Living Behind the Veil

I'm often asked what I wear in Afghanistan and what it's like to wear a veil. It's freedom. Freedom to have a bad hair day, freedom to arrange my chadar to conceal the curve of my breasts and backside, freedom to not be an expatriate for a little while. It means freedom to hide even on the street from the Afghan men's eyes which seem to strip me naked.
When I relax my shoulders and walk less purposefully, less confidently, my eyes downcast and covered by sunglasses, I pass for an Afghan woman. I hear the men whisper in Dari, "Is she a foreigner or local woman?" I chuckle but am silent. On the street, I'm also a free target....freely exposed to groping, sexual innuendos whispered to me as a man bicycles by, free to have stones thrown at me, freely seen as no one's wife, daughter, sister, mother, friend, or boss. I step inside my gate, and remove my chapan and chadar. Now I'm someone's boss, motherhood returns to me as little steps run to greet me, and I receive a kiss from my adoring husband. Now I'm free to his loving and gentle eyes which know and enjoy my curves, free to once again be under the protective umbrella of being a wife, mother, friend, colleague, boss, niece, sister, daughter, woman.

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Purple Vs. Orange Hoops and The 5C's




In the 21st Century world of reaching the unreached, two significant characteristics of organizations, teams, and individuals is becoming urgently necessary:

Agility and flexibility.(1)

What do these two terms mean?

Agility:       1. Ability to move quickly and easily. 1.1 Ability to think and understand quickly.

Flexibility:  1. The quality of bending easily without breaking. 1.1 The ability to be easily modified. 1.2 Willingness to change or compromise. (2)

Our experience in working with hundreds of organizations is that there are a few areas of conflict when we will not move forward in partnership with an organization, because we experience a lack of agility and flexibility with them.

What is the nature of what we are experiencing?

Is it relational, theological, or ecclesiastical?

If relational, it usually stems to a lack of trust, an inability to communicate well and be understood, and most importantly, a lack of chemistry. See the 5 C's below.

If theological, is there a significant lack of ability to look past the disagreement and move forward in partnership?

For example, we've seen this on the field where the theological value in terms of a missiological belief were held to so tightly the team was willing to break relationship over it, even though it was not related to soteriology but to modality in the local environment- how the mission should be done (although Winters (3) would have probably used the term sodality here, the fact was the main issue was how the local church should be implemented and funded).

Our perspective as conflict mediators was that the missiological belief originated from a cultural (North American) missiological value that was in direct conflict with what local believers wanted and what the cultural advisors were asking for.

In this sense then, the expatriate (North American missionary) was imposing theological and missiological cultural imperialism, using sophisticated spiritualized language. It did not end well, the team broke up leaving all parties hurt and relationships unreconciled for years after.

If ecclesiastical, how restrictive or liberal is the potential partner being?  We believe in the liberal affirmation of gifts, and by liberal, I mean absent of cumbersome restrictive processes.  Time, money and resources are wasted because an organization or denomination says "It (the ministry) has to be done THIS way." In order for this task to be done, it must have a certain Evangelical-truth-focused-our-way "stamp" on it.  This means you have to go through our training and do it our way, even if you already have had the training elsewhere and we've interviewed you. 

In other words, (read with sarcasm)
"Oh, you went through some hoops? Yours were purple, but ours are orange. You have to go through our orange hoops, too, even though in the end, you'll have the exact same skill...again." 

I know that one response to this could be that organizations need to protect "their hedgehog" in order to not have missional drift. (4) However, at some point, (re) training becomes ridiculously unnecessary and poor stewardship.

Henry Cloud wrote, "The best predictor of the future is the past."  What has already happened in this partnership to give us pause?   What objective hope do we really have that anything will change? If we don't have anything tangible, we need to be willing to end the partnership or even talks of a partnership.

What do we look for in partnerships?  There are many different web pages suggesting a variety of different "C's" but here are the ones we use to analyze if we should move forward:

The 5 C's of partnerships:

1. Chemistry - is there an easy, natural, relational chemistry with this individual or organization? It's a bit of an intangible thing to describe, but we ask:  "Do we like being around these people and do they appear to like being around us? Would we want to use some of our relax time to be around them?"

I've experienced chemistry with brothers and sisters from cultures all over the world. Chemistry crosses cultures, genders, even religion.  There are some Muslim brothers and sisters who I love dearly and enjoy partnering with in projects together.

2. Communication - do we seem to be able to easily communicate with each other and understand each other?  Is there an easy manner of clarification (assuming the best) and does it take a lot or a little to go into conflict over communication?  When conflict is addressed, are both sides able to enter into it gently and with humility? Does the process of working through conflict result in increased trust and loyalty on both sides?

3. Competence - are we competent for the task and are they? If not, can the skill be learned and improvement shown rather quickly?  Or is the energy needed on our part or theirs simply too much for us right now to "get to competence" for the task?

We used to think that competence can be gained, but after watching people over years and agonizing over them and our own responses, we realized that some truly cannot gain true competence (as we may define it), or we simply cannot get the competence needed (as they define it).

In some ways, it can be simply the wrong fit.  We've seen a person trying to do the best job they can and just not being competent. But move them to a totally different job, and wow! They are flourishing and great stuff for the Kingdom is happening!  So "competent" can "masque" "wrong fit" and leadership is wise to make changes.

However, since many mission organizations do not quickly "let people go" (fire them, make them redundant, etc.) over lack of competence, in the end, with all the trainings we do, we train people that we'd never send folks to, simply because our philosophy is that a bit more training could help the incompetent folks perhaps do a better job since they are already trying to do it and their organization isn't stopping them even though they probably should.

We trust God's sovereignty here as He works through individuals, and occasionally, we are happily surprised to see growth. I am also well aware that there are some who know me and think I'm not competent, so at some point, while we may not enter into close partnership with some folks, we also trust God working in and through each one of us with our limitations.

4. Character - do they have character that matches their words? If we have an uneasy feeling about this, we'll pull back and wait until we see reality and evident fruit of poor character or Holy Spirit character.

For example, I watched Neal once interacting with another gentleman as we explored partnership with another couple together over dinner. I observed my husband more insecure and being verbally trod over, "schooled" by the other man.  At the end of the evening in the privacy of our room, I reflected to him what I observed and that it was clear to me we were not to enter into partnership with the other couple.

The reality was that neither of us couples were being pulled to be our best-- we clearly couldn't do that for the other couple either.  So we work in different parts of His harvest field, and we cheer for them from a distance.

5. Calling - is there a clear calling to partner together?

Usually, if one of these is not going well, we won't enter into a partnership.  As a husband-and-wife team, if one of us has an issue with a ministry partnership the other is engaged in, we'll ask for a Necessary Ending (5) analysis to see if/when we should end the partnership.

Humility is called for here, and a careful listening to the Holy Spirit on what we should do when things aren't going well, either before we've formally entered into a ministry partnership or are already in one and are considering ending it.

Either way, it is often a carefully walked path with wise advisors to know what we are called to in partnership with others for the sake of His Kingdom.

It requires tolerance for ambiguity - we can't know everything, as well as acceptance of knowing we'll disappoint others.  Some have a much harder time with ambiguity and loose ends.

It also requires time. This blog post is short in describing all of this, but it takes a lot of time. Neal and I have spent probably 80 hours simply discussing one specific partnership to try to understand them and ourselves, and what our response was and why we were reacting the way we were. We agonized over those folks. We tried to understand what was bothering us, why did one little statement bother us, was it us or was it them?  In the end, when it was that hard to figure things out, we knew that there would never be a partnership.

While we always want to be willing to work through conflict and difficult partnerships, it seems that some things just cannot be resolved on this side of Heaven in our human finiteness. But knowing our own boundaries and what His Spirit is calling us to helps us know how to navigate complex situations and keep pressing on in the race He has called us to.

Sources:
1. Daniel Wagner, Dante Disparte, Global Risk Agility and Decision Making
2. Oxford Dictionary Online, accessed 3.12.19
3. Ralph Winters, Perspectives of the World Christian Movement
4. Jim Collins, Good to Great
5. Henry Cloud, Necessary Endings, chapters 5 -7.




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