Recommended Reading: Erin Meyer's The Culture Map

Earlier this week, I (David) argued that exploring cultural differences is a good way to prepare for The United Methodist Church's General Conference, at which people will be coming together across cultures to make collective decisions. I recommended Hofstede Insights' Country Comparison as a way to make such comparisons for the six dimensions of culture examined in the work of Geert and Gert Jan Hofstede.

Hofstede's work is not the only possibility for such comparisons, however. Erin Meyer has written The Culture Map, a book that examines cultural differences among countries on eight dimensions:

* Communicating (low context vs. high context)
* Evaluating (indirect vs. direct negative feedback)
* Persuading (principles first vs. application first)
* Leading (egalitarian vs. hierarchical)
* Deciding (consensual vs. top-down)
* Trusting (task-based vs. relationship-based)
* Disagreeing (confrontational vs. non-confrontational)
* Scheduling (linear vs. flexible time)

These dimensions of cultural differences are all also highly relevant to how various parties will approach the collective decision-making process at General Conference in May.

In addition to her book, Meyer's website has a pay-to-use cultural comparison tool that allows users to select countries and make direct comparisons. While not free, users can purchase one-day access for just $4 USD and longer-term access for more.

General Conference and the Hofstede Culture Country Comparison

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

When The United Methodist Church's General Conference next gathers (even if it is not clear yet when exactly it will do so), it will make decisions as a global body, across national and cultural differences. Many commentators have noted the US-centric nature of the decision-making processes at General Conference, with its reliance on complex, technical procedural maneuvering based on Robert's Rules of Order.

Yet Robert's Rules are not the only way in which culture is embedded in decision-making processes at General Conference. Regardless of the rules or procedures employed, each participating cultural group comes to the process of decision-making with its own cultural presuppositions that shape its understanding of how decisions should be made.

Fortunately, resources exist to help delegates (and others) make sense of those differing cultural presuppositions, and the delay in holding General Conference gives delegates some more time to explore them.

Two of the most significant researchers into the nature of cultural differences and how those differences impact organizational life, including decision-making, were/are the Dutch father and son Geert and Gert Jan Hofstede. Their work focuses, in part, on comparing countries on six dimensions of culture. These six dimensions are as follows:

* Power Distance, defined as "the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally."

* Individualism, defined as "the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members."

* Masculinity, which, according to the Hofstedes, concerns "what motivates people, wanting to be the best (Masculine) or liking what you do (Feminine)."

* Uncertainty Avoidance, which reflects "the extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid these."

* Long Term Orientation, which "describes how every society has to maintain some links with its own past while dealing with the challenges of the present and future."

* Indulgence, which describes "the extent to which people try to control their desires and impulses." 

Hofstede Insights (a consulting organization connected to the Hofstedes) has a country comparison website that allows you to compare two or more countries on these six dimensions.

While unfortunately, the Democratic Republic of Congo (home to the second-largest number of United Methodists) is not one of the countries available for comparison, the United States, the Philippines, and many countries in Africa and Europe with branches of United Methodism can be compared. Here, for instance, is a comparison of the US and Nigeria.

Spending some time examining comparisons between countries may be a useful way for General Conference delegates to prepare to make decisions across cultures. In particular, this exercise highlights differences, especially around power distance and individualism. Such comparisons can provide delegates (and others) with a better understanding of how their fellow United Methodists approach the shared task of making decisions.

Knut Refsdal: Consensus-based processes in the church

Today's post is by Rev. Knut Refsdal, District Superintendent for The United Methodist Church in Norway. Rev. Refsdal here explains the consensus-decision making model used at this year's Norway Annual Conference meeting.

Given the situation the church finds itself in after the specially called session of the General Conference earlier this year, there was a great deal of excitement before our Annual Conference in Norway in June. It was therefore of great importance how the various cases were handled.

From the Cabinet's point of view, we decided early on that we would try to facilitate consensus-based processes. This is a process where we search for a common opinion without using formal voting and where we engage in a genuine and respectful dialogue. This is important for a church. As a church, we are called to work against all forms of divisions so that God's reconciled fellowship can become visible. We do this also in the way decisions are made.

Consensus doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone agrees. We also say that we have reached consensus when one of the following happens: Either that all those who have the right to make decisions agree on a result or most agree and that those who disagree accept that they have been heard and that they can live with the result. Thus, agreement on a result is not limited to confirming the wording of a proposal. It may also be that a consensus has been reached on another result, such as agreeing to reject a proposal, referring a case to further processing or confirming that one can take different positions in relation to the case in question.

Consensus is a willingness to explore and develop alternative ways of decision-making than what are often called "parliamentary methods." The latter aims to structure debates and proposals in such a way that they can lead to majority decisions. We know these methods very well in the church These are not methods that emphasize a goal of unity, nor are they methods that necessarily foster collaboration and broad participation and inclusion. I would say the contrary, these often promote factions with the result that one easily ends up with winners and losers in a process, which can be detrimental to internal relationships and make decisions more difficult to implement.

The goals for consensus processes are therefore: Better decisions, better implementation of decisions and better group relationships.

The following are some key principles that underpin consensus as a form of decision:

Inclusive and participatory: In a consensus process, everyone affected by a decision is included and encouraged to participate and contribute towards a final decision. Likewise, the goal is to address the needs of everyone involved in the process. Consensus is therefore a search for common opinion, understanding and will without the use of formal voting and where one strives for more voices to be heard.

Consensus seeking: Consensus is a process that seeks to reach as much consensus as possible on a decision. There is therefore a great deal of room for dialogue, consultation, exploration, questions, reflection and cooperation that increases respect and understanding.

Process-oriented: Consensus emphasizes the process towards a decision, not just the result. Therefore, all participants' views and perspectives are respected and appreciated. This means that one invests a lot also in the way a decision is made, not just in the decision itself.

Collaborative oriented: Consensus is dependent on the willingness to co-operate. All participants are encouraged to help shape matters in such a way that it can lead to a result that safeguards everyone's concerns. This is based on the belief that, by listening to everyone's perspectives, the community is better able to make decisions that most people can agree on. Consensus therefore presupposes that everyone listens with openness and humility in order to also seek the insight of others, and this implies an attitude of respectful expectation since everyone is working towards a common goal. In the concept of consensus, there is therefore an expectation of a willingness to put the interests of the whole above one’s own preferences. In locked situations, therefore, all parties must be encouraged to work together to find solutions that everyone can live with.

Relationship-building: Consensus seeks to build good group relationships through decision-making. This is intended both to create a foundation for future decisions and to improve the implementation of decisions.

At our Annual Conference, there were three proposals on the table regarding the decisions at the specially called session of the General Conference: One proposal supported the Traditional Plan. Another proposal included a statement for full inclusion. A third proposal called for more theological studies. Many voiced their opinion in the dialogue and two more proposals were presented.

It was clear, during the exploring period, which often is the starting point in a consensus-based decision-making process, that there was a solid majority for full inclusion. But there were no ordinary votes on the proposals. Instead a consensus process was used to guide the conference to a broadest possible consensus on the matter. Every delegate was given orange and blue colored papers to indicate agreement or disagreement. The minority was given time to voice their concerns and the proposals were adjusted accordingly.

The people behind the different proposals were asked to work on a joint proposal, weighted by the consensus indications given. They came back with a single proposal that included:

  •  an agreement that the large majority wants full inclusion.
  •  a willingness to respect the view of the minority that wants to uphold the discipline.
  •  a strong determination to keep TUMC in Norway together.
  •  to establish a broad commission to seek a way to fully include LGBTQ+ persons and map consequences for the discipline, finances, organization and international connections.
  •  to deliver a report to the Annual Conference 2020 for deliberations and actions.

The church in Norway is not of one mind in this matter, but the will of the majority is clear and the majority is willing to make concessions to include as many as possible. This achieved a consensus and a broad platform for our upcoming work for the next year.

Robert Hunt: Culture, Not Geography, Defines Global Church, Part III

Today's post is written by Dr. Robert Hunt, Director of Global Theological Education, Professor of Christian Mission and Interreligious Relations, and Director, Center for Evangelism and Missional Church Studies at Perkins School of Theology. It is the third of a three-part series. The first and second parts can be found here and here, respectively.

The problem of culture that I developed in the last blog doesn’t just apply to understandings of gender and social institutions like marriage. Institutional structures and decision making processes are also deeply influenced by culture.

The General Board of Global Ministries is now imagining itself as “an agency that comprises global mission connections. In doing so it recognizes that ours is a multi-centered world in which Christianity’s center of gravity has shifted to the Global South and East. These changes invite dialogue and mutuality among local churches, mission partners, and the world’s vulnerable people.” This means in practice establishing “global mission connections” in various sites around the world: one in South America, one in Africa, and one in Asia. Thus the GBGM will “explore mission in deeper ways through the relationships we will be able to form on the ground in key geographic regions.” (http://www.umcmission.org/learn-about-us/news-and-stories/2016/may/0506surprisingactivity)

It isn’t clear that this new structure takes seriously enough the complexity of culture. Can a  “connection" in Korea will be relevant to mission in Vietnam or Indonesia or the Philippines? The latter two countries have a wide range of languages and cultures, none of which share the worldview and situation of Korea or even one another.

Buenos Aires, the location of the Latin American connection, is a city that is far more European the Mezo-American, a place where Spanish is still spoken with an Italian accent. Argentina has virtually none of its indigenous or African slave population left.  Apart from remnants of German colonists and refugees what does it have in common with Portuguese speaking Brazil, a country with a huge Afro-Brazilian population and an extraordinary number of indigenous peoples living in Amazonia? Or with Central America and its very different political problems and peoples?

My fear is that the United Methodist church conceives of being global church in purely geographical terms rather than in terms of cultural difference.

Which returns us to decision making. An earlier blog pointed out that the customary timing of US annual and jurisdictional conferences isn’t shared world-wide. Do we realize that this difference is cultural? US Annual conferences take place when the public  school year is ending and thus pastors with families can easily move. And that in turn is tied to the agrarian economic cycles typical of the northern hemisphere - cycles that demanded that children be available to help their parents on the farm.

As I quickly learned as a missionary with the GBGM, these cycles aren’t found elsewhere in the world. Schools in Malaysia and Singapore aren’t on holiday from June to August - because they have very different cultural patterns to follow.

But it isn’t just when we meet. It is how decisions are made. The whole UMC is set up in decision making structures that are distinctly Anglo-American in culture. (What could be more Anglo-American that Robert’s Rules of Order?) These structures are significantly different from those of ethnic minorities within the US, and even more so United Methodists outside the U.S. But I have yet to see any recognition that these cultural difference make a profound difference in how decisions are made, and can be profoundly disenfranchising of individuals and whole peoples. Mere translation is a minuscule part of inclusion. No matter who attends the General Conference, its entire structure, from the daily schedule to the overall plan privileges Anglo-American culture and empowers those who have mastered it - while disempowering those who have not.

In the worlds both of global business and of multi-cultural institutions such as hospital and universities there has now been for the last 40 years intensive interest in cultural difference and how that plays out in different values as they are realized in all social settings. The work of Hofstede, Minke, and Livermore on intercultural understanding and practical intercultural team building and decision making is a commonplace in these environments. In Dallas I’m regularly asked to provide training in cultural intelligence for institutions serving diverse cultures. Global businesses, who actually sponsored a great deal of contemporary research on cultures and values, also consciously adapt to local values and decision making processes.

But as near as I can tell, not the UMC. With the exception of the Rio-Texas conference I know of no conference wide effort to insure that every UMC leader understands cross-cultural dynamics and is developing the skills to that are absolutely necessary to function effectively in a complex cultural environment. Has the council of bishops engaged in training in cultural intelligence and cross cultural relationships and values? Have the leaders of the general boards and agencies? Have any of the boards of ordained ministry in the different annual conferences? Or do they assume that Robert’s Rules will insure the openness and fairness of their deliberations?

The announcement of the reimagining of Global Ministries is interesting in this regard. It envisions global connections through regional centers. It foresees an international coaching network. It foresees expanding the number of missionaries from around the globe. It looks forward to initiatives in global health. It talks about a commitment to responsible stewardship. And not once, not once, does it mention the word “culture.” Or indeed even allude to the concept.

Coaching, Christian witness, health, stewardship: these are concepts and activities that are deeply embedded in culture and influenced by culture. But there is no mention of culture and addressing it as a specific issue. In my experience the unnamed is the unthought.

This may not end well.

Robert Hunt: Culture, Not Geography, Defines Global Church, Part II

Today's post is written by Dr. Robert Hunt, Director of Global Theological Education, Professor of Christian Mission and Interreligious Relations, and Director, Center for Evangelism and Missional Church Studies at Perkins School of Theology. It is the second of a three-part series. The first part can be found here.

In the previous blog I described three processes of decision making from outside the West. All western structures for making decisions are equally a product of culture and cultural assumptions. And there is simply no reason that the various cultures of the modern west should be privileged in determining key values, who makes up the membership in the church community, and how decisions about the community will be made.

Yet that is what the United Methodist church, in its long history of colonial domination of Methodists outside the US, has done. It has privileged its values, its rules of order and its form of community discipline over all other cultural forms of decision making and discipline.

We pretend to be global church, but the designation is purely geographical, because so long as our decision making processes are carried out under the illusion that our patterns of decision making are somehow a-cultural and universal we are really just a Western church with colonies worldwide.

Will this be changed by the recent decision of the General Board of Global Ministries to reorganize into regional centers across the globe? Or by the shift in the majority of General Conference delegates to those outside the US?

I doubt it. What appears absent in the GBGM announcement, as was entirely absent in the recent General Conference debates, is the recognition that the UMC is made up of a complex plurality of cultures and that cultural difference does and must pervade all our decision making.

Let me offer some examples.

In the extensive debates about same-sex marriage and ordination both “traditionalists” and “progressives” have worked within and debated within the same dichotomy of “modern/postmodern” versus “traditional.” References to the world outside the US, when they were made at all, were sweeping; treating Africa, Asia, and Europe as mere extension of American theological traditionalism, aka orthodoxy. It is as if the whole world is theologically divided between the modern and the non-modern, and other cultural differences are irrelevant. As if the whole evangelical - liberal debate in the West was determinative of the coming shape of global Christianity.

This has been particularly true with regard to the majority that now controls the General Conference. It is perfectly willing to allow the continuation of a structure that grants central conferences the privilege of adapting the discipline to their contexts, but refuses to make the United States, or its regions, into similar central conferences. Why? It appears to me that this is the continual privileging of the US context as the universal context of theology struggle (between orthodoxy and modernity). Other people have cultures that vary. We have the universal.

This is a bogus understanding of the United States and the West more generally. Serious social scientists know that we are a nation of different cultures. The recent work of Colin Woodard on America’s Nations is just one example. But the General Conference, as well as advocates on both sides, have thus far has steadfastly refused to recognize culture as a factor in understandings of marriage.

I expect we’ll quickly discover that those cultural differences we have steadfastly ignored are relevant. American United Methodism’s acceptance of divorced clergy and bishops is unlikely to be accepted in cultures for whom divorce and remarriage is unacceptable. (It is completely unacceptable in the churches I served in Southeast Asia) At the same time polygamy, unacceptable in American culture, is acceptable in many African Christian cultures. Different cultures have different constructions of gender and gender roles, and these influence both family structure and responsibility in ways that are bound to affect ideas about marriage and child rearing among clergy and laity.

In the end agreement between American traditionalists and United Methodists in the rest of the world on same-sex marriage will prove to be a superficial cover over substantive cultural differences regarding gender, gender roles, child rearing, and structures of authority in the family. The same can be said of superficial agreements between American progressives and such allies as they find in Europe and parts of Latin America.

Robert Hunt: Culture, Not Geography, Defines Global Church, Part I

Today's post is written by Dr. Robert Hunt, Director of Global Theological Education, Professor of Christian Mission and Interreligious Relations, and Director, Center for Evangelism and Missional Church Studies at Perkins School of Theology. It is the first of a three-part series.

A global church must engage seriously the reality of multiple cultures, not just geographical locations and languages.

Early in my time as a missionary in Malaysia I was invited to go into central Borneo Island, about 3 days by boat, to visit an Iban community that was considering becoming Christian. They had heard the gospel from Iban Christians, including one of my students, in a nearby longhouse. But they wanted to talk to someone from the seminary.

I won’t recount the entire adventure, only this: that many of the questions they asked were more pragmatic than theological and had to with maintaining local customs. Some questions were simply part of a kind of religious bidding war. The Bahai’s promised them an electrical generator. The Muslims promised them government jobs. Methodists didn’t make any such promises, but we did have a good record of serving people’s needs.

But the kind of bargaining that was going on was only part of a much larger set of cultural differences. Our discussions took place well after 10pm, and only after the women and children had gone to bed. Their local elder had slaughtered a chicken and waved it over our heads to invoke blessings on the coming discussion. We had sipped rice wine, and then for the thirsty cases of Carlsberg beer had been broken out. We finished talking at sunrise, when men went about their work and we returned to our village by boat.

The actual decision was made the next evening when, again late at night, there was a hours long discussion by the senior members of the longhouse. And the next day the eldest member of the community, having considered everything, and having noted carefully the flights of various bird species over the longhouse for the last several days, as well as his own dreams, announced that the entire community would be baptized and become Methodist Christians. My student and his father, both licensed pastors, carried out the baptisms (several dozens) a few weeks later.

Let’s travel halfway around the world to Vienna, Austria, where for seven years I served a dominantly West African congregation made of refugees and immigrants. Once a month the African choir sang in worship. And the day before they sang they met for rehearsal and lunch, which took all of Saturday. As pastor I was interested in knowing what songs I should put in the bulletin for Sunday. They never told me. Instead they informed me that over the course of the day they had sung many songs in different languages and in the end had chosen the song leader. And the song leader, led by the Spirit, would tell us all what to sing on Sunday.

Back in Malaysia. I’m attending one of the many committee meetings that make up academic life in even a small theological school. It looks like a meeting should look. People around the table. An agenda. Multiple comments made on each item. But on each action item the chair of the committee simply announces the decision. No “I move.” No “I second.” No vote. When I first arrived in Malaysia I would have found this bizarre and irritating. But a good friend, and relative of my Chinese wife, explained the way things work. “The purpose of the committee is to ratify the decision of the chair.”

I highlight these experiences because they indicate a much larger and more complex truth: All processes of decision making are bound to culture and cultural ideas about values, who the members of the community are, and how they come to a common mind.