-a-half-hour session on the theme what is the social responsibility of the church? Given that Bishop Kyungu wanted the session to frame the training that would follow, we agreed upon a two-to-three-day workshop to initiate proceedings.

Yet in spite of the admirable objective of the workshop, the selflessness of the theme did not necessarily mean that the participants were impervious to their own church culture. We were concerned that the need to appear spiritual could mean that piety may mitigate against honesty. Even worse, that they would diminish the importance of their lived experience because their individual stories didn’t fit in with their inherited ideas of devotion, theological correctness, and church practice.

As such, we proposed three questions that grounded the participants’ reflections in their context rather than a reflection on the abstract concepts of ‘social’ and ‘responsibility’. Disarmed by piety-free language and story-telling, these grounded questions started a conversation that helped identify to whom they were responsible and who they needed to become.

In addition, the participants saw beyond their own parishes and called for a transformation within the church:

“The participants expressed something that I did not anticipate: leadership in our community has not valued the concept of love in servant relationships very much. They feel resentment. Love has not been central to Christian service in our community.”

Bishop Daniel Kyungu

So while the participants came to understand their social responsibility in terms of relationship, engagement and story, they also identified the guiding principle for service for their own church leaders.

Leveraging grounded questions for deeper insight

A grounded question is human-centred, meaning that it brings people to the fore rather than centring reflections on ideas lifted from any human context. For example, rather than ask ‘what are our values’, a grounded question could be ‘when have you felt ashamed or proud?’

By drawing out individual stories, listeners are curious and respectful rather than feeling constrained to adopt an argumentative position over concept definition. Once we put people back into the frame, we realise that we can only address complex problems by either crossing boundaries, or even circumventing them.

To do this means asking questions that may not seem to address the theme at hand. In our case, rather than asking ‘what is the social responsibility of the church’, we asked ‘when have you been touched by the dignity, compassion and generosity of an ordinary person, Christian or not?’ Taking participants away from the expected yielded a richer conversation providing insights that might otherwise have not been seen.

What grounded questions could provide insight for your organisation?

We are indebted to Mark Strom for his guidance on the formulation of the grounded questions and on working with the church. To learn more, Mark’s TEDx talk is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEISLatc57I or you can purchase his book Lead with Wisdom: How Wisdom Transforms Good Leaders into Great Leaders.