INTRODUCTION Organizations are constantly training new
Organizations are constantly training new employees. According to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (2015), 58.7 million Americans were hired for new jobs—not including job transfers
within an organization, promotions, or demotions—in 2014. On any given day, between three
and four percent of America’s working population is starting a new job (Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 2015). All of these new employees go through a period of organizational socialization.
Organizational socialization is the process by which individuals become insiders, or members of
an organization (Bauer, Bodner, Erdogan, Truxillo & Tucker 2007).
During organizational socialization, new members learn what is expected of them by
proactively seeking information and/or through socialization tactics (Bauer et al., 2007).
Organizational socialization tactics are the methods an organization uses to help a newcomer
become a full-fledged member of the organization. The tactics can vary in terms of message
content and the channel used to disseminate information. Typically, media-rich channels are
chosen to transfer know-how, while lean channels are chosen to transfer other information
(Murray & Peyrefitte, 2007). Part of the know-how and information disseminated to newcomers
is regarding their roles in the organization, but one of the most important aspects of socialization
is the process of instilling organizational values into new employees (Hart, 2012) so that
“employees’ goals, styles of work, and morals …match those of the organization” (Hess, 1993, p.
190).
Just like individuals, organizations have value systems. Sometimes these value systems
are the conglomerate values of all of the members and sometimes the values systems are
strategically chosen and enforced by the organization’s founders and management. When
individuals become new members of an organization, they learn the values and beliefs that the
organization upholds and that they will be expected to exhibit in the workplace
(ShockleyZalabak & Morley, 1989).
Organizations should be concerned with making sure that their employees espouse the
same values as the organization since the behavior of employees and the decision-making
process are guided by an individual’s culture and values (Hooper & Pye, 2002). The
phenomenon of employees sharing the same values as an organization is known as value
congruence. Employees with organizational value congruence are more likely to make decisions
that align with organizational goals (Hooper & Pye, 2002).
Organizations train new employees with the hope that the newcomers will internalize and
adopt the information given to them during training, including organizational values. Though
values-focused messages can be communicated to employees throughout their tenure,
organizations often start transferring information about organizational goals, values, and purpose
to newcomers during the socialization process (Hart, 2012).
Background and Statement of the Problem
In recent years, businesses have increasingly focused on building a positive brand. Some
scholars claim that an organization is granted a brand image by external stakeholders and their
expectations of and experiences with the organization, while other scholars insist that the internal
stakeholders of an organization create a brand identity through their promises and behavior
(Burmann, Hegner, & Riley, 2009). Burmann, Hegner, and Riley (2009) proposed a model that
combines these two views, suggesting that brand is a composite of both brand image and brand
identity. Brand identity refers to “the shared values, competencies, origin, vision,
communication style and behavior” of a group of people (Burmann, Hegner, & Riley, 2009, p.
115). The shared values of a brand identity typically originate with the founders of an
organization (Manohar & Pandit, 2013). Often called core values, they define the organization’s
purpose and philosophy (Manohar & Pandit, 2013) and form the basis from which employees
choose behavior and make decisions (Hooper & Pye, 2002).
Core values have been found to make a significant impact on the success and
effectiveness of organizations. Manohar and Pandit (2013) examined the core values of highly
innovative organizations and found that in these successful organizations, core values give
direction to organizational members and are practiced at all levels of the organization. Core
values can only give direction to organizational members if these members are aware of them.
This requires that the organization communicate organizational values to all members.
Not only are organizations faced with the task of communicating their core values to
employees, they should do so in a way that persuades the members to internalize and enact their
organizational values. Research has shown that if the values of the employees match the values
of the organization, the employees will have greater job satisfaction, organizational commitment
and job performance (Fitzgerald & Desjardins, 2004). One way organizations can increase the
likelihood their employees will have value congruence is to require employees to go through
training. A study conducted by Cable and Parsons in 2001 found that newcomers shifted their
values toward what they perceived to be the organization’s values during socialization.
Most organizations would agree that orientation programs during employee socialization
are an important component for teaching newcomers their organizational culture and values.
What is not known are the most effective methods organizations can use to communicate
organizational values during orientation to persuade newcomers to internalize those values.
Purpose of the Study and Research Questions
My research examined the methods a specific organization used to communicate
organizational values, and the reception of those values and methods of communication by
organizational newcomers. I explored this topic through a case study of the 2015 short-term
missions training for Adventist Frontier Missions (AFM). The purpose of my research was to
discover the effective ways AFM communicated organizational values during orientation; the test
of the communication’s effectiveness being whether newcomers were motivated to internalize
organizational values. This was determined by assessing the participants’ perception of
organizational communication of organizational values. The study revolved around the following
five research questions, with the first two as the primary questions.
Question #1: How does AFM communicate organizational values to newcomers during
orientation?
Question #2: How are trainees of the AFM training program persuaded to assimilate
organizational values?
Question #3: Do the values of AFM newcomers shift to reflect the organization’s values
over the course of training?
Question #4: What do attendees of the AFM training perceive to be the most effective
methods the organization uses to communicate core values?
Question #5: Which messages do AFM newcomers find to be effective in aiding their
understanding and internalization of organizational values?
Research Design and Theoretical Framework
Processes and relationships within organizations are complex with many variables, so a
holistic approach was best suited for my research. I chose to conduct a qualitative case study to
explore effective methods whereby AFM communicates organizational values to newcomers
during training and to explore the response of newcomers to those methods. The case study
design enabled me to collect richer details than I could have gathered using a quantitative
research study.
Multiple sources enhanced the reliability of my study. The sources included participant
observation, surveys, focus groups and interviews. The goal of the focus groups and interviews
was to discover the values participants learned over the course of the training as well as the
effective methods AFM used to communicate core values. I used the inductive method of
grounded theory to interpret the data collected.
The Case Study Organization
Adventist Frontier Missions (AFM) is a missionary organization. Incorporated in 1985,
the organization’s mission is to “establish indigenous Seventh-day Adventist church-planting
movements among unreached people groups” (About Us, 2015). Unreached people groups are
those that do not have access to the Christian Bible because of geographic, language, or political
barriers. The organization currently has projects with 50 different people groups in places like
Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania. Each project is based on a model of
crosscultural church planting that includes several stages: prepare, connect, introduce, renew,
cultivate, leadership development, and transfer and follow-up (AFM Church Planting Model,
2015). During the transfer and follow-up stage, the new church is transferred to the Seventh-day
Adventist church and ceases to be an AFM project.
Adventist Frontier Missions has a reputation for developing a high level of organizational
commitment from volunteers, who dedicate years of service to the organization. Short-term
missionaries spend one to three years working for the organization, while career missionaries
have been known to devote over 20 years to their mission project (Missionaries, 2015).
Before AFM volunteers begin their service they are required to undergo an intensive
training to ground them in organizational values and to give them skill sets for their service. One
of the main objectives of training is to develop leaders and multipliers, or the trainers of trainers
necessary for a movement (Training Philosophy, 2015). Training for career missionaries is three
months long, while training for short-term missionaries is four weeks. The training is split into
sections that cover many topics including, survival skills, servant leadership, language and
culture acquisition, and cultural issues in missions, but one of the main focuses of the trainers is
to teach trainees the organization’s values (L. Burn, personal communication, November 22,
2014).
The core values of AFM are reliance, integrity, humility, teamwork, and transparency
(About Us, 2015). Reliance refers to dependency on God; integrity refers to enduring results;
humility refers to dependent vulnerability in relationships; teamwork refers to harmonious
cooperation with organizational stakeholders as well as target people groups; and transparency
refers to communicating with clarity and candor (About Us, 2015).
Significance of the Study
Thousands of individuals are employed by or volunteer for nonprofit organizations.
According to the Urban Institute, there were 1.44 million nonprofits in 2012, and more than a
quarter of adults in the United States volunteered for a nonprofit organization in 2013
(McKeever & Pettijohn, 2014). Though management scholars in both the public and nonprofit
sectors recognize the importance of values in pursuing organizational goals (Peng, Pandey &
Pandey, 2015), nonprofit organizations are particularly values-oriented.
The results of my research can be useful to organizations that are concerned with
maintaining a particular culture of values. Knowing which organizational socialization tactics
and methods of communication are most beneficial for volunteer value assimilation could give
these organizations a basis from which to restructure their orientation programs. Since nonprofit
organizations have limited resources and are constantly trying to reduce costs, it follows that they
should seek the most efficient and effective methods for communicating core values during
orientation.
In addition to saving organizations time and money, improving their training methods
could impact an organization’s brand. Wentzel (2009) found that when individuals interact with
an employee who is considered an exemplar of the brand’s workforce, the employee’s behavior
is attributed to the brand as a brand characteristic. In other words, the way an employee
behaves—which is based on organizational values—affects the organization’s brand image. The
conclusion of my research offers insight on an effective way of communicating organizational
values that could be useful for organizations that aim to train employees to be positive brand
ambassadors.
Limitations and Delimitations
My study explores the methods of value transferal by AFM to new members during the
2015 short-term missions training; it does not describe the process whereby newcomers of all
organizations internalize organizational values.
The study only discusses value internalization over the course of the training; it does not
determine how long value congruence will last, nor how the participants will enact the
organizational values during their terms of service. I limited the study to current participants
based on the assumption that trainees would be more likely to forget specific organizational
socialization tactics if more time had transpired between their training and the research.
Another limitation is that I did not compare different types of socialization such as
individual information seeking and peer socialization to see how they affect the
valueassimilation process. I focused my study on organizational tactics and methods of
persuasion, and how newcomers perceived those methods.
Summary
Organizations often count on their employees to be brand ambassadors, acting on behalf
of the organization. Employees are likely to act on behalf of an organization if they have value
congruence with the organization. In order to ensure employees have value congruence,
organizations communicate their core values to employees during organizational socialization.
Research has been conducted on the process of organizational socialization and the role of
individual information seeking during socialization, but there is a gap of knowledge around the
best methods of communicating organizational values during socialization. The current
qualitative case study used observations, surveys, interviews and focus groups to identify what
organizational communication and persuasion methods trainees perceived as effective during the
2015 Short-Term Missions Training. The results of this study should be beneficial to AFM as
well as other organizations that wish to implement an effective values-based training.
The following chapter reviews literature and theories surrounding organizational values,
organizational socialization tactics, and persuasion. Subsequent chapters describe the methods
and procedures followed in this study, the results obtained, and their application.
Definition of Terms
Aspirated values: Values that members of an organization believe should be espoused by the
organization’s management.
Attributed values: Values that members of an organization regard as belonging to the
organization.
Espoused values: Values that are used by an organization’s management in formal verbal and
written communication. (Synonyms: core values, organizational values)
Organizational culture: The collective values, beliefs and behavior of members of an
organization.
Organizational values: values that are either embedded in or intended for an organization’s
culture.
Socialization: The process by which newcomers to an organization make the transition from
being outsiders to insiders.
Socialization tactics: The methods by which an organization expects its newcomers to go through
the socialization process.
Value congruence: When an individual’s values match the values espoused by an organization.
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Organizations have personalities in the same way individuals do, made up of their
work ethic, codes of behavior, sense of humor, and value systems. Values are central to
several “organizational phenomena including identity, culture, person-organization fit and
socialization” (Bourne & Jenkins, 2013, p. 495). Since congruence with organizational
values has been linked with increased job satisfaction and organizational commitment of
employees (Fitzgerald & Desjardins, 2004; Shockley-Zalabak & Morley, 1989),
organizations have begun to emphasize core values.
One of the key moments in which organizations communicate their core values to
employees is during organizational socialization. Since organizations deal with limited
resources, they should strategically plan their newcomer orientations to include the most
effect methods of communicating their core values so as to benefit from employee value
congruence. The following literature review seeks to describe organizational socialization
and discover effective methods for communicating organizational values. I will begin by
exploring the topic of organizational culture and values. Then I will discuss the literature
surrounding organizational socialization and socialization tactics. Lastly I will review
theories of persuasion.
Organizational Culture and Values
The personality of an organization is known as organizational culture.
Organizational culture is comprised of multiple layers including visible artifacts and values
(Schein, 1984). Visible artifacts are the aspects of organizational culture that are observable,
such as office layout, uniforms, and motivational décor; and values (Schein, 1984). Schein
described two levels of values: assumptions, which are unquestioned, taken-for-granted
values such as progress is inevitable or businesses should be profitable; and debatable,
espoused values, which are the concepts about the organization’s goals and principles that
guide organizational behavior, such as quality, promptness, and honesty (Schein, 1984). An
organization’s values often affect its visible artifacts. For example, a company might display
a clock in the conference room because it values efficiency, or a company might develop a
logo depicting a helping hand because it values humanitarianism.
In 1973, Rokeach defined two categories of values: terminal values, which are the
preferred end-states of existence, and instrumental values, which are preferred modes of
conduct (as cited in Stormer and Devine, 2008). These values can be evidenced in
organizations in several ways. Bourne and Jenkins (2013) describe four different types of
organizational values: espoused values, attributed values, shared values, and aspirated
values. Espoused values are the values that are used by an organization’s management in
formal verbal and written communication; attributed values are the values that members of
an organization ascribe to the organization; shared values are the aggregate system of
values held by an organization’s members; and aspirated values are the values that
members of an organization believe should be espoused by an organization (Bourne &
Jenkins, 2013). Bourne and Jenkins (2013) argue that these types of values can be
combined into a single framework of organizational values in which values are measured
on two continuums: whether they are social or individual, and whether they are
embedded or intended. An organization’s espoused values fall on the intended and social
sides of the continuums (Bourne & Jenkins, 2013).
Organizations will often state their espoused values in a mission statement or list of
core values (Hooper & Pye, 2002). But it is not enough for organizations to simply
compile a list of their espoused values. Research suggests that organizations should be
intentional about communicating their values to employees (Fitzgerald & Desjardins,
2004). For instance, a study of organizational values in a healthcare organization found
that employees in departments that clearly and consistently communicated values were
more involved in the organization and more likely to participate in organizational
decision-making than employees in departments that did not clearly and consistently
communicate values (Fitzgerald & Desjardins, 2004).
Value Congruence
In addition to communicating core values, it is beneficial for organizations to
motivate their employees to adopt organizational values. When an employee adopts
organizational values, the organization has the potential to benefit both internally and
externally. An internal benefit is that employees who possess value congruence with an
organization—meaning that they share the same set of values—have higher job satisfaction
and organizational commitment (Fitzgerald & Desjardins, 2004). An external benefit,
identified through a series of four studies conducted by Sirianni, Bitner, Brown, and
Mandel (2013), is that when employee behaviors are aligned with brand positioning—or
espoused values—customers respond positively to an organization’s brand.
Employees are representatives of an organization. Just like a country expects its
ambassadors to clearly represent the country’s culture and interests, organizations desire
that their employees be brand champions by clearly representing the organization’s
service and values (Lohndorf & Diamantopoulos, 2014). It is important to note that
enacting an organization’s values does not mean that an employee holds the same values
system as the organization. Research on facades of conformity show that individuals can
hold both personal and organizational values, and choose whether to express or suppress
their personal values (Stormer & Devine, 2008). It is not beneficial either to organizations
or individuals when they suppress their personal values because it causes the individuals
to feel psychological discomfort and could lead them to participate in behavior that
sabotages the organization (Stormer & Devine, 2008).
As the previous studies indicate, it is in the best interest of organizations to
employ individuals whose values match those espoused by the organization. This
compatibility between individuals and the organizations for which they work is known as
person-organization fit (Cable & Parsons, 2001) and is measured by calculating
employee-organization value congruence (Chatman, 1989). McDonald and Gandz (1992)
observed that organizations can achieve person-organization fit either by hiring
employees with value congruence, or by teaching employees organizational values. But
regardless of how closely an individual’s values match those of an organization when they
are hired, all newcomers should be made aware of organizational values during
organizational socialization.
Organizational Socialization Tactics
Organizational socialization is “the process by which newcomers make the
transition from being organizational outsiders to being insiders” (Bauer et al., 2007, p.
707). Many organizational socialization theories are based on uncertainty reduction
theory (Mignerey, Rubin & Gorden, 1995). The idea is that new employees seek to reduce
their uncertainty in order to fit in to their new job environment and reduce their levels of
anxiety and stress, and organizations seek to reduce newcomer’s uncertainty so that they
become fully functioning and productive members of the organization.
There are different strategies that organizations can use to help newcomers reduce
their uncertainty. Van Maanen and Schein (as cited in Bauer et al., 2007) were among the
first theorists to describe these strategies in their 1979 model of organizational
socialization tactics. In their meta-analytic review of organizational socialization
research, Bauer et al. (2007) describe Van Maanen and Schein’s six dimensions of
socialization: collective—socialization with other newcomers vs. individual—
socialization separate from other newcomers; formal—newcomers trained off the job vs.
informal—newcomers trained on the job with other employees; fixed—specific timetable
vs. variable—no timetable; sequential—socialization through organized phases vs.
random—random organization of socialization; investiture—feedback from insiders that
affirms or disaffirms identity vs. divestiture—no feedback; and serial—help from insiders vs.
disjunctive—without help from insiders (Bauer et al., 2007).
In 1986, Jones (as cited in Saks & Ashforth, 1997) split the dimensions into two
categories: institutionalized socialization tactics—collective, formal, sequential, fixed, serial,
and investiture—“encourage newcomers to passively accept preset roles, thus reproducing
the status quo,” whereas individualized socialization tactics—individual, informal, random,
variable, disjunctive and divestiture—“encourage newcomers to challenge the status quo and
develop their own approaches to their roles” (p. 236). Jones further suggested that the
institutionalized socialization tactics could be simplified into three categories: context—
including both collective and formal, content—including both sequential and fixed, and
social—including both serial and investiture (as cited in Bauer et al., 2007; and Saks,
Uggerslev & Fassina, 2007).
Institutionalized socialization tactics have been shown to increase employees’
organizational commitment and job satisfaction (Bauer et al., 2007; Saks, Uggerslev &
Fassina, 2007), while individualized socialization tactics have been shown to increase
employee’s innovative role orientation (Allen & Meyer, 1990). A concept closely linked to
individualized socialization tactics is employee information-seeking or sense-making.
Research has shown that individuals who participate in proactive socialization behaviors
will more quickly and effectively become socialized into an organization (Saks &
Ashforth, 1997). But as organizations do not have control over the extent of their
employees’ information seeking, institutionalized socialization tactics are of more interest
to the field of organizational communication.
Message Content During New Employee Orientation
Though both individualized and institutionalized socialization tactics can help an
individual reduce uncertainty and adjust to a new organization, a study by Klein and
Weaver (2000) showed that individuals who attended an organization’s optional orientation
had higher levels of organizational knowledge and commitment than those individuals who
opted out of the orientation. Organizational knowledge includes information about
performance proficiency, people, politics, language, organizational goals and values, and
history (Chao, O’Leary-Kelly, Wolf, Klein, & Gardner, 1994). But the main two categories
of information transferred to newcomers during orientation are organizational roles and
organizational goals/values.
Katz and Kahn, in their 1978 study, state that the most important information a
newcomer receives during socialization is regarding his or her organizational roles (as
cited in Chao et al., 1994), while Kim, Cable and Kim (2005) assert that the most
important information a newcomer receives during socialization is regarding organizational
values. Regardless of which content area is most important for employee adjustment, a
study by Hart in 2012 found that the organizational messages most emphasized by
organizational management during orientation deal with organizational goals and values.
I agree with Kim, Cable and Kim (2005) that the most important messages
transferred to newcomers during orientation involve organizational values because an
individuals’ behavior within an organization is grounded in the organization’s culture and
values (Fitzgerald & Desjardins, 2004). Though an organization can train an individual how
to respond in predictable situations, the true test of an individual’s alignment with an
organization is whether, in unpredictable situations, the individual responds in ways the
organization would endorse.
Value-Transfer During Socialization
I have described organizational values and the main theories of organizational
socialization. But how do individuals learn organizational values during socialization and
what effective methods can organizations use to communicate their core values?
Cable and Parsons (2001) found that newcomers were more likely to report positive person-
organization fit—which is based on value congruence—if they were socialized using the
sequential and fixed (content tactics), and serial and investiture (social tactics) socialization
tactics. Context socialization tactics did not affect person-organization fit (Cable & Parsons,
2001). The study also found that newcomers’ values shifted towards their perceptions of
their organizations’ values when they experienced institutional socialization tactics (Cable
& Parsons, 2001).
Though some research has been done concerning institutionalized organizational
socialization tactics, more research should be done regarding the specific socialization
strategies that facilitate learning (Saks & Ashforth, 1997). Encouraging value adoption
during socialization is more than simply transferring knowledge of an organization’s core
values; it involves persuading the newcomers to internalize and enact organizational
values. I will next explore methods of persuasion and suggest some possible methods that
might be effective ways to communicate organizational values during newcomer
socialization.
Motivation to Learn
Since organizations communicate their core values to employees with the
expectation that the employees internalize and enact them, it seems logical that a strategic
plan for communicating organizational values should be based on the theory of planned
behavior. Developed by Fishbein and Ajzen in 1975, the theory predicts that “the more one
intends to engage in a particular behavior, the more likely should be its performance”
(Armitage & Conner, 1999, p. 35). Intentions are affected by an individual’s positive or
negative evaluations of the behavior, whether they believe the behavior is desired by
another individual and their relationship to that individual, and how difficult they perceive
participation in the behavior to be (as cited in Armitage & Conner, 1999). Applying the
theory of planned behavior to the training of organizational values, a newcomer’s
intentions to adopt organizational values would be influenced by how positively they
viewed the organization’s espoused values, whether they felt pressure to assimilate into the
organization’s culture, whether the pressure was coming from their superior or someone
they wanted to please, and the ease with which they could enact the organization’s values.
Similar to the theory of planned behavior, Noe and Schmitt’s definition of the
motivation to learn as “specific desire on the part of the trainee to learn the content of a
training program” (as cited in Wiethoff, 2004, p. 266) refers to newcomer attitudes
towards organizational training efforts. Motivation to learn has been shown to positively
affect learning and the behavior outcomes of training (Quinones, 1995). Organizations
can manipulate newcomers’ motivation to learn by appealing to their belief in the
newcomers’ ability to reach goals (Eden & Kinnar, 1991). Applying motivation to learn to
the training of organizational values, newcomers might be motivated to learn
organizational values if their trainer were to communicate absolute confidence in their
ability to internalize organizational values and succeed in the organization.
According to the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion, individuals are more
likely to put energy into thinking about and processing information when they perceive an
issue to be important or affecting them in some way (Cacioppo & Petty, 1984). Applying
the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion to values training, an organization might
stress the importance of reflecting organizational values and how it will affect newcomers
on an individual, social, or organizational level. Similarly, social learning theory suggests
that individuals want to act in ways that will result in a reward (as cited in Gruys et al.,
2008), so organizations might institute a reward system and emphasize it during
orientation.
Summary
Organizational culture and values can be linked to the success of organizations
(Hooper & Pye, 2012; Manohar & Pandit, 2013). In order to transfer their culture to new
generations of employees, organizations must communicate their values (Fitzgerald &
Desjardins, 2004). This is often done during newcomer orientation. Research has shown
that individuals who attend orientation have a greater understanding of organizational
knowledge than individuals who do not attend orientation (Klein & Weaver, 2000). As
such, it is valuable for organizations to use orientations to persuade newcomers to
internalize and enact organizational values. More research is needed to determine the
effective methods organizations can use to persuade newcomers to internalize organizational
values. This information would be useful for the strategic planning of newcomer
orientations, allowing organizations to make the most effective use of their limited
resources.
The following chapter provides an in-depth description of the methods and
procedures followed in this study. Then, the results of the study will be described and
discussed.
CHAPTER 3
METHODS
As mentioned in chapter one, I conducted a qualitative case study of AFM.
Qualitative research is the “nonmathematical process of interpretation, carried out for the
purpose of discovering concepts and relationships in raw data and then organizing these into
a theoretical explanatory scheme” (Strauss & Corbin, 1998, p. 11). I chose a qualitative
method for this research because my topic involves organizations, which are complex
processes involving multiple interactions between members at the individual, group, and
organizational levels, and in both the objective and subjective dimensions (Owen & Dietz,
2012). In order to get a holistic view of the effective methods of communicating and
persuading newcomers to internalize organizational values during onboarding, I needed to
tap into the experiences of both the senders and receivers without isolating a set of
predetermined variables. I needed an emic rather than an etic focus. I decided that the
qualitative approach was my best option.
The qualitative design I chose was a case study. Case studies are an appropriate
method to use when a researcher searches to answer questions about how and why (Baxter
& Jack, 2008). To do so, the researcher explores a real-life, contemporary context or
setting “over time, through detailed, in-depth, data collection involving multiple sources
of information” (Creswell, 2013, p. 97). Case studies focus on a specific context or setting
because they are based on the belief that contextual conditions are relevant to the
phenomenon under study (Baxter & Jack, 2008). The context in which organizational
communication occurs is essential to my research questions because organizations are
complex systems with many variables.
“Cases are units of analysis” (Patton, 2002, p. 447). The unit of analysis I chose for
this study was the onboarding program of a specific organization. Compiling an indepth
description and analysis of a single bounded case to understand and illustrate a specific
issue is known as an instrumental case study (Creswell, 2013). The instrumental case
study afforded me the ability to gather richer information than I would have been able to
gather if I were comparing multiple cases.
Research Questions
The issue my instrumental case study dealt with was the persuasive
communication of organization values, and the bounded case in which I explored it was
the 2015 AFM training program. The purpose of my study was to examine the methods
whereby organizational values were communicated to AFM newcomers during
socialization, and to discover which methods were perceived by newcomers to be
effective. I based my research on the following questions:
Question #1: How does AFM communicate organizational values to newcomers
during orientation?
Question #2: How are trainees of the AFM training program persuaded to assimilate
organizational values?
In addition, I asked the following secondary questions:
Question #3: Do the values of AFM newcomers shift to reflect the organization’s
values over the course of training?
Question #4: What do attendees of the AFM training perceive to be the most
effective methods the organization uses to communicate core values?
Question #5: Which messages do AFM newcomers find to be effective in aiding their
understanding and internalization of organizational values?
Setting and Participants
I used purposeful sampling to select AFM as the case study organization. Purposeful
sampling is choosing a case for study because it is “information rich and illuminative”
offering useful manifestations of the phenomenon of interest (Patton, 2002,
p. 40). Purposeful sampling was a logical method for me to use because the focus of
qualitative research is on in-depth understanding. Adventist Frontier Missions was an
excellent choice for my case study because its length of training allowed for an
information-rich longitudinal study of newcomer value-assimilation during socialization.
Another reason AFM made a good case was that I had been told that the organization’s
training was grounded in values, making the information I would gather illuminative to
the topic.
Adventist Frontier Missions holds two trainings each summer. The career
missions training, for missionaries dedicating their life to service, lasts three months. The
short-term missions training, for missionaries dedicating 1-2 years of service, lasts one
month. During the summer of 2015, only three couples/families—six adults—registered
for the career missions training. In contrast, 16 individuals registered for the short-term
missions training. I used purposive sampling to select the short-term training as the sample
for my case study because it offered a larger sample.
As Marshall (1996) wrote, “an appropriate sample size for a qualitative study is one
that adequately answers the research question” (p. 523). I believed that the trainees who
were interested in participating in my research would put effort into understanding and
interpreting their own behavior, and therefore be ideal participants in my research.
Therefore I opened up my research to all of the trainees, asking that only those who were
interested participate. This process of using the most accessible subjects is known as
convenience sampling (Marshall, 1996).
Fifteen trainees consented to participate in my study. Eight of them had previously
served as a short-term missionary; seven of them were new to mission work. The majority
of them were young adults; ten were in the 18-24 age range, three were in the 25-29 age
range, one was in the 30-34 age range, and one participant was in the 40-44 age range.
Eight of the participants were students, and seven had already graduated into the work
force. Nine of the participants were female; six were male. Eleven of the participants
were from the United States, three from Europe, and one from Canada.
Instrumentation
Qualitative case studies rely on multiple sources of data (Creswell, 2013). The
sources of data I relied on were surveys, participant observations, focus groups and oneon-
one interviews with participants. The triangulation, or process of corroborating evidence
from different sources, strengthens the reliability of my research (Patton, 2002).
Before the start of the short-term missions training I used the responsive
interviewing model to interview the AFM Training Director. The purpose of the interview
was to get a more comprehensive understanding of AFM’s values and to discover the
methods that trainers use to communicate organizational values during training.
“Responsive interviewing emphasizes the importance of working with interviewees as
partners rather than treating them as objects of research” (Rubin & Rubin,
2012, p. xv). Using the responsive interviewing model allowed me to be flexible
(Creswell, 2013). I started the interview with a pre-determined set of questions (see
Appendix A), but asked further questions based on the Training Director’s responses. For
example, the Training Director described the process AFM went through in choosing their
five core values. This led me to query whether the values were attributed or aspirated.
Surveys
On the first day of training I administered a demographic and values survey (see
Appendix B) to study participants. The values portion of the survey instructed participants
to circle their top 7 values from a list of 20 instrumental values. I chose to include
instrumental values in this survey because the five core values espoused by AFM are
instrumental values, defined as preferred modes of conduct. The instrumental values I
listed on the demographic and values survey included the five core values of AFM—
reliance, integrity, humility, teamwork, and transparency—and a modified version of the
18 instrumental values identified by Rockeach in 1973 (as cited in Karacaer, Gohar,
Aygun & Sayin, 2009) and used by Karacaer et al (2009) in their study on auditor values. I
included ambition, broad-mindedness, capability, cheerfulness, cleanliness, courage,
helpfulness, imagination, independence, intellectuality, logic, obedience, politeness,
responsibility, and self-control in my instrument. The values from Rockeach’s list that I
did not include were honesty, forgiveness, and love. These instrumental values were
excluded because of their strong religious connotations.
At the conclusion of the training, participants completed a final values survey (see
Appendix C). In this survey, I again instructed participants to circle their top 7 values
from a list of 20 instrumental values. I also asked for whether participants felt their values
had changed over the course of the training and what they perceived to be the best
methods AFM used to communicate values.
All fifteen trainees filled out the survey administered at the beginning of the
training. Only eleven trainees filled out the survey administered at the end of the training,
so the data used to determine whether trainee values shifted over the course of the
training was limited to those eleven participants.
Focus Groups & Interviews
In addition to the surveys administered at the beginning and end of training, I
conducted focus groups and interviews with study participants, asking them about AFM
values and how they were communicated. Whereas the surveys provided succinct
information, the interviews allowed me to gain an in-depth perspective of the participant’s
experience. The purpose of a qualitative interview is to “explore in detail the
experiences, motives, and opinions of others and to learn to see the world from
perspectives other than [the researcher’s] own” (Rubin & Rubin, 2012, p. 3).
I did not have time to give individual interviews to each participant, but I did not
want to exclude any participant’s experience. To solve this issue, I held focus groups.
There ended up being three focus groups and two one-on-one interviews. Each focus group
had between 4-7 participants. I created an interview/focus group protocol (see Appendix
D) to ensure consistency in the lines of inquiry I pursued with each person/group (Patton,
2002). In order to maintain participant confidentiality, I refer to all participant responses
from the focus groups and interviews by the focus group or interview number. For
example, if a participant named Amanda had participated in Focus Group 2, I would
replace the name Amanda in all research documents with the name Focus Group 2.
Observation
“Observational data, especially participant observation, permit the evaluation
researcher to understand a program or treatment to an extent not entirely possible using
only the insights of others obtained through interviews” (Patton, 2002, p. 22-23). The
instrument of choice for the qualitative researcher is the human observer, so I attended the
short-term missions training as a participant as observer. A participant as observer
participates in the activity on location as opposed to observing from a distance (Creswell,
2013). While observing, I took notes (see Appendix E) regarding what was communicated
to trainees. Each evening I used these notes to write a journal entry synthesizing my
experience during that day’s training (see Appendix G).
Procedures
After AFM gave me organizational consent to study the 2015 training sessions, I
scheduled an interview with the Training Director. During the interview I asked the
Training Director to identify the values of AFM and to describe how he communicates those
values to trainees during training.
On July 14, I met with the six attendees of the AFM career missions training and pilot
tested my Demographic & Values Survey, Final Values Survey, and interview/focus group
questions. There was one interview/focus group question the career missionaries found
confusing. Based on this feedback, I changed the question.
The short-term missions training began on July 20. Before the Training Director
officially started training, I gave a presentation to the trainees, explaining my presence as
participant observer. I also offered trainees the opportunity to participate in my research,
and detailed the time commitment involved; participants would complete a 10-minute
survey at the start of training, and at the end of training. They would also sign up for a
one-hour focus group or interview, taking place during the last two weeks of training.
Trainees were assured that there were no known risks to participation in the study, and that
I would ensure their confidentiality throughout the course of the study. I requested that
AFM trainers and staff step out of the room during my presentation so that the trainees
would not feel pressured to participate in my research. Directly following my presentation,
those trainees that agreed to participate signed informed consent forms (see Appendix F)
and filled out the Demographic & Values Survey (see Appendix B).
I would have liked to participate in every aspect of training. But after interviewing
the Training Director, I learned that the training includes the immersion experience of
living together, and I was not able to participate in that experience. I attended the training
classroom experience from July 20-August 14. Six hours a day; Monday through Friday
9:00-12:00 and 2:00-5:00. During this time I took notes about what the trainers said and
how they communicated. Each time a new trainer arrived, I explained the purpose of my
research and had the trainer sign an informed consent (see appendix F) before taking notes.
If I did not have a trainer’s informed consent I still attended the training session, but did
not take notes. Each evening I wrote my observations in a journal (see Appendix G),
giving special attention to values that were either mentioned explicitly or implied. I looked
for examples of methods the trainers used to communicate values as well as my experience
and reactions to the trainers’ communication methods and messages.
After two weeks of training I requested that participants sign up for focus groups
or interviews. The majority of the participants preferred focus groups. I ended up with
three focus groups and two interviews. The focus groups and interviews took place
during the one-hour period before lunch, but because training sessions often went late, the
interview/focus group time was limited. Each focus group and interview lasted between
25-35 minutes. Though I was able to ask all of the planned questions, there was not
enough time to ask follow-up questions.
The focus groups and interviews took place in private rooms in the AFM Training
Center so that other trainees or AFM staff would not overhear them. Before asking the
first question, I reminded the participants that their answers were confidential. Since I
recorded the focus groups and interviews, I requested that trainees not mention specific
names of other trainees, but assured them that if they slipped up, I would edit names out of
the audio files. I also told the trainees that they were not required to answer all questions,
but that they should speak up if they had an answer or opinion.
August 13 was the final day of formal training. I requested that the Training Director
exit the room when I handed out the Final Values Survey (see Appendix C) to participants.
At this point, I reminded trainees that participation in my research was optional. The survey
took about five minutes to complete.
Part of the case study procedure includes assembling the raw data (Patton, 2002).
After I collected the data, I compiled all the Demographic & Values Survey and Final
Values survey results into a table (see Appendix N). I replaced the participant names with
their interview or focus group number in order to maintain confidentiality. Then I
transcribed the focus groups and interviews (see Appendices H through M), editing out any
trainee names mentioned in the conversation. Once all of the interviews/focus groups were
transcribed, I scrubbed my journal, replacing all trainee names with their corresponding
interview/focus group number. My data was ready for analysis.
Data Analysis
The theoretical framework that guided my data analysis was grounded theory. Grounded
theory seeks to generate or discover a model or theory to explain a process and provide a
framework for further research (Creswell, 2013). But first, an individual case or cases must
be constructed “without pigeon holing or categorizing” them (Patton, 2002, p. 57). “The
initial focus is on full understanding of individual cases before those unique cases are
combined or aggregated thematically” (Patton, 2002, p. 57). Once a case is fully
understood, it can be analyzed for patterns and themes. The rationale behind
caseconstruction before applying theoretical analysis is that phenomena are influenced by
context, thus understanding the phenomena requires data to be grounded in the specific
cases and contexts (Patton, 2002).
The first step in constructing the case for analysis was synthesizing the interview with
the AFM Training Director to provide a picture of AFM values and the rationale and methods
AFM trainers use to communicate those values to trainees. This information provided
background and supplemented my observations and the results of the interview/focus groups.
Constructing a case record requires organizing and classifying the data (Patton,
2002). I read the interview/focus group transcripts, and observation journal both literally and
reflexively (Schutt, 2012). When reading the transcripts and journal literally, I focused on the
literal content, identifying the values that were communicated and the methods that were used
to communicate them. When reading the transcripts and journal reflexively, I focused on my
own interpretation of the data, looking for themes, patterns and regularities. I classified the
data—using colored pens to code the data—into four areas: a) the values that were mentioned
or implied, b) why the values were important or motivation for learning them, c) The methods
by which the values were communicated or learned, and d) specific phrases or metaphors that
were taught in training that were repeated in interviews or my journal.
Some of my research questions dealt with the participants’ reactions, which had the
potential to be varied and subjective. There were a couple deviant responses. I included
these responses in the study because all responses represented an equally valid participant
reaction to organizational communication and my research would be incomplete were I to
leave anything out. In order to limit researcher bias, I did not eliminate deviant responses.
After I classified the data, I listed the values mentioned in each instrument and
counted the number of times each value appeared. Similarly, I listed the communication
methods mentioned in each instrument and counted the number of times each method
appeared. I compared the communication methods participants mentioned in the Final Values
Survey to those I observed and to those participants mentioned during the interviews/focus
groups.
Finally, I compared the results of Demographic and Values Survey with the results
of the Final Values Survey to see whether participant values shifted to reflect
organizational values over the course of the training. I compared the values participants
claimed to hold at the beginning of training with the values those same participants
claimed to hold at the end of training. I also compared the values participants claimed to
hold—both at the beginning and at the end of training—with AFM’s core values. Lastly, I
compared AFM’s core values with the values participants attributed to AFM. All of these
comparisons gave me a picture of the shift in trainees’ understanding and adoption of
AFM values over the course of the training.
Summary
I used a case study of AFM to examine effective methods whereby organizational
values can be communicated to newcomers during socialization. The data for my research
was collected through participant observation, surveys, and interviews/focus groups. The
next chapter describes the results of the research, followed by a discussion of the findings.
CHAPTER 4
RESULTS
Training or orientation programs during employee socialization are one of the first
introductions newcomers have to organizational culture and values. During training,
organizations are faced with persuading newcomers to internalize and enact
organizational values. But the best methods organizations can use to communicate
organizational values during orientation have not yet been identified. I conducted a case
study of the 2015 AFM short-term training to see what methods trainees found most
effective.
AFM Values
When I asked the Training Director how AFM trainers communicate values during
training, he described how the organization demonstrates core values on a day-today
basis. For example, requiring that career missionaries spend 12 years in the mission field
demonstrates integrity, and emphasizing the importance of student missionaries to spend
three months learning culture and language at the beginning of their mission highlights
the importance of humility. The Training Director believes that core values define the
culture of an organization. “Core values describe who you are. And the greater
effectiveness with which they do, the more powerful they are” (Appendix H).
The values exist independently of whether they are identified or how they are labeled.
Adventist Frontier Missions has labeled five core values, known as behavioral
values: reliance, integrity, humility, teamwork, and transparency (About Us, 2015).
Reliance describes an attitude of depending on God for resources, strategy, and success;
integrity refers to a code of honesty and truth in order to achieve enduring results; humility
refers to an attitude of teachability and dependent vulnerability in relationships; teamwork
refers to building cohesive teams with healthy relationships that work well together and
with others; and transparency refers to communicating with clarity and candor (About Us,
2015). The Training Director views these values as essential to the success of the
organization; reliance is the basis on which the other values are built, and integrity is the
end goal of the organization. How one gets from reliance to integrity is through a culture
of humility, teamwork, and transparency.
In addition to the core values, there are values implicit in AFM’s mission
statement. The mission of AFM is to “establish indigenous Seventh-day Adventist
church-planting movements among unreached people groups.” The implied values—
identified by the Training Director—are: a pioneering spirit, cultural sensitivity, support
of Seventh-day Adventist theology and values, movements/multiplication, and connecting
with people groups outside of the reach of the gospel.
AFM Training Learning Environments
AFM’s mission statement is pivotal to their training. The Training Director
explained, “If you were to take our mission statement and eliminate all the adjectives it
says: to establish movements among people groups. At the very core is movements. So all
of our teaching, then, focuses around how do we shape people or how do we equip people
to do that?” The trainers try to equip the trainees to establish movements by using two
different didactic environments: dialogical learning takes place in the classroom, and
immersion learning takes place outside of the classroom in the way the trainees form a
team, work and live together.
The Classroom
The classroom is a large room in Morgan Hall at the AFM Training Center in
Berrien Springs, Michigan. Classes run a minimum of six hours each day for four weeks.
Rather than focus on information, the classes focus on transformation. The three main
trainers each specialized in a training area: one on languaculture acquisition, one on
worldview and cultural issues, and one on discipleship. Though they followed a master
schedule and covered specific points, in general the trainers led discussion-based classes.
The trainers used different techniques to spark conversation; sometimes a trainer would
lead the class in a game or activity, tell a story, or show a short video. But the trainer
would then invite the trainees to reflect on the experience and share what they had
learned. Often, the trainer told a story without giving the moral or message, instead
asking trainees to tell him what the story meant and what they might have done
differently in the situation. Another role storytelling played was highlighting previous
mistakes the trainers had learned from. A trainer would tell a story about a mistake or bad
judgment he made in the past and describe the consequences of his actions. Trainees
were expected to learn from the trainers’ mistakes and draw conclusions about
appropriate behavior from these stories.
The classes were educational and interesting. AFM trainers believe in “presenting
truth in a fashion most likely to be understood, practiced, remembered by our audience, and
easily shared by them with their friends” (Training Philosophy, 2015). This philosophy
shaped the entertaining and interactive teaching style of the trainers. They were good
storytellers, using vocalics and gestures to accentuate their messages, and often augmented
their lessons with diagrams, illustrations, songs, or other attentiongetters. For example, one
trainer used three buckets to illustrate different classifications of behavior.
To ensure that trainees paid attention and understood concepts, trainers asked for
feedback. Different trainers went about this differently. One trainer handed composition
booklets to the trainees and requested that they journal each day to summarize, reflect,
and apply the most important things they learned. The trainer read the journals and wrote
feedback for the trainees. Another trainer distributed blank t-shirts to the trainees,
requesting that they decorate the t-shirt with concepts learned in class. The classroom was
a relaxed learning environment. As one participant put it, “They’re very interactive with
us. It’s not a classroom; we go to classes, but it doesn’t feel like a classroom. It feels like
a community” (Focus Group 2).
The Simulator
Learning does not end when trainees exit the classroom. Rather, trainees view the
way trainees live and work with each other as an essential aspect of training called the
Simulator. They “see training as an immersion experience. Once you arrive—whether it’s
at morning, night or noon—everything you experience is designed to embed these values”
(Training Director Interview).
Right across the parking lot from Morgan Hall is Mission Inn, the dormitory
where trainees eat, sleep and spend much of their time when they are not in the
classroom. Much of their Simulator experience takes place in Mission Inn. At the
beginning of training, the trainers set up leadership roles for trainees, such as being in
charge of multimedia, cooking, cleanup, a social gathering, etc. In addition, the trainers
requested that trainees practice what they learned in the classroom with each other. For
example, trainees were taught a specific format for resolving issues and group
decisionmaking. They were then asked to schedule this type of team discussion outside
of the classroom.
When trainers asked for trainees to do something outside of classroom, they held
trainees responsible to follow through. For example, the trainers instituted a penalty of 10
push-ups per minute that a trainee arrived late to the classroom. Instead of acting as drill
sergeant and watching over the penalty, the trainers told trainees to keep track of their
time and do the pushups on their own time. Several times I saw trainees doing pushups
during free time because they had arrived late to class. Once, a trainer was with me, and
he thanked the trainees for being accountable for their penalty.
One of the simulator training experiences was a one-hour coaching conversation
with the Training Director, scheduled during the free hour right before lunch or dinner.
During this conversation, the Training Director asked three questions: a) what do you want
to talk about? b) what are some of your strengths and c) what are some areas in which you
would like to grow? The coaching conversation had three goals: a) to prepare the trainees
to invest in others; b) to model the core values c) And to make the trainees aware that they
are responsible for managing the backside of their strengths, or their weaknesses.
The Crucible
“The end of the first week of training culminates in an outdoor adventure survival
weekend designed to push the trainees to their mental, physical, spiritual and social
limits” (Student & Short Term Missions Training, 2015). The survival weekend is called
the Crucible, and is a combination of dialogic learning and immersion learning. According
to the Training Director, between 50-70% of the values learning occurs over the course of
these 72 hours.
The Crucible has earned a reputation, and quite a bit of anticipation surrounds the
event. Part of the anticipation centers around the secret nature of the Crucible. People
who have gone through the Crucible experience are not supposed to talk about it. What
happens at Crucible stays at Crucible. The reason for this secrecy is that in order to
achieve the environment of dependency and vulnerability that the trainers attempt to foster
through the Crucible, there needs to be an element of surprise. In order to respect AFM’s
training efforts, I will only give a general description of the Crucible.
The Crucible is designed to be an immersion experience that simulates the frontier
mission experience (Training FAQs, 2015). Trainers acted in specific ways in order to
simulate aspects of the mission field and to elicit an emotional response from the trainees.
Through various exercises, trainees were forced out of their comfort zones until they hit a
wall physically, emotionally, or mentally. Sometimes the crash was public; sometimes it
was private. Public crashes were dealt with as a group. “We’re watching the human
interaction, we’re watching how people hold up, we’re watching emotional responses,
how we communicate, and then we’re coaching them through that. There’s a lot of
impromptu training that’s taking place in the Crucible,” the Training Director explained.
That training took the form of coaching. Conversation was a big part of the Crucible. Each
activity was followed by a debriefing session. “We have space that we create, but it’s not
the space, it’s really the conversation around it that’s the classroom,” the Training
Director emphasized, “It’s in the spaces between when the real learning is taking place.”
The trainers believe that “mistakes are some of our best teachers. We encourage
our teams to fail safely and not to waste their mistakes” (Training Philosophy, 2015). The
Crucible was full of mistakes, but the trainers coached the trainees to think and talk
through their mistakes to glean lessons that would help them become better leaders and
followers; better team members. Before the Crucible began the Training Director
explicitly told the trainees that the purpose of the Crucible was to turn them into a
highfunctioning team. Many of the activities fostered leadership and followership skills.
But though teamwork and leadership was explicitly defined as the goals of the
weekend, an unmentioned goal was that trainees come to terms with themselves and their
community (Student & Short Term Missions Training, 2015). Over the weekend, each
trainee hit some sort of melting point. The day following the Crucible was spent
debriefing; each trainee mentioned his/her melting point and what he/she learned from the
experience. This debriefing was only possible because the trainees had accepted a culture
of transparency and vulnerability over the Crucible weekend.
Values Communicated During Training
During my interview with the Training Director, he explicitly explained AFM’s
five core values—reliance, integrity, humility, teamwork, and transparency—as well as the
values implicit in AFM’s mission statement—a pioneering spirit, cultural sensitivity,
support of Seventh-day Adventist theology and values, movements/multiplication, and
connecting with people groups outside of the reach of gospel. Some other values that he
mentioned at least twice were: community, communication, cultural sensitivity, practice,
healing, leadership, transformation, trust and vulnerability.
Though the Training Director was explicit in speaking about AFM’s core values
during our interview, the communication of values during training was subtler. I only
noticed two of the core values mentioned by name in the classroom: teamwork and
transparency. And only transparency was identified as one of AFM’s values. Not once
during training were the five core values listed. In contrast, AFM’s mission statement was
explicitly discussed in the classroom. The values that were mentioned by name most often
during training were: leadership, teamwork, transparency, community, cultural sensitivity,
healing, multiplication, and vulnerability.
Though AFM’s core values were not mentioned by name, if a trainee said
something that related to one of the values, the trainers would expound upon it, stressing
the value’s importance without identifying or labeling it. Often core values were alluded to
instead of identified. For example, on Day 2, a trainer said, “For you to think that you can
help them when you arrive is an illusion. Your first work is going to be a learner or a
listener rather than a teacher.” I understood the trainer to be highlighting the necessity of
humility. Another example is that one of the trainees became overwhelmed on Day 3.
When he vocalized his feelings, the trainer stopped almost mid-sentence and prayed for
the trainees. This demonstrated the value of reliance and validated the trainee’s
transparency.
Most of the core values were communicated implicitly through modeling and
coaching during the Crucible and through daily interactions between the trainers and
trainees. For example, the trainers’ teaching style was transparent and vulnerable. In
describing their training style, the Training Director said, “We tell a lot of stories about
ourselves and our own journey and our own experiences.” He also identified the way
trainers use prayer in training as nurturing a spirit of reliance.
Trainee Values
Over the course of the 2015 Short-Term Missions Training, the trainees did learn
organizational values. They also demonstrated a shift in their values toward prioritizing the
core values of AFM.
Trainee Values before Training
On the first day of training I asked participants to list the values of AFM. I was
looking to see whether trainees could identify the five core values of AFM: reliance,
integrity, humility, teamwork, and transparency. None of the participants successfully listed
all of AFM’s core values, although several of them identified at least one. Four participants
mentioned teamwork; one mentioned humility. Nine mentioned concepts present in AFM’s
mission. One participant stated that he/she did not know AFM values.
I also asked participants to circle their top seven values out of a list of twenty
values. The values most circled were (in order of agreement): Transparency, Integrity,
Helpfulness, Cheerfulness / Humility / Teamwork. Four of those are core values of AFM.
Table 4.1 shows the number of participants that circled each AFM core value as a
personal value at the beginning of training.
Table 4.1
First Comparison of Participant and AFM Core Values
Reliance
Integrity
Humility
Teamwork
Transparency
Total
V
alues
Participant 1
X
1
Participant 2
X
X
2
Participant 3
X
X
X
X
4
Participant 4
X
X
X
X
4
Participant 5
X
X
2
Participant 6
X
1
Participant 7
X
X
X
3
Participant 8
X
X
X
3
Participant 9
X
X
X
X
4
Participant
10
X
X
2
Participant
11
X
X
X
3
Participant
12
X
X
X
3
Participant
13
X
X
2
Participant
14
X
X
X
3
Participant
15
X
X
X
X
4
Total 4 12 11 6 8
Participants
Trainee Values after Training
On the last day of training I again asked participants to list AFM values to see
whether they could identify all five core values. None of the participants successfully
listed all five core values. Nine participants attributed concepts present in AFM’s mission
as AFM values. The values mentioned most were transparency, teamwork, humility and
vulnerability. Other values include cultural sensitivity, discipleship, obedience and
relationships or relational healing. Table 4.2 shows the number of participants that
mentioned or alluded to each of AFM’s core values. Some participants listed similar
concepts or synonyms to AFM’s core values; these are indicated in Table 4.2 with
parentheses. Participant 6 listed all 20 of the values mentioned later in the survey as AFM’s
values, so his/her responses are not included in Table 4.2 totals.
The responses in the focus groups and interviews were similar to participant
responses on the surveys in terms of identifying AFM core values. As a group the trainees
identified all of AFM’s core values, but individuals and small groups did not consistently
know them. One trainee said, “I honestly don’t know what they claim as their values”
(Interview 1). But though that participant did not claim to know AFM values, all
interviewees and focus groups mentioned teamwork and transparency; most of them also
mentioned integrity. Non-core values frequently mentioned or alluded to by participants
include adaptability, community, communication, involvement, investment,
multiplication, and relationships. The AFM core values of humility and reliance were not
really mentioned or alluded to by trainees in the interviews or focus groups.
Table 4.2
AFM Core Values Identified by Trainees on Final Values Survey
Reliance
Integrity
Humility
Teamwork
Transparency
Total
Values
Participant 1
(x)
X
X
X
3-4
Participant 2
X
X
X
X
4
Participant 3
X
X
X
3
Participant 4
0
Participant 5
X
X
(x)
3
Participant 6
-
-
-
-
-
-
Participant 7
X
X
X
3
Participant 8
X
X
X
X
4
Participant 9
0
Participant 10
X
X
2
Participant 11
(x)
X
X
X
X
4-5
Total 2-4 4 5 7 7-8
Participants
In the Final Values Survey I again asked participants to list their top seven values to
see whether the values participants circled would shift to reflect organizational values. The
values most circled were (in order of agreement): Integrity / Teamwork /
Transparency, Humility, Cheerfulness / Obedience. Four of these are core values of
AFM; and were all among the top values circled by trainees in the Demographic &
Values Survey administered at the beginning of training. Table 4.3 compares the AFM core
values that participants identified as personal values at the beginning of training and the end
of training. The table includes two columns for each AFM core value, representing the
before—administered on July 20—and after—administered on August 13—surveys.
As seen in Table 4.3, the value congruence of six participants increased over the
course of training; the value congruence of four participants stayed the same; and the value
congruence of one participant decreased. Every AFM core value had more participants
identify it as a personal value at the end of training than at the beginning of training. The
average value congruence of participants with organizational values at the beginning of
training was 2.8 values, while at the end of training it was 3.7 values. This indicates a shift
in participant values towards organizational values over the course of training. Some non-
core values that shifted to being identified as personal values by participants by end of
training include obedience, cheerfulness, responsibility and broadmindedness.
On the Final Values Survey I asked participants whether they felt any of their
values had changed over the course of the training. Most of the participants affirmed that
their values had changed. “I believe so. When presented, several of their values impressed
upon me as important, especially in missions,” wrote one participant. Another participant
confirmed this statement: “Yes. There were some values (new and old to me) discussed
and brought out which I now see to be extremely more important than before.” One of the
values participants mentioned as having changed during training was teamwork.
Table 4.3
Second Comparison of Participant and AFM Core Values
Reliance
Integrity
Humility
Teamwork
Transparency
Total
Val
ues
7/
20
8/
13
7/
20
8/
13
7/2
0
8/
13
7/20
8/
13
7/20
8/1
3
7/
20
8/1
3
Particip
ant 1
X
X
X
X
X
1
4
Particip
ant 2
X
X
X
X
X
2
3
Particip
ant 3
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
4
4
Particip
ant 4
X
X
X
X
1
3
Particip
ant 5
X
X
X
X
X
3
2
Particip
ant 6
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
3
5
Particip
ant 7
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
4
4
Particip
ant 8
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
3
4
Particip
ant 9
X
X
X
X
X
X
3
3
Particip
ant
1
0
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
3
5
Particip
ant
1
1
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
4
4
Total 2 3 9 10 7 8 5 10 8 10
Participants
One participant elaborated, “I saw the value in teamwork much more [after training]
than before. I said I valued teamwork [before training], but actually I valued independence
more before the training.”
Not all participants agreed that their values changed during training. One participant
clarified, “They haven’t changed, but they have all gone to a much deeper level.” This
could be taken to mean that his/her understanding of the value or the value’s importance
was strengthened during training. Along similar lines, another participant stated, “I
wouldn’t say my values have changed. They’ve just been shuffled. The way I prioritize
values has changed.” Interestingly, the participant who stated that his/her values hadn’t
changed went from listing 3 of AFMs values in his/her top seven values at the beginning
of training to listing all 5 of AFM’s values in his/her top seven values by the end of
training.
How Trainees Learned AFM Values
On the first day of training the Training Director told trainees that self-discovery was
an important aspect of the training; that they were responsible for what they learned. This
put responsibility on the trainees, and meant that the values trainees assimilated would be
the values they chose to assimilate. As I mentioned earlier, the trainers did not explicitly
talk about AFM values. The participant from Interview 1 commented on this: Rather than
just listing them off as “here are our values,” they give us scenarios that we enact and that,
after the scenarios, they have us think about, “okay, what did you do? Why did you do
that? Would something else have been better?” And it helps us run through the thought
process in our minds so that when we get to the ending point of “this is the proper action,”
we got there. And we know our thought process of getting to that answer, rather than just
being told “a value for AFM is love.” It’s just a word. It doesn’t really have a meaning at
that point. But if we have an experience to tie to that value, then it makes it more real.
(Interview 1)
One of the participants form Focus Group 1 reflected on the same idea, saying,
“They set up the principle…and maybe don’t even tell you what the values is, but the
principle and everything is so clear that you form that value almost subconsciously.” Both
the participants from Interview 1 and Focus Group 1 seemed to have a positive reaction to
AFM’s choice to refrain from listing core values in some form of explicit verbal
communication.
Even though the trainers did not explicitly talk about core values, they still
communicated those values. On the Final Values Survey I asked participants to select the
type of communication of values that most influenced them during training: orally, visually,
interactive activities or other. Participants selected Interactive Activities most, followed by
oral communication.
Delving deeper, I asked participants to list the most effective method AFM used to
communicate their core values. One of the participants mentioned the simulator
experience: “The lectures were stellar, but it was the interactive activities/assignments
(communal living and cooking, “Crucible,” “Penguin Circles,” games, journals, etc.) that
brought it home.” Another participant repeated some of the same items, and added
storytelling to the list: “Interactive activities, role-playing, and personal stories and
experiences.” Another participant who affirmed the importance of storytelling wrote,
“The stories of their experiences that portrayed the values they were trying to instill.”
Though some participants listed interactive activities and storytelling as effective
methods of communication, most participants focused on how the trainers modeled
values. One participant stated that AFM best communicated values “by living the
examples they teach.” This was confirmed by another participant who wrote, “AFM lives
values – shows them and shows and teaches how to apply them.” Another participant
further explained, “The vulnerability and transparency of the trainers. Their willingness
to be open and honest, and the way in which their lives reflected the material they were
teaching.” The participants positively responded to seeing the values modeled by the
trainers.
One participant wrote that the best method of learning was “learning through
experience and by example.” Half of that statement focuses on the trainers modeling the
values, the other half focuses on a personal experience with the values. Several other
participants affirmed the importance of having some sort of personal experience with a
value. “The trainers showed how the values worked and/or made us have to fight back
against them with the values they wanted to instill,” wrote one participant. “Showing the
core values and making us demonstrate them in our daily lives to know what they feel like
to uphold,” wrote another. And a third added, “leading by example, practical activities.”
The responses to the Final Values Survey reflected what I heard participants say in
the focus groups and interviews. In the focus groups and interviews, one participant
mentioned metaphors as being important to their values-assimilation process, a couple
participants mentioned storytelling and the personal experiences trainers shared with
trainees. A participant of Focus Group 2 mentioned the trainers’ dynamic presentation
style:
There have been a couple [times] in class where I’m following but not getting it,
and then, the teachers seem in tune to that. I can see them just scanning our faces.
And they keep trying new ways. They’ll sometimes even stand up and start
talking in different voices and illustrating it with a story or a quote. ‘Imagine’—
grabs somebody and like—“okay, stand here with me and we’re gonna pretend that
we’re wheat. What are our roots doing right now?” (Focus Group 2)
In addition to the classroom experience, a couple participants mentioned debriefing
sessions as integral to their learning. During debriefing sessions, trainees described and
analyzed what they were learning. Though several participants mentioned the debriefing
sessions, one in particular credited the debriefing sessions for contributing significantly to
his/her learning experience:
I probably wouldn’t have gotten probably 75% of the gain from Crucible if we
hadn’t had constant constant constant debriefing and talking and digging into the
hard stuff like ‘how’d that make you feel?’ ‘What was going on here?’ ‘Who was the
leader?’ ‘How did you react to that?’ ‘What if you were the leader?’ ‘How would
you have reacted? (Focus Group 2)
The experiences outside the classroom were just as important as the experiences
inside the classroom. Several participants emphasized the importance of interactive
activities, the simulator experience of living together and working as a team, and the how
the trainers encouraged trainees to practice what they learned outside of the classroom.
“They’re very action-oriented. So, in fact, they almost feel as if it’s a failure when they’ve
only told us a principle and not given us a practical moment to see if we know what to do
with it,” stated a participant in Focus Group 2. As this participant noted, the trainers
appeared to be concerned with trainees enacting values.
They emphasize life as a classroom so much that it honestly doesn’t blip on my
screen when I walk in and out of class. Because when you’re in class, it’s particularly
structured, but when we’re [at] meal times, we’re continuing the things we’re
learning: teamwork, the atmosphere of community. When we’re on our own, we’re
often working on things that they are encouraging us to value. (Focus Group 2)
Trainers weren’t the only ones looking to see whether trainees were enacting values.
The trainees were also observing each other. One trainee from Focus Group 3 mentioned
that trainees enacted the values because the values themselves were understandable and
attainable.
I would say that the values they have are realistic in the sense that others that are not
trainers could reciprocate them. In terms of living, I have noticed that trainees have
already applied them to real life. Since we are in a living setting that is with one
another, I have noticed that the values that AFM expresses and shows, these have
already been shown throughout the trainees’ lives in reciprocating the values that
they see from the trainers. (Focus Group 3)
As participant observer, I also noticed trainees enacting AFM organizational values
outside of the classroom. For example, one of the values discussed by trainers was
relational healing. After the trainees were given step-by-step instructions on how to
approach difficult conversations with someone, I saw trainees practicing difficult
conversations with each other on their lunch breaks, or while traveling to and from different
activities.
Just as on the Final Values Survey, the method that almost all participants in the
focus group and interviews mentioned as pivotal to their learning organizational values
was how the trainers modeled those values. A participant from Focus Group 2 commented
that the trainers “are exhibiting what they’re saying in their life.” A participant from Focus
Group 3 gave an example of how the trainers modeled a value, saying, “to create the open
space for the [trainees] to be more vulnerable, the staff and the teachers have been
vulnerable with us in their stories.” Another way that participants saw trainers model their
values was through their one-on-one coaching session with the
Training Director.
The one-on-one session says a lot about them, too. They’re taking the time, an hour
[for each trainee]. And it just reinforces their value of friendship and time and
adaptability and valuing people, discipleship. You know, making that connection.
Being available. Living the gospel they preach….I think in many ways, here at
training, they’re showing us, doing for us what they want us to do for others.”
(Focus Group 1)
Motivation to Learn AFM Values
There were several factors that study participants identified as impacting their
motivation to learn organizational values. Most participants agreed that it was important
that missionaries act according to a specific set of values. When asked why, the most
common answer had to do with teamwork—one of AFM’s core values—although a couple
of individuals referenced missionaries as brand ambassadors for an organization.
The participants chose to go as missionaries through AFM. In one participant’s
words, “I was really motivated to be here.” I asked participants why they chose AFM. The
answers regarded positive communication by the organization, the organization’s
reputation and/or being recommended to the organization, and agreement with the
organization’s values and/or mission. From reading through my observation journal (see
Appendix G), I saw that I started buying into parts of the mission of the organization on
Day 3 of training, but didn’t understand this consciously until Day 11. Believing in the
AFM mission had an impact on me. I filled out a Demographic & Values Survey on the
first day of training and a Final Values Survey on the last training. Though I did not
include my surveys in the results of this study, my values shifted to reflect the
organization’s values, and I attribute it to my acceptance of AFM’s mission and being
persuaded that AFM’s core values would assist in accomplishing the mission.
When I asked participants what motivated them to learn AFM values, several
referenced their mission and that they realized AFM values would benefit them. “All the
values that we’re being taught, they’re very relevant for what we’ll be encountering in the
field,” said a participant from Focus Group 2. A participant from Focus Group 1 mirrored
this idea: “a lot of this transparency, vulnerability, and the how they teach us and live it—
how to solve differences between each other—just made me aware how important this
will be in the coming year.” And a participant from Focus Group 3 added, “I don’t have
an easy time just adopting everything people say. But I’ve chosen to because I believe it’s
going to help me be a better missionary.” This participant further explained,
To understand what AFM’s values are and to realize that those values really align
with the values that Christ has in so many respects, that is really a powerful thing,
because that ties me to the mission in more than just ‘I’m doing this for AFM.’ It ties
me to the mission at heart level because I’m doing it for Christ.” (Focus Group 3)
This participant was able to describe the link between values and mission that most of
the other participants simply alluded to. He/she felt motivated to learn organizational
values because of commitment to the mission. Other participants identified motivation to
learn as being influenced by commitment to the organization. Two participants identified
positive experiences practicing AFM values as influential in motivating them to assimilate
the values. And some participants even mentioned their motivation to learn stemming from
the trust the organization placed on them to learn the values. “AFM doesn’t say: ‘these are
our values and we’re going to help you instigate them and we’re going to keep helping you
instigate them.’ They say: ‘These are our values, now it’s up to you,’” explained a
participant from Focus Group 1. The participant continued: It’s discipleship. They’re
teaching you how to do it on your own….They just give you a principle, and then….they
leave it up to you, which is actually a really big risk. But they leave it up to us to enforce
the principles that they teach. (Focus
Group 1)
Another motivator mentioned by participants was the affirmation they received from
AFM trainers as helping them in the value-assimilation process. “[The trainers] give us
feedback, and affirmation, and just really help us along the way,” said a participant from
Focus Group 1. Similarly, a participant from Focus Group 3 felt affirmed by the trainers’
belief in him/her.
A motivation for me is that someone is willing to listen to where I feel my
weaknesses are, and who also believes that I can do it; that my relationship with
God is strong enough to carry on. And because someone else believes in me, I feel
motivated to take on the same values that the person who believes in me has. (Focus
Group 3)
But the factor most-mentioned by participants as motivating them to learn AFM
values was seeing those values modeled in the trainers. “They are exhibiting what they’re
saying in their life. And that can’t help but motivate,” commented a participant from Focus
Group 2. A participant from Focus Group 1 described the benefit of seeing values
modeled:
Just seeing how their values played out in their own lives and giving us practical
examples, it shows me how it improves the quality of their life and so it makes me
think, ‘oh, well, it’s probably going to improve the quality of my own life, too…. You
can see it played out. You see that it’s an attractive thing. You think, ‘that’s what I
want.’ (Focus Group 1)
In addition to seeing the benefits of values modeled by trainers, some participants
seemed to be motivated to learn organizational values because of the passion and enthusiasm
the trainers demonstrated.
I like how they’ll get fired up about what they’re teaching. And you can really just
see on their faces, it actually matters to them. Or when the trainer’s telling a story,
you can see…it brings emotions and stuff like that. And it just really makes you want
to buy in to what they’re saying. (Focus Group 2)
Summary
Adventist Frontier Missions trainers used both dialogical and immersion learning
methods during the 2015 Short-Term Missions Training. The values mentioned explicitly
during training included leadership, teamwork, transparency, community, cultural
sensitivity, healing, multiplication, and vulnerability. The values that participants
identified as AFM values include transparency, teamwork, humility, vulnerability, cultural
sensitivity, discipleship, obedience and relational healing. Participants’ personal values
appear to have shifted to reflect congruence with organizational core values over the
course of training. This shift appears to have taken place mainly because participants
believed in the mission of AFM and were persuaded that organizational values would
help them accomplish the mission, and because participants were positively affected by
seeing the values modeled by trainers. The next chapter discusses the implications of
these findings.
CHAPTER 5
DISCUSSION
The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the organizational
communication methods used during the 2015 AFM Short-Term Training and to identify
which methods were perceived by newcomers to be the most beneficial for their
assimilation of organizational values. I collected data through participant observation,
surveys, focus groups and interviews. Then I analyzed the data inductively. The results of
the study indicate that nonverbal communication of organizational values during
socialization can be effective.
Major Findings
The major finding of this research is that organizational newcomers perceived
nonverbal communication of organizational values during socialization to positively
impact their motivation to learn and assimilate organizational values. Adventist Frontier
Missions trainers used both dialogical and immersion learning environments to teach
values during the 2015 Short-Term Missions Training, but research participants responded
most positively to their method of modeling organizational values. Several participants
stated that they were persuaded to accept AFM values because of the way trainers
practiced what they preached, and because the participants believed that enacting
organizational values would help them accomplish their mission.
Similar to a study by Cable and Parsons (2001), I found that participant values shifted
to reflect congruence with espoused organizational values during socialization. Also, at the
end of training, the trainees attributed the values of transparency, teamwork, humility,
vulnerability, cultural sensitivity, discipleship, obedience and relational healing to the
organization. This correlates with the values mentioned explicitly most often by trainers
during training: leadership, teamwork, transparency, community, cultural sensitivity,
healing, multiplication, and vulnerability.
Discussion
The following section discusses how the results of this case study address each
research question and how they apply to the field of communication.
AFM’s Communication of Organizational Values
Research question #1: How does AFM communicate organizational values to newcomers
during orientation?
When I planned the study, I defined organizational values as the five core values
espoused by the organization. I expected AFM trainers to communicate the organization’s
five core values to trainees through formal verbal and/or written communication because
espoused values are defined as values used by organizational management in formal
verbal and written communication (Bourne & Jenkins, 2013). I was surprised to find that
AFM trainers did not explicitly identify the organization’s five core values during the
training program. They verbally emphasized the values of leadership, teamwork,
transparency, community, cultural sensitivity, healing, multiplication, and vulnerability.
Two of those are part of the organization’s core values.
The other core values were illustrated or alluded to.
During my interview with the AFM Training Director, he indicated that the
organization’s core values are embedded values rather than espoused values. Embedded
values can be either attributed values, meaning values that members of an organization
ascribe to the organization, or shared values, meaning the aggregate system of values
held by the members of the organization (Bourne & Jenkins, 2013). This led me to
change the focus of the data analysis from organizational communication of espoused
values to attributed values.
The instruments—including myself as the participant observer—had already been
prepped with espoused values in mind, to see how the organization communicated the
core values of reliance, integrity, humility, teamwork, and transparency to participants.
But since the focus of the study shifted to embedded values, I had to identify which
values participants attributed as embedded values of AFM before analyzing how those
values were communicated. Participants identified transparency, teamwork, humility,
vulnerability, cultural sensitivity, discipleship, obedience and relational healing.
Most of those values were communicated verbally. The only two values identified by
participants that I did not observe to be explicitly identified during training were
humility and obedience. In addition to explicit verbal communication, the values were
alluded to and talked about, without being specifically mentioned. One of the most
common ways that trainers communicated values was through storytelling. In 2010,
Barker and Gower introduced the idea that a key way of communicating organizational
values is through storytelling. Their storytelling model of organizational communication
highlights that storytelling creates swift shared meaning and is participative rather than
simply instructive (Barker & Gower, 2010; Barker, Rimler, Moreno & Kaplan, 2004).
This was evident in the way AFM trainers used storytelling to transfer organizational
knowledge to the trainees.
The trainers also communicated organizational values by modeling them. In modeling
the values, trainers used a rich medium to communicate the values. According to media
richness theory, the more complex the information, the more rich a medium should be
used (as cited in Fulk & Boyd, 1991). Through their method of modeling core values,
AFM trainers selected the richest medium in order to communicate the complex and
abstract meaning and application of organizational values.
Participant Motivation to Adopt AFM’s Values
Research Question #2: How are trainees of the AFM training program persuaded to
assimilate organizational values?
Participants were persuaded to assimilate AFM values because they were impressed
by the way trainers modeled the values. This was mentioned in each of the focus groups
and interviews I held, making it the most important aspect of persuasion. Though
participants identified seeing trainers model the values as influential in their values-
assimilation, few participants delved deeper to explain why. One participant mentioned
seeing positive results of the trainer’s behavior, one participant mentioned enjoying the
trainer’s enthusiasm, and one participant mentioned appreciation that trainees could
replicate the trainer’s behavior.
Another element that persuaded participants to assimilate organizational values was a
belief that enacting those values would help them accomplish their mission.
Several participants referenced how adopting organizational values would help them achieve
their goals, demonstrating that the AFM had communicated that whether an individual
enacted organization values would affect the individual’s success. Though no participants
identified an explicit organizational message tying values with mission success, I observed
this type of message communicated explicitly and implicitly through storytelling.
Based on all of the responses, it seems that Fishbein and Ajzen’s 1975 theory of
planned behavior could be used to explain how AFM trainees were persuaded to
assimilate organizational values. The theory of planned behavior describes behavioral
intentions as being affected by an individual’s positive or negative evaluations of the
behavior, whether they believe the behavior is desired by another individual and their
relationship to that individual, and how difficult they perceive participation in the
behavior to be (as cited in Armitage & Conner, 1999).
Value Congruence
Research Question #3: Do the values of AFM newcomers shift to reflect the
organization’s values over the course of training?
In order to assess the effectiveness of organizational communication of values, I
wanted to verify whether participants adopted organizational values. I planned to see
whether Cable and Parsons’ (2001) findings that newcomers’ values shifted towards their
perceptions of their organizations’ values during socialization would be replicated in my
case study. The instrument I used was designed before I shifted the focus of the study
from espoused values to embedded values. I was unable to test whether there was a shift
of value congruence of embedded values because I had not yet identified the organization’s
embedded values when the Demographic & Values survey was administered. Thus, I tested
the value congruence of participants with AFM espoused values—as originally planned—
at the beginning of training and at the end of training.
At the beginning of training, participants did have some value congruence with
the organization. The participants had an average of 2.8 values congruent with AFM’s
five core values. That means the average participant shared more than half of the
organization’s core values. I do not know whether value congruence played a part in the
participants being selected to work for the organization. But I do know that a couple
participants mentioned value congruence as a reason why they chose to work for AFM.
At the end of training, the average participants had 3.7 values congruent with
AFM’s five core values. This indicates that participant values did shift toward
organizational espoused values over the course of the training. It surprised me that
participant values shifted towards the organization’s core values even though the core
values were not explicitly communicated during training. This is evidence that though
the organization’s communication of values may not have been traditional, it was
effective. Even though at the end of training not a single participant could correctly list all
five core values of AFM, the majority of participants had reprioritized their values to
include more of AFM’s core values in their personal top values.
Though participant values shifted towards organizational values during
socialization, it is still unclear to what extent participant values shifted. For example, the
instrument had participants indicate their top values but not prioritize them. For example, a
participant may have indicated both humility and cheerfulness as top values both at the
beginning and end of training, but considered humility less important than cheerfulness
before the training and more important than cheerfulness at the end of training. Such a shift
in value prioritization would have been undetected in this study. In addition to value
prioritization, value understanding was not measured. For example, a participant might not
have shifted the importance of humility between the beginning and ending of training, but
his/her definition and application of the value might have shifted to reflect the
organization’s understanding of the value.
Effective Methods of Communicating Organizational Values
Research Question #4: What do attendees of the AFM training perceive to be the
most effective methods the organization uses to communicate core values?
The method mentioned by participants as the most effective method AFM trainers
used to communicate organizational values was by modeling those values. The modeled
behavior appeared to be effective because participants were able to see and experience the
positive outcomes of the behavior (Gruys et al, 2008). These findings align with
Bandura’s 1997 social learning theory that “suggests that employees may acquire much of
their learned behavior by observing and imitating others” (Gruys et al, 2008, p. 811).
Similar to modeling, storytelling was identified by participants as an effective method of
communicating organizational values. Through listening to stories, participants were able
to learn behavior by visualizing the behavior and experiences expressed in the stories.
In their storytelling and modeling, the trainers often illustrated values without
identifying them; participants were expected to fill in the blanks. The trainers’ use of
modeling and storytelling indicates a basis in andragogy, the idea that people need to be
actively involved in the process of educating themselves (McGrath, 2009). This put
responsibility on the trainees, and often meant that the values trainees assimilated would be
the values they perceived, identified and were self-persuaded to assimilate. The
participants referred to this as the discovery method of learning, which is supported by
Brinol, McCaslin and Petty’s (2012) idea that individuals have the power to change their
own attitudes or beliefs (Brinol, McCaslin & Petty, 2012). The emphasis on nonverbal
and implicit communication is contrary to the traditional idea that information needs to be
clearly and explicitly communicated to newcomers during socialization.
Message Content
Research Question #5: Which messages do AFM newcomers find to be effective in
aiding their understanding and internalization of organizational values?
I wrote this research question when I equated organizational values with espoused
values, which by definition must be communicated through formal verbal and written
communication. My assumption that the communication of organizational values would
be explicit verbal communication led me to believe that I would find the answer to this
question through participant responses to my interview/survey questions. Instead, my
study had unexpected results highlighting the importance of nonverbal communication in
the transferal of organizational values to newcomers. Participants did not reference specific
messages as important to their value-assimilation process. In this case study, the methods
of communication had greater impact on participants than specific messages.
Recommendations
As research is wont do to, this case study triggered more questions in addition to
providing answers. It would be beneficial to conduct more research see whether methods
of communication take precedence over the messages communicated in socialization
programs structured differently or for for-profit organizations as well as nonprofit
organizations. Peng, Pandey & Pandey (2015) suggest that nonprofit organizations are more
likely to foster individual-organizational value congruence than for-profit organizations. It
is possible that the same factors that influence value-congruence might influence employee
motivation to learn. For example, a part-time worker at a fast food chain restaurant might
not care enough about organizational values to appreciate the discovery method of
communication.
Another area for more research is to compare the effective ways of communicating the
different types of organizational values as identified by Bourne and Jenkins (2013). I
began this study with the goal of identifying effective methods an organization uses to
communicate espoused values, but ended up identifying the effective methods an
organization used to communicate embedded values. It is possible that different methods
of communication might be more effective for different value types.
Adventist Frontier Missions’ method of approaching the communication of
embedded values appeared to rely heavily on implied communication and on nonverbal
communication of those values. Further research should be done that compares the
effectiveness of verbal and nonverbal communication of organizational values. One
method might be better than the other, or perhaps the best method is a combination of the
two. It is possible that, if AFM were more intentional about verbally communicating core
values, trainees might have more accurately been able to list AFM’s core values and
might have shown an even greater shift in value congruence over the course of training. It
might be worthwhile for the organization to test and see if this would improve the
effectiveness of their training program.
Another question that AFM or other researchers could ask is whether participant
motivation for assimilating some values is different than their motivation for assimilating
other values The question I asked participants regarding persuasion of organizational values
was open-ended, allowing participants to respond to the question for any value. Similarly,
further research could be done on participant understanding and definitions of organizational
values before and after socialization. For example, before my interview with the Training
Director, I would have defined integrity as doing the right thing rather than enduring results.
Several participants either listed integrity as one of AFM’s values or their personal values
both at the start and the end of training. But it’s possible that their understanding of the word
shifted as mine did.
Finally, it might be useful to conduct additional case studies of the communication
of organizational values in AFM. Longitudinal studies could follow up on participant
understanding and enactment of organizational values while they are in the field, or upon
their return to the U.S. Another focus of additional studies on AFM training might include
before and after interviews with AFM management and/or trainers.
Conclusion
This research attempted to identify the methods of communication that individuals
perceived to be effective in their internalization of organizational values. The study
found that modeling values can be an effective form of communicating organizational
values. When organizational values are consistently modeled, it appears that
organizations don’t need to be explicit about verbalizing values in order for the values to
be understood and assimilated by newcomers that have bought into the organization’s
mission. Rather, the values can be assimilated as newcomers come into contact with an
organization and see how organizational members behave. It could be that
communication context is more important than message content during the process of
newcomer value assimilation. This supports Fishbein and Ajzen’s theory of planned
behavior (as cited in Armitage & Conner, 1999) and Bandura’s 1997 social learning
theory (as cited in Gruys et al, 2008).
The results of this case study should be beneficial for organizations that attempt to
train organizational culture or values to newcomers during socialization, especially to those
organizations for which values and culture are essential to their mission.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX A
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL: TRAINING DIRECTOR
Date and time of interview:
Location:
Interviewer:
Interviewee:
Relationship of Interviewee to AFM:
Description of project: Responsive Interview regarding the organizational methods and
strategies Adventist Frontier Missions uses to communicate organizational values.
Questions:
1. What are the values of Adventist
Frontier Missions?
2. How do you incorporate those
values into the AFM training?
3. What strategies do you use to
communicate AFM values to individuals
during AFM training?
4. Do you think knowing the values
will help AFM missionaries in the mission
field? If so, how? If not, why?
5. List additional questions:
Time Stamp and Observations:
APPENDIX B
DEMOGRAPHIC & VALUES SURVEY
1. Name:
2. Age Range (please circle the option that corresponds with your age):
18-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44
3. Sex (please circle option that corresponds with your sex): Male Female
4. Country of origin:
5. Ethnic background:
6. Most recent occupation or job:
7. Are you a student (please circle the correct answer)? Yes No
If so, do you attend: Pubic Institution/Private Institution
8. Is this your first time going on a short-term mission trip?
9. Why did you choose to go as a missionary through Adventist Frontier Missions?
10. What are the values of Adventist Frontier Missions?
11. Please circle your top 7 values:
Ambition
Broad-mindedness
Capability
Cheerfulness
Cleanliness
Courage
Helpfulness
Humility
Imagination
Independence
Integrity
Intellectuality
Logic
Obedience
Politeness
Reliance
Responsibility
Self-control
Teamwork
Transparency
APPENDIX C FINAL VALUES SURVEY
1. Name:
2. What are the values of Adventist Frontier Missions?
3. Please circle your top 7 values:
Ambition
Broad-mindedness
Capability
Cheerfulness
Cleanliness
Courage
Helpfulness
Humility
Imagination
Independence
Integrity
Intellectuality
Logic
Obedience
Politeness
Reliance
Responsibility
Self-control
Teamwork
Transparency
4. Do you feel that any of your values changed over the course of the training? Why/why
not?
5. During the training, were you most influenced by the communication of values that was
done (please circle all options that apply):
- Visually
- Orally
- Interactive activities
- Other
6. What do you think was the best method Adventist Frontier Missions used to communicate
core values?
APPENDIX D
PROTOCOL: FOCUS GROUP / INTERVIEW
Date and time of interview:
Location:
Interviewer:
Interviewee(s):
Relationship of Interviewee(s) to AFM:
Description of project: Responsive focus group/interview regarding the perceptions of
Adventist Frontier Missions values and the methods used to communicate and persuade
newcomers to adopt them.
Questions:
1. What are the values of Adventist Frontier Missions?
2. Do you think it is important for missionaries to act according to
a specific set of values? Why/Why not?
3. Do you think knowing the values of Adventist Frontier Missions
will help you in the mission field? If so, how? If not, why?
4. What does it look like for someone to act according to Adventist
Frontier Missions values? (Give an example)
5. What do you think was the most effective method Adventist
Frontier Missions has used to communicate their values?
6. Describe a moment when it “clicked” and you understood AFM
values.
7. What, if anything, has persuaded you to enact AFM’s core
values?
8. What did you learn about AFM values outside of the training
sessions?
9. Are there other values that you think should have been
emphasized more during the training? If so, what and how?
Time Stamp
and
Observations:
APPENDIX E
OBSERVATION PROTOCOL
Date and time of observation:
Location:
Individuals present:
Description of activity:
Descriptive notes:
Reflective notes:
APPENDIX F. INFORMED CONSENT FORMS
Andrews University Department of Communication Training Director Informed
Consent Form
Thank you for participating in this study, a capstone research project for my graduate studies at
Andrews University. The purpose of my study is to explore the ways AFM communicates core
values during newcomer orientation. Please read the following information about how
participation in the study might affect you, and sign at the bottom of the page.
• I agree to participate in a research project on the campus of Adventist Frontier Missions
training facilities regarding the communication of organizational values.
• I consent to be observed as I present segments of the short-term missions training.
• I agree to a 20-30 minute interview before the start of the short-term missions training. I
understand that because of my position in the organization, statements I make during the
interview may be traced back to myself.
• I understand that the researcher is the only individual who will have access to the field
notes of the observations and transcriptions of the interview.
• I understand that participation in this research is voluntary and will not affect my
relationship with or treatment by Adventist Frontier Missions.
• I understand that I may discontinue participation in this research at any time.
• If I have any questions regarding this research or my rights, I can contact the Institutional
Review Board at irb@andrews.edu or:
Caralin McHan
Dr. Williams-Smith
Principal Investigator
Chair, Department of Communication
Andrews University
Andrews University
4633 E Hillcrest Dr.
4141 Administration Dr.
Berrien Springs, MI 49103
Berrien Springs, MI 49104
caralin@andrews.edu
707-337-0555
269-741-6314
Participant
Investigator Witness
___________________
___________________ __________________
(Printed Name)
(Printed Name) (Printed Name)
___________________
___________________ __________________
(Signature)
(Signature) (Signature)
___________________
___________________ __________________
(Date)
(Date) (Date)
Andrews University Department of Communication Presenter Informed Consent
Form
Thank you for participating in this study, a capstone research project for my graduate studies at
Andrews University. The purpose of my study is to explore the ways AFM communicates core
values during newcomer orientation. Please read the following information about how
participation in the study might affect you, and sign at the bottom of the page.
• I agree to participate in a research project on the campus of Adventist Frontier Missions
training facilities regarding the communication of organizational values.
• I consent to be observed as I present segments of the short-term missions training. I
understand that my name will not appear in any descriptions or write-ups of this research.
Instead, a composite profile will be creating combine my characteristics with other
presenters that will be observed during this study.
• I understand that the principal investigator is the only individual who will have access to
the field notes of the observations.
• I understand that the completed research paper may be provided to Adventist Frontier
Missions management.
• I understand that participation in this research is voluntary and will not affect my
relationship with or treatment by Adventist Frontier Missions.
• I understand that I may discontinue participation in this research at any time.
• If I have any questions regarding this research or my rights, I can contact the Institutional
Review Board at irb@andrews.edu or:
Caralin McHan
Dr. Williams-Smith
Principal Investigator
Chair, Department of Communication
Andrews University
Andrews University
4633 E Hillcrest Dr.
4141 Administration Dr.
Berrien Springs, MI 49103
Berrien Springs, MI 49104
707-337-0555
269-741-6314
Participant
Investigator
Witness
___________________
___________________
___________________
(Printed Name)
(Printed Name)
(Printed Name)
___________________
___________________
___________________
(Signature)
(Signature)
(Signature)
___________________
___________________
___________________
(Date)
(Date)
(Date)
Andrews University Department of Communication Participant Informed Consent
Form
Thank you for participating in this study, a capstone research project for my graduate studies at Andrews
University. The purpose of my study is to explore the ways AFM communicates core values during
newcomer orientation. Please read the following information about how participation in the study might
affect you, and sign at the bottom of the page.
• I agree to participate in a research project on the campus of Adventist Frontier Missions
training facilities regarding the communication of organizational values.
• I understand that I will be observed during segments of the short-term missions training.
• I agree to fill out a 10-minute Demographic and Values Survey at the beginning of my training
experience, and a 10-minute Final Values Survey at the end of my training experience.
• I agree to participate in two 45-60 minute focus groups and/or interviews. I understand that my
responses in these interviews will be confidential. The researcher is the only individual who
will have access to the interview recordings and transcripts. My responses will not be provided
to Adventist Frontier Missions and will not be traceable back to me. I understand that in the
writeups of the research, my characteristics and responses will be combined with other
participants to create a composite profile.
• I understand that participation in this research is voluntary and will not affect my relationship
with or treatment by Adventist Frontier Missions
• I understand that the final research paper may be provided to Adventist Frontier Missions
management in an effort to improve their missions training program.
• If I have any questions regarding this research or my rights, I can contact the Institutional
Review Board at irb@andrews.edu or:
Caralin McHan Dr. Williams-Smith
Principal Investigator Chair, Department of Communication
Andrews University Andrews University 4633 E
Hillcrest Dr. 4141 Administration Dr.
Berrien Springs, MI 49103 Berrien Springs, MI 49104
707-337-0555
269-741-6314
Participant
Investigator Witness
___________________
___________________ ___________________
(Printed Name)
(Printed Name) (Printed Name)
___________________
___________________ ___________________
(Signature)
(Signature) (Signature)
___________________
___________________ ___________________
(Date)
(Date) (Date)
APPENDIX G OBSERVATION JOURNAL
Date: July 20, 2015
Day of Training: 1
Notes: It has started. The project that I looked forward to all summer is now upon me. I showed
up at the Adventist Frontier Training Center a couple minutes later and called Greg (my witness)
to make sure that he was on his way.
Though I thought that I was going to attend the entire training, I found out that worship
starts at 8:00 - even though the training schedule shows the training starting at 9:00.
Unfortunately, this means that I will miss the first hour that the trainees are together each
morning. As an ethnographer I want my experience to reflect that of the newcomers (the
shortterm missionaries). But it became apparent to me a couple times during the day that my
experience might not be representative of the experience of the trainees for the following
reasons:
- I am not a missionary, so my hopes/fears/goals for the training are different.
- Because my motivation for attending the training is different than the other trainees, I will
prioritize information differently. For instance, I am carefully listening for any reference to
a value, while the missionaries are looking for advice about how to succeed in the field.
- I will miss out on valuable experiences that the other trainees share. They live together and
will cook together, sleep together, wake up together. I will constantly be coming and going,
mission morning worships and meals, leaving at lunch (to go to work) and leaving right
after the training ends (to go to work). Therefore the ‘outside the classroom’ experience
that the other trainees share will shape them in ways that are not accessible to me.
I made sure that The Training Director and any other AMF staff exited the room before I
handed out the informed consent and values & demographic survey. I assured the attendees that
their participation was voluntary and I would be keeping their information confidential. I didn’t
expect that everyone would agree to participate. But all 16 attendees did agree to participate.
I’m so very excited about that!
Today’s training was split into two sections before lunch, and two after. I will refer to
them as sessions 1-4. Session 1 began with a presenter going over communication. It occurred
inside Morgan hall. The attendees were seated at 5 circular plastic tables that were arranged in a
half-circle. Trainees sat on the outside, which was the outside, in maroon chairs. The 1st
presenter was dressed in black pants & white shirt with a black collar and tie. His session was
about the missionaries’ responsibility of writing and taking photos. He talked about how those in
creative access countries should protect their identity. He gave handouts to the trainees with tips
on writing, taking good photographs, and videos. He asked the trainees why AFM needs stories.
The answers were to record answers to prayer, transparency (show that Christians go through
hard times) and customs/culture. He stressed to the missionaries that when they are writing
articles, they never put down a person, a country, or a government.
There was a break, in which I spoke to the 1st presenter about my research and had him
sign an informed consent. Then session 2 started. It picked up where session 1 had left off, with
the same presenter talking about blogs. He requested that the missionaries always behave in a
professional manner. He reminded the trainees, “You are ambassadors for Christ. you are
ambassadors for AFM.”
Session 3 began after lunch. The training director was in charge of sessions 3 and 4. He
started off my commending the trainees for their timeliness, and letting them know that those
who are late in the future will have a penalty of 10 pushups per minute they were late. Then, his
assistant had the missionaries move so that they were sitting near those people whose destination
country was the same as their own.
At this point the training started in earnest. The training director said that “adult
education focuses learning on the student rather than the teacher.” He went on to explain that he
expected each trainee to bring something to the class and that discussion and self-discovery
would be important aspects of the training.
Next he had an activity where each of the trainees wrote on stick notes what they were
excited about, what they were fearful of, and what their goals were. Once this activity was
completed, the missionaries shared with the group some of the things they had written. I was
surprised to hear how many of the AFM values were mentioned indirectly during this activity. I
could tell that the training director picked up on it, because he would reiterate or expound upon
whatever a trainee said that was connected with the AFM values (both explicit and implicit - see
interview) Yet, he mostly did not explicitly refer to the values by name while connecting them to
AFM’s core values. Also, it seemed they were transparent in the honesty with which they
answered questions. One example is a Participant in Focus Group 1 sharing that she wasn’t even
sure why she is going as a missionary because she didn’t plan on doing this.
These are the values I heard during this portion:
- “Transparency is one of our values.” It’s why people choose AFM. This was in response to the
what someone said is the reason why they chose to go as a missionary through AFM.
- “In order to have movements we need to have multipliers.” the importance of the training. This
is one of the implicit values.
- Reliance. In response to the question ‘what are you excited about?’ one trainee said that he
looked forward to relying on God.
- “Making friends is what your job description is,” - Director
- Indigenous. A Participant in Focus Group 3 mentioned that he was afraid of imposing his
culture on the people in the field.
- “Failure is a part of growth” - Director. I believe he was referring to humility. -
“Learn how to be a team and make a team.” Long-term goal of Participant in Focus Group 3.
She was talking about the value of teamwork.
The 4th session o the day started with deconstructing the AFM mission statement. Each
word was defined. The mission statement is to “establish indigenous Seventh-day Adventist
church planting movements among unreached people groups. if all adjectives are deleted it
reads, “establish movements among people groups.” During the deconstruction establish was
identified as being a foundation (Participant in Focus Group 1). For indigenous, the Director
told a story about how men in West Africa wear 3-piece suits to church in the sweltering weather.
Somebody took church planting to be a garden metaphor. Movements were defined as: energy,
go forward, spread, dynamic.
The director emphasized that movements are simple. They have to be something that
anyone could see and think “I could do that.” He showed a TED talks video about leadership
with a crazy guy dancing (I used it in my COMM skills class!) and also drew an illustration to
demonstrate the missionaries are tools in God’s hands. The illustration demonstrated reliance
and humility.
Participant in Focus Group 2 said that the training is “not about book knowledge, it’s
about how you apply it.” The Training Director said, “In order to have significant growth, you
must have significant change of heart. I think he might have been illustrating humility.
Throughout the training there were several breaks, during which people could stand outside and
talk, while most people played pickle ball. The Training Director asked what it had to do with
training. As this was discussed I watched a Participant in Focus Group 3’s face. He was leaning
forward with his mouth slightly open, as if he were having an epiphany. How is training like
pickle ball? A participant in Focus Group 2 observed that it is a process of explaining, modeling,
and then passing the baton for someone else to experience on their own, while still being around
to help. A participant in Focus Group 2 added that if there are two many players, new courts
should be opened. The Training Director then stated that people get skills by practicing and not
being afraid to step in and try and fail. He emphasized, “Failure is an event, not a person.”
Date: July 21, 2015
Day of Training: 2
Notes: Before the training began I ran into one of the career missionaries. She said that she and
her husband had gone through the training 10 years ago, and the training strategies have changed
significantly in that time. Ten years ago the training sessions were taught lecture-style whereas
now they are discussion-based. Also, values were not emphasized 10 years ago. I appreciated
hearing this from her. She stated that now (possibly because of the new training style, possible
because of her own personal growth) she is more aligned with AFM values and has made them
part of her life.
Today’s training started out as a recap of yesterday. The Training Director asked the
class to reflect and write what they learned yesterday. The trainees were given several minutes
to write their thoughts, and then discuss in their small groups (each table is a group - the tables
were assigned by destination country. There are 5 groups. I have ended up in the group with
someone going to Thailand, Cambodia, and Turkey). After discussing within the groups, each
group mentioned 1 item to the rest of the class. I have a gut feeling that the silent reflection and
writing will probably help some of the trainees verbalize and internalize what they learned
yesterday. In fact, I wondered if in fact it was a sort of self-persuasion technique that The
Training Director was using. Some of the ideas that the trainees emphasized were:
- “We don’t do this alone.” (A Participant in Focus Group 2). He was alluding to the
values of teamwork and reliance. The Training Director picked up on the Participant in Focus
Group 2’s thought and expanded on it. He referred to the illustration (man-centric vs.
Godcentric) he had drawn yesterday, and proposed that a practical application of the idea of not
going alone is prayer, but that the paradigm shift also requires a paradigm shift in the way the
trainees will pray. He challenged those trainees who will be leading out in evening worship
tonight to wrestle with their ideas regarding prayer as they prepare the worship. This is another
experience outside the classroom that I will not have access to. Perhaps I should ask questions
about worships—and journal—in the focus group. Another thing The Training Director said was,
“I couldn’t care less what you say. How you live shows what you believe.” He was making the
point that head knowledge does not always transfer to heart knowledge. And that parroting that
one understands the God-centric paradigm does not mean that one lives his/her life that way.
- “Failure is an event, not a person.” (Participant in Focus Group 3). A participant in
Focus Group 2 unpacked this phrase to mean that success is not a person, either. He took it
further to say that people are not successful. God is successful. While the participant in Focus
Group 2 was unpacking Participant in Focus Group 3’s statement, I felt like I was having a
personal breakthrough. I have always struggled with hating failure, feeling like any failure was
a reflection of my character and would diminish my self-worth. It appeared that I was not the
only person having a breakthrough, because several people were taking notes (Participant in
Focus Group 2, Participant in Focus Group 3, Participant in Focus Group 2, Participant in
Interview 2). Some others were listening with rapt attention, mouths open, or leaning forward in
their chairs (Participant in Focus Group 3, Two participants in Focus Group 2).
- The final lesson learned yesterday that was mentioned was that is important to sit back
and let God do the work, but that is not a passive activity. At this point, The Training Director
played a song titled “Jesus I am resting.” My observation notes say that at this point pickle ball
was brought up as a metaphor again. I remember this happening, but do not remember the
importance of the thought.
The second session of the morning was focused on ethnocentrism. The Training Director
showed a staged picture of a man in a suit facing a group of ‘native’ men in what looked like a
tropical biome. He asked for responses. Most of the responses had to do with the differences in
culture, and meeting people at where they were. Because I don’t want to influence the training, I
kept my thoughts to myself. But my first thought was that Jesus is supposed to be accessible,
and something we easily apply to our day-to-day. But nothing about the suited man looked
dayto-day for the other men. The Training Director used the photo to illustrate the cultural
differences between missionaries and their host culture. He said that missionaries should be
cognizant of the differences between their culture and their host culture, and that it is often
greater than it seems. He emphasized, “for you to think that you can help them when you arrive
is an illusion.” In fact, it is the other way around. “Your first work is going to be a learner or a
listener rather than a teacher,” he added. I saw this as an allusion to the value of humility.
Next we watched a video clip called Norse to Norsewest or something like that. A spoof
on missions and humanitarian attempts, the video followed a group of Norse people who tried to
impose their beliefs on North American culture, destroying electronics, changing the diet,
implementing hand-to-hand combat, and other things. Though many of the trainees seemed to
think that the movie was an over exaggeration of what happens in mission work, I have my
doubts. Additionally, what struck me about the video is that if the North Americans in the video
had hypothetically been asked whether they agreed with the Norse values (health, strength, etc.)
they would definitely have agreed. What differed was the application of those values. This is
definitely something that missionaries should be cognizant of as they head into the mission field.
The illustration that followed as a video documentary about a man who learned how to ride a
bike that had been re-engineered so that turning the steering wheel right turned the bike left, and
vice versa. He traveled over the country giving presentations about how people cannot
reprogram their muscles to work just because their brain understands the concept. He challenged
himself to learn how to ride the bike. It took him 8 months of practicing before he was able to
ride the bike. He would get going for a couple seconds, but with any small distraction he would
find himself wobbling and crashing. Once he learned how to ride the backwards bike, he wasn’t
able to ride a normal bike at the first try. It took him 20 minutes before his body remembered
how to ride a normal bike. This video clip had many applications. The biggest message was that
knowledge does not equal understanding. The trainees appeared to apply this concept to the new
cultures they will be exposed to. That they will not understand the culture until after they get
there, and will experience reverse culture shock upon reentry into their home culture. What most
struck me about the culture is how easy it is to fall back into old habits. A simple distraction will
pull someone back into his or her old frame of mind. And new experiences are fraught with
distractions.
The Training Director recommended a book to the trainees titled “The Talent Code” that
is about genius. The other studied places from which a disproportionate number of a particular
kind of genius come from (i.e. female tennis players from Russia, soccer players from South
America). The author found that three things produce genius: ignition or inspiration, deep
practice which involves being comfortable with being uncomfortable or the gap between where
one is an where one wants to be, and master coaching. The Training Director applied this
concept to discipleship.
The morning session ended with The Training Director likening AFM policies with a
uniform. Some of the ways trainees took the metaphor was to mean leveling the playing field,
and The Training Director added representing the organization. What struck me about this
metaphor is that a uniform makes someone instantly recognized as part of a particular brand, and
often speaks to that brand’s mission or the wearer’s functionality (i.e. student, policeman, sailor,
etc.).
Finally, The Training Director emphasized that the crucible is to learn teamwork, and that
nobody can make it on his/her own. It was blatantly obvious then, that the value we will be
taught this weekend is teamwork - although I would imagine that humility and reliance are right
up there with it.
Sessions 3 and 4 after lunch were not very eventful. Because of how The Training
Director prefaced them with the metaphor of a uniform I thought that integrity or other values
might be emphasized. Instead, it was a pretty straightforward presentation regarding child abuse,
and a step-by-step guide for filling out W-4’s, I-9s and other documents. The only two values I
saw potentially referred to during these presentations were 1) integrity when the presenter
stressed not to sign the agreement unless trainees had read the AFM policy book and 2)
teamwork when one office member was volunteer to help fill out forms and the trainees were
instructed to applaud her.
At the end of session 4, The Training Director came back with an announcement. He
reads the trainees daily journals. He wanted to remind trainees to structure their journals by
starting with a summary of the most important data they learned, then a reflection/interaction
with what they learned and then ending with an application or how to use the information. It
struck me that the journal could be an “aha” moment for some of the trainees. They might not
identify it as a turning point in their value-assimilation, but it might work as self-persuasion or
the repetition needed to solidify the values.
Date: July 22, 2015
Day of Training: 3
Notes: I hate to admit it, but 13-14 hour work days are getting to me, and I was not able to focus
as well today as I could yesterday and the day before. Unfortunately, this means that I am not as
observant or as insightful as I might have been otherwise. I also realized that my journals do not
include level of detail and personal reflection that they should. But I’m afraid that if I spend
more time journaling and stretch myself thinner, I will get sick or have a break down. Once
again, I will not be able to reflect much on my observations from today. That will need to wait
until after the observations are over and I no longer feel like falling asleep on my feet.
Incidentally, this morning two girls had their heads down on the table and looked like they still
wanted to be in bed. This made me realize that I am not the only person who might have
personal factors that inhibit my learning.
There are 1 or 2 new trainees - I think. A pastor and his wife from Togo. I am not certain
yet of their roll in the training. If they are new trainees, I will try to see if they would like to be
involved in my study. On the subject of my study, I finally had time last night to go over the
Values & Demographic Survey, and I realized that not all trainees
The Training Director started out the day with a reminder of punctuality. He commented
that there were several individuals who would have had to do 40 pushups if his pushup policy
had been implemented. “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”
he reminded the trainees. He then said that this is a biblical principal because starting with
creation, a day begins with rest and ends with work (evening and morning were the first day).
Along with disciple, The Training Director talked about daily devotions. He
requested/demanded that trainees do their personal devotions differently. That they pair up in
groups of two of the same gender and read the same number of chapters in the Bible each day.
If, at the end of the week, one of the partners has not studied the number of agreed-upon
chapters, both trainees will start over again. I thought that this might be a consequence of
teamwork, but the values that The Training Director specifically mentioned were transparency
and accountability. “Major changes often only take place when there is a relationship of
accountability.”
Another way that The Training Director is keeping the trainees accountable is by reading
their journals. For the first time this year he is interacting with the journals - writing comments
and feedback. This might be an important learning experience for some of the trainees and
influence them regarding their values. I am curious to see if any trainees mention it during the
focus groups.
Some of the values that are not AFM core values or those alluded to in the mission
statement, but that I think are still values of AFM based on things that The Training Director has
said are change and structure.
At the end of session 1 The Training Director had the trainees practice SOAP journaling
on The Great Commission. I had a significant revelation doing the SOAP journaling (that
Christians are not supposed to simply teach, but to teach to obey. The focus is on the action.
The response of the receivers of the message), and wonder if other trainees experienced the same
thing.
After a break of Pickle Ball, we reunited in Morgan Hall and picked up where we left off.
Different individuals shared what they found impactful during their SOAP journaling. Similar to
the previous days, when The Training Director heard something he agreed with, he expounded
upon the idea. I noticed that he got pretty excited about each aspect. Nobody had a wrong
answer, and he was able to twist each comment into a point that he wanted to make. The points
were the following:
- “faith looks at a certainty greater than the uncertainty.” This had to do with faith and
doubt, which The Training Director suggested are not opposite ends of a spectrum. Rather
certainty and uncertainty are opposite ends of the spectrum. Certainty does not leave room for
doubt or faith. Uncertainty can have the reactions of both doubt and faith. They are often felt
simultaneously. But faith is focusing on a certainty, while doubt is focusing on an uncertainty.
“A prerequisite to great leadership is great followership.” When he said this, The Training
Director’s voice became quieter and slower, emphasizing the point. In addition to changing his
vocalics, The Training Director acted things out, raised his voice, and whispered. All of these
techniques worked to illustrate his passion and enthusiasm, and maintain listener interest while
he was speaking.
I saw The Training Director model quite a bit of transparency during the Session 2. He
talked about how difficult it is to be a student missionary. “One of the things that kills student
missionaries is mission” “You will survive the year, but you will come back broken” - regarding
a student missionary that is working from a self-centric paradigm instead of the God-centric
paradigm. He was honest and transparent about the emotional stress of being a missionary. At
one point, one trainee voiced concern. He felt overwhelmed and didn’t know how he was going
to be able to remember everything he needed to during the year. The Training Director put a stop
to the lecture portion of the training, and started a group prayer (demonstrating reliance). In
addition to this silent affirmation of the trainee’s transparency, The Training Director verbally
thanked the trainee for his transparency.
At the end of the Session 2 The Training Director had the trainees write down four
phrases: 1) salvation looks like relational healing; 2) the way we live together is the gospel we
preach; 3) living together in community reveals relational brokenness; 4) relational brokenness is
an opportunity for me to experience deeper salvation.
Session #3 after lunch started with us picking up with the great commission. The
Training Director brought up an idea that I had never heard before, that baptizing people in the
name really means to immerse people in God’s character. Baptism the way the church practices
it is just a symbol of the immersion that people have already experienced. To illustrated what
immersion means, The Training Director talked about pickles (purposely chosen because of
pickle ball? Probably). They have to be immersed in brine in order to turn into pickles. And
this immersion produces a change in their character. They cease to be cucumbers when they
become pickles. The Training Director then stated that AFM has a long-term mission. The
organization is looking to create pickles, not cucumbers.
I was extra tired during the afternoon sessions and almost took a 10-minute nap instead
of stepping outside to play pickle ball. At the last minute I decided that I wouldn’t get enough
rest in a nap to make it worthwhile, so I headed outside. I was able to see The Training Director
introduce the guest pastor to Pickle Ball. I felt bad for him - that he had already missed out on
the amazing pickle ball metaphors from the previous days.
Session 4 continued with discipleship. The Training Director stated that the Great
Commission has been God’s plan since the beginning of the earth. Starting with creation man
was commanded multiply. Abraham was also given the same commission. And each time God’s
covenant is renewed, he also renews his promise of blessing. The Training Director mentioned
that blessing is linked with obedience. This resonated with me, because it reminded me of when
I went to Grace Point SDA church, and the emphasis there on abundance, and how the 10
commandments are a description of a life of abundance rather than a list of laws. We
spend time in groups of 2 going through the discipleship book. I didn’t feel completely
comfortable being part of this activity, because I am a researcher. And I wasn’t sure if my
partner was comfortable being partnered with me. Also, I hate to say, I am probably not as
biblically knowledgeable as most of the soon-to-be missionaries.
Just as with the morning session, the Training Director was a dynamic discussion leader.
He used dynamics and gestures. He acted out the story of Peter walking on water, and used
sound effects. Later on he invited one of the trainees to arm wrestle with him on the floor. They
both gave it all they got. The point the Training Director was making was that “if you fight sin,
you will surrender to sin, because it is stronger than you. If you wrestle with Jesus, you will
surrender to Him.”
Both yesterday and today the training went longer than 20 minutes past 5:00. Since I
have to be at work at 5:30 pm because otherwise I will be locked out of the building, once it
reaches 5:00 I am more preoccupied with time than with content the trainer is sharing.
Unfortunately this is one of my weaknesses. Again, I was reminded that personal issues can
impede a person’s acquisition of organizational knowledge and values.
Date: July 28, 2015
Day of Training: 6
Notes: There are several days that I need to make up for. Thursday immediately following
training, we left for the Crucible weekend, and Sunday/yesterday I was too tired to catch up. So
here goes…
Thursday was training day #4. We met in the AFM training center just like other days.
The Training Director was in charge of the training, and the entire day was focused on
discipleship. It was noted that the stages of discipleship are introduce, wrestle, apply, and share.
He reiterated the points from Day #3 that salvation looks like relational healing, the way we live
together is the gospel we preach, and living together reveals relational brokenness. As we went
over these concepts from yesterday, I wondered whether it is possible that the repetition of
talking about what they have learned helps trainees solidify what they have learned.
The Training Director also mentioned that disfunctions in a team are inevitable, because
nobody is perfect. “Teams are inherently dysfunctional because they are made up of imperfect
people.” The way that the Training Director (TD) talked about high functioning teams made me
wonder whether the mission of AFM is to create high functioning teams. In that way, the process
is the goal.
Session 2 started with the TD using a metaphor of firemen coming to put out a fire in
order to illustrate high-functioning teams. Members of high-functioning teams need to walk
toward the fire to put it out. That means that they need to confront crises instead of ignoring
them. They need to be skilled at conflict management. One of the skills necessary for members
of high-functioning teams is learning how to manage difficult conversations, learning
conversations and listening.
Because of the transparency, vulnerability, and courage it takes to confront something, it
is essential for high-functioning teams to have a safe environment of trust and open
communication. One of the things that help with conflict management is being aware of
attribution error. We see offense as an internal attribute of a person; but we see our own actions
that caused offense as an external attribute. We studied attribution error in Communication
Theory I believe. I was excited to see Communication theories applied to missions!
Session 3 continued the conversation about learning conversations. The key in learning
conversations is to have genuine curiosity in the other person and to believe in his/her goodwill.
To give him/her the benefit of the doubt. As an illustration of learning conversations and
listening conversations, the TD had two trainees demonstrate their listening/learning skills. One
thing I learned is that questions are off-limits when one is listening in a conflict situation because
questions are a way of maintaining control and focusing the conversation on what you are
interested in rather than on what the other person wants to communicate.
The TD stated that he is going to institute a weekly meeting where the trainees will have
an opportunity to take out the trash and participate in difficult conversations and learning
conversations. He emphasize that this will require an environment where it is safe to have high
levels of transparency.
Session 4 after lunch was lead by a Trainer (T) instead of the Training Director. This T’s
focus was on missions. He started by splitting the guys and girls into groups and giving them a
scenario to which they had to respond with a plan for missions. When the groups got back
together to discuss their various plans, I noticed that both the guys and the girls used metaphors
that had previously been used in training i.e. “pickling” or illustrations like the leadership video
with the leader who inspires a group on a grassy bluff to start dancing.
Session 5 included a game to illustrate a point. The girls each held the end of a sheet
with the word evangelism on it. The boys held a sheet with the word church printed on it. There
was a ball that represented a believer resting on the evangelism sheet. The girls’ duty was to
land the ball into the church sheet without touching the ball. We failed. The boys tried, and they
were able to make it, but when multiple balls were added, they failed.
To teach the trainees about giving people the tools that they need, the T told a story about
a drought in PNG in which flour and oil were given to the native peoples. They were told that
the flour and oil was food, but were not told how to use it. So some people drank the oil, and
tried to eat the raw flour. They became sick and had to be transported out to a hospital when
they were in critical condition. The T then asked the class what should have happened instead,
and the trainees responded that those helping during the crisis should have met the PNG people
where they were at and either taught them how to use the flour and oil, or give them food that
they were familiar with.
In Session 6 the conversation about differences in culture continued. Then, as soon as
this session was over, we all left on the Crucible. Though this is the first time I have journaled
about the Crucible, it has been on my mind for months. The Crucible is a camping survival
weekend that the AFM trainees are taken on with the intent of turning them into a
highfunctioning team. There is a general policy that what happens on the Crucible stays at the
Crucible. As the Crucible is an integral part of training, I cannot leave it out of my research. But
as it is part of the secret sauce of AFM, I cannot divulge the specific activities that went on
during the Crucible.
The crucible started Thursday evening, and went until Sunday evening. During that time,
each of the trainees came to some sort of melting point, either spiritually, mentally, physically, or
emotionally. Sometimes these meltdowns were public. But most of them were private. At the
beginning of the Crucible the TD told all trainees that the purpose of the Crucible was to form
high-functioning teams. And thought the weekend the trainees were put through different levels
of challenges and hardships in order to foster an environment that would force them out of their
comfort zone and to rely upon their teammates. Once the trainees returned, the next day of
training was spent debriefing the crucible. Each trainee described their melting point and what
he/she learned from the event.
On Monday, Training Day #5 before we talked about the melting points during the
crucible, we talked about moments that hit us as hilarious, and the biggest lessons that were
learned. Some of the lessons that trainees mentioned were that teamwork is important, how to
push past barriers when you or someone else needs help, and that what is important in a team
isn’t the goals as much as it is the process of building/maintaining relationships. The TD
affirmed that the Crucible is not the events that the trainers plan, it’s what each trainee brings to
the experience.
The TD stated that “great leaders create a space for people to be at their best.” The TD
also used the illustration of a fire and girls warming themselves at a fire after being wet and
miserable during one Crucible, likening it to sharing the gospel. It requires vulnerability so one
can warm him/herself up.
The TD congratulated the trainees on becoming a high-functioning team during the
crucible. He asked the trainees what it was that led them from where they were to when the
training started to where they are now. The answers included the Crucible, vulnerability,
community, and an environment of trust. The TD responded to one of the trainee’s answer that
“true church is when you’re known for who you are, and loved anyway,”
During the debrief, one of the trainees thanked the TD for the feedback that he gives the
group as well as individual trainees. She stated that the feedback helps her. Perhaps it is one of
the things that will help her assimilate the organizational values.
Training Day #6 was today. The TD was not present. Instead a new trainer came. I was
able to get him to sign an informed consent after session #1. Session #2 started with talking
about language and culture acquisition. All of the trainees were sitting in the same position as
last week. Apparently we have adopted a system.
The T asked the trainees how learning a new language is a path of humility. One of the
trainees responded that learning a new culture is a path of humility because there will always be
something new to learn. It is possible that she has thought long and hard about this, or she has
been picking up hints that this is one of AFM’s values.
During the morning, the trainees were mostly doing work out of a workbook. It
reminded me a bit of high school, with the fill in the blanks and busy work. The T did make an
indirect reference to a value, though. He said, “This isn’t to scare you, it’s to prepare you,”
when talking about the difficulties of language/culture acquisition and mission work. With that
statement, he was modeling and reinforcing the AFM value of transparency.
At the end of the morning session, the trainees had to repeat the future worker’s pledge
about promising to use language learning to share the idea of redemption. Just by making this
commitment and reading the pledge out loud, some trainees might have been persuaded to adopt
the ideas/position of AFM, otherwise they might have experienced cognitive dissonance. During
the afternoon, the trainees were split into groups for language acquisition. I was put into a group
with three other trainees that are focusing on the Korean language. Throughout the afternoon we
used dolls, toy animals, and pictures of personal relationships and actions to learn Korean
vocabulary. One of the trainees got excited every time we were able to act out a Korean
command, or put the animals/dolls in a position that illustrated a Korean sentence. From his
excitement I deduced that he is a kinetic learner. Therefore he probably will have learned much
more from the Crucible experience than through any of the classroom portions of the training.
But we’ll see what he says during the interviews/focus groups.
Date: July 29, 2015
Day of Training: 7
Notes: Today I did not feel like there was much reference to organizational values. Both the
morning and afternoon sessions were focused on languaculture acquisition. The Trainer
presented in the morning, stressing the CUTER method and why it is important to recognize the
difference between definition and meaning. In the afternoon, the individual groups met for
language practice. Again, I was with the Korean group. The two trainees who are learning
Korean with me had both studied last night. I did not study, but my recollection of the Korean
we learned yesterday was greater. I believe this is because I am already bilingual. And if I
remember correctly from a language-limiting activity during the Crucible, the other two trainees
are currently monolingual.
At the end of session #1 the trainees were encouraged to sign their name at the bottom of
the Evolving principle pledge after reading the pledge out loud. Again, the process of reading
the pledge out loud and signing my name caused me to feel committed to the task. It is possible
that pledging has the same effect on the others, motivating them to be more intentional about
their languaculture acquisition.
Just as yesterday, the morning was spent mostly working in a workbook. The busy work
does not motivate me to learn. Rather, it makes me feel like I am in high school, learning a
required amount of information instead of discovering it for myself. Nevertheless, this teaching
method might be helpful for some of the trainees, and I do not want to discount it.
Though workbooks limit my learning, stories increase my learning. I have found that when one
of the Trainers uses a story or a metaphor, I spend considerable energy applying the concepts I
have learned to the situation. The Trainer told a story and gave an illustration to demonstrate
pieces of life. The concept is that an object is not simply an object in a culture. The object plus
its meaning equals a piece of life. The examples he told were a drum in a temple. Just knowing
the word drum would not give someone a sense of Turkey’s culture. But knowing that every
time someone hit the drum, they were announcing the merit they had just earned, that does touch
upon culture. In the same way, New Zealanders use sheep for eating and for clothing. So do
Turkish people. But in Turkey they also use sheep for sacrifices. Someone needs to know about
the sacrifices, or else they do not understand the Turkish meaning of sheep.
In the afternoon for the language practice we added furniture, food, and relationship (in,
on, under, beside) to our vocabulary. Once again, one of the Trainees demonstrated considerable
excitement whenever he was able link the sounds kinetically with actions. The other trainee
appears to be an auditory learner. Somehow this does not surprise me, since he sings in choirs
and plays piano.
Date: July 30, 2015
Day of Training: 8
Notes: Similar to yesterday, I did not notice many direct or indirect references to organizational
values today. This is partially because the training this week is focused on languaculture
acquisition - which could be considered a job skill rather than organizational knowledge. During
the afternoon the language nurturer who helped 5 trainees and myself learn Thai was not an
AFM employee and was not affiliated with the organization, so though I sat in on the training, I
did not take observation notes.
During the morning the trainees learned about the zone of proximal development, which
is the zone in which a person is able to have growth in a new languaculture. The zone of
proximal development is balanced between comfortable and uncomfortable. Too comfortable
and a person will not learn; too uncomfortable and the person will be in over his/her head.
At one point during session 2 one of the trainees asked the Trainer to clarify one of the
guidelines for languaculture acquisition. The Trainer responded, “we aren’t looking for rules, we
are looking for principles we can live by.” ‘
Date: July 31, 2015
Day of Training: 9
Notes: I feel like today’s journal is going to be a repeat of yesterday’s journal. Once again, not
much reference was made to organizational values, either directly or indirectly.
The morning focus was once again languaculture acquisition. The afternoon was focused
on acquiring a language. During the morning session #2, the trainer mentioned the frustration
and feelings of being strange and foolish that missionaries will feel as they are beginners in a
language. I felt that this was an example of transparency, and a reminder that the trainees need
to keep a humble attitude when they go out into the field.
During the afternoon I felt less inclined to pay attention and learn the language than I had
for the rest of the week. While trying to analyze my feelings I wondered whether I would have
been more motivated to learn if I were going to use the language in the future. It might be
possible that the student missionaries are focused on learning the AFM values simply because
they know they will need to use the values in the field.
Date: August 3, 2015
Day of Training: 10
Notes: We had two different trainers today; one if the morning and one if the afternoon. The
morning trainer focused on discipleship and the afternoon trainer focused on cultural issues and
mental models.
In the morning, the trainer affirmed the trainees for their excellent job on their learning
journals. He also talked quite a bit about listening to God. This reinforces the AFM value of
reliance, as defined as reliance on God. He said, “If God is going to speak to your heart, it’s
probably going to be when you are listening.” He discussed the voice of God and the story of
Samuel. He also confessed that his biggest failures and wipeouts are when he faces crises
without going to God. “Listening to God is not a one-time event. It’s a process.” he explained.
I noticed this morning that my attention is drawn every time the trainer tells a story or uses a
metaphor to make a point. Those are much more effective to my learning than a simple
explanation of the facts.
Before lunch, we discussed the story of the Good Samaritan. We used the discipleship
books as a guide as we studied the story. Though the study, I was convinced of several things:
people are much more broken than they would like to admit but they need to admit their
brokenness in order to be healed, community is important and people need to accept those who
are broken and help them heal, Jesus is the answer (reliance on God). I noticed that what I saw
in the story was related to AFM values of humility, teamwork, and transparency. As we talked
about the story of the Good Samaritan, the trainer reinforced the value of vulnerability (which I
translate as transparency) and the importance of the church being a safe place.
The afternoon started off with an illustration of the differences in culture. The trainer (a
man) held hands with one of the trainees (a boy) and talked about how differences in worldview
affect the way a person experiences that occurrence. His worldview as an American filtered the
interaction as gay the first time he encountered the behavior, when in reality he was in a “man’s
world” and the action was completely acceptable. Because of the differences in culture, the
trainer told the trainees that they need to strip Christianity of all culture until it is the bare bones
before they apply Christianity to people in another culture.
Session number 4 continued with the culture theme. Trainees were instructed to write on
a board words that describe what American culture revolves around. He then used those words
to help describe mental models. He also drew a diagram that illustrated how mental models are
formed. During this session he told a lot of stories and used illustration to explain the concept of
mental models. He started talking about culture shock, and encouraged the trainees that when
they encounter culture shock, they should get help form someone (humility, teamwork and
community) and plan fun events.
Date: August 4, 2015
Day of Training: 11
Notes: This morning we had a surprising conversation during the first session of training. The
trainer admitted that it was the first cubicle they had allowed to finish without practicing dealing
with interpersonal issues. I had understood the crucible to be specifically about teamwork - and
that was true for our crucible, but in the past the crucible was about learning conversations as
well as about teamwork. In fact, learning conversations are crucial to the good functioning of
teams. The trainer told the trainees that only once before in the 16 times they have led a crucible
did a group not deal with interpersonal issues. In that instance, the trainers manufactured and
argument and learning conversation in the presence of the trainees. In the debrief that followed
the argument, the trainer found out that none of the student missionaries had seen adults process
disagreements healthfully. Either they had never seen their parents argue before, or the
arguments had been unpleasant, harmful, and unhealthy. When the trainer talked about this, I
realized that I have never seen my parents argue, therefore I do not have a mental model of what
healthy disagreements look like. I am missing the tools needed for a successful learning
conversation.
Because we did not practice this skill over the crucible, one of the trainees asked for a
bullet point list of how to conduct a learning conversation. The trainer brought in another trainer
who was outside, because this was the other trainer’s area of expertise. The bullet-point list was
as follows:
- Think of what happened from the other person’s perspective.
- Request a learning conversation
- Attempt to tell the story form the other person’s perspective.
- Give the other person time to clarify the story, and listen to his/her response
- Acknowledge what you personally did to contribute to the problem
- Come to an agreement on what can be done to avoid the problem in the future
One of the things that were not emphasized in this list was that one needs to go about initiating
the learning conversation with an attitude of curiosity and belief in the goodwill of the other
person. At the end of the bullet points about a learning conversation, the trainer mentioned that a
learning conversation is not a confrontation. A confrontation has a winner and a loser. A
learning conversation is win-win
When the trainer mentioned that our crucible was the first crucible that did not have to
practice learning conversations because of interpersonal conflict, I felt a little bit jipped, and
wished that we had encountered conflict in order to practice difficult conversations. I asked the
trainer why the trainers did not manufacture a difficult conversation for our crucible. The trainer
replied that the trainers had agreed that the themes of our crucible seemed to be leadership,
followership, and teamwork. Crucibles might change based on what people bring to them. But,
this trainer still wished that our group had been able to practice difficult conversations. Perhaps
because I saw the logic in learning conversations as beneficial, or perhaps because we did not
receive practice in them, turning the skills into a scarcity. Either way, I resolved in my heart to
use learning-conversation concepts and skills in my interpersonal relationships with my family
and significant others.
For a short while during the first session, I sat in personal reflection rather than listening
to the training. It occurred to me that the trainees might be committed to learning AFM values
because they have already bought in to the mission. I have started to try to incorporate
components of the AFM training into my personal life. Why? Because I have been persuaded in
the importance of a portion of the AFM mission. The other trainees believe in the mission - it is
part of the reason they joined the organization. And since the values have been linked with
attaining the mission, the trainees might have high motivation to adopt AFM values. During
the second session, the trainer talked about nonverbal communication and its importance. He
used the example of clothing. In one particular culture pants signified prostitution. Because of
that meaning, he required that his wife and daughters not wear pants. Not because there is
anything wrong with pants, but because of what pants would communicate to the members of
that culture. After this illustration the trainer told a series of stories and asked the trainees to tell
him what lessons could be learned from the stories. One of the stories was about two Mormon
missionaries who took of picture of themselves sitting on top of a Buddha, which landed them in
jail. Another story was about a man who found himself with an unexpected wife because he had
shaken hands with his “uncle” in a culture which signified a handshake to mean a proposal. The
stories segued into the differences and culture. The trainer talked about the stages and symptoms
of culture shock and how to deal with it.
Session 3 before lunch was very short. The trainer only had time to introduce the idea of
high context and low context cultures. He mentioned that high context cultures are big on saving
face and using half-stories.
During lunch we had our first focus group. 6 trainees, 3 girls and 3 boys, participated.
Although one of the boys did not say a word. It made me wonder why he even showed up,
except that he must have felt obligated.
After lunch the 4th session started 30 minutes late because the trainer was running late.
He told the trainees to use the 30 minutes for personal quiet time. This ended up being an
excellent way to practice the “listening to God” concept that he had introduced to the trainees
yesterday.
The afternoon sessions were focused on discipleship. Session 4 was about the parable of
the sower and the importance of competence (our discipleship sessions have already talked
about called, committed, and community). The trainer stated, “You will not have an audience for
your words until you’ve earned an audience with your life.” I enjoy writing down key phrases
that the trainer says. These proverbs catch my attention, and probably help persuade me to
assimilate organizational values.
Today I noticed that some of the work trainees did together and some work was done
individually. During the sessions some trainees took notes on their t-shirts that they were given
in order to fill with notes. Some took notes in a journal that they were given to fill with notes.
And others sat listening without taking notes.
During session 5 the trainees were instructed to think about instances in which they did
something in their personal walk with God that strengthened their relationship with God. After
listing these things, 3 of the trainees were asked to share something from their list. They shared
setting aside quiet time with God, intercessory prayer, and prayer journaling. The trainer
explained that just like the wheat in the parable of the sower has roots that touch the roots of
other wheat, people in a Christian community sometimes should share what happens in their
personal lives (private walk with God) with people in their community. This will serve to
strengthen the community. He encouraged the trainees to share their private lives with their
Bible study accountability partner. This reminded me that I do not have an accountability
partner, but it would be advantageous for me to have one. So when I left the training, I asked a
friend to be my partner. She agreed! :)
Date: August 5, 2015
Day of Training: 12
Notes: Today was focused entirely on worldviews and the differences in cultures. The morning
started with the trainer telling stories and asking the trainees to tell him the meaning of the
stories, or the lessons learned. As he told the stories some of the trainees drew on their t-shirts
while some sat listening to the trainer, and others wrote in their journals. As I looked around the
room, I realized that I have become attached to all of the trainees and cannot imagine the group
functioning without any single one of them.
Several of the stories that the trainer told illustrated the difference between high context
cultures and low context cultures. After a couple stories, the trainer used the metaphor of gum to
talk about evangelism. If we hear a list of the ingredients in gum, gum does not sound
appetizing to us (He read out the list of ingredients and asked the trainees whether it sounded
good to them). Then he stated that Christians often do the same thing; they list the ingredients
without offering unbelievers a product. But just as you or I want to taste the gum to see whether
it is good, unbelievers want to experience that Christianity is good before hearing about the
ingredients. Towards the end of session 1, the trainer stated that the AFM trainers act in
certain ways and plan the crucible so that everyone on the team (referring to the trainers) is
thinking in terms of modeling the gospel, not talking about it. They hope that this attitude rubs
off on the student missionaries.
Session 2 used an illustration of three buckets for the entire session. The trainer brought
in a sick on a base with three branches sticking off of it in different directions. From these three
branches hung buckets. The bottom and top ones were platinum, while the one in the middle
was white. He explained that the buckets represent classifications of behavior. The top bucket
represents actions which are required, the bottom bucket represents actions which are prohibited,
and the middle bucket represents actions which are neither required nor prohibited and therefore
require principles to determine behavior. Some of the principles might be “what would Jesus
do?” or “is the action helpful or harmful?” or “does the action have the appearance of evil?”
What is classified in the top and bottom buckets is often the result of cultural norms, although in
some cases it is religious norms. As someone moving from one culture to another, the trainees
were told to remember that the cultural norms of behavior in America (or their home country)
will be different than that of their host culture. There were two key phrases that the trainer said:
“Every choice you make either moves God’s work forward and back” and “Just because you can
do it doesn’t mean you should do it.” He was emphasizing the importance of appropriate
behavior. He made it clear that as the student missionaries go out into the field, some of the
behavior that they have classified as prohibited might move to the optional bucket, and some
behavior that they have classified as required might move to the optional bucket, and probably a
lot of behavior that they have classified as optional will move to the required or prohibited
buckets. These changes take a lot of work.
At the end of session 2 all of the trainees were given a piece of paper on which were
listed many different behaviors (I think there were 44 in all). The trainees had to list next to
these behaviors whether they classified the behavior in the top (1), middle (2), or bottom bucket
(3). Each of the behaviors was assigned a letter(s) A through RR. The trainer then made all
trainees fold their paper so they could not see which behavior corresponded with which letter.
He then read out a letter and then 1, 2, and 3. When he called the number that trainees had put
next to the letter, the trainees raised their hands. The trainees kept their eyes on their paper and
did not see whether the other trainees had the same answer as them. The trainer kept track of
how many times out of 25 the trainees had 100% consensus on whether a behavior was required,
optional, or prohibited. Out of 25, the trainees only had 1 in which they all agreed. The trainer
used this to illustrate that even though Christians all agree on a set of principles (The 28
fundamental beliefs for Adventists), they do not agree on the application of these principles.
To start out the afternoon sessions, the trainer asked the trainees to reflect upon which behaviors
they might need to move into new buckets when they move into their new host culture. This
seems like an invaluable skill for missionaries; being able to apply the principles that govern
behavior to different cultural settings.
Next, the trainer introduced two paradigms of Christianity. One of the paradigms is a
circle. What is inside the circle represents following Christian principles and being saved. What
is outside the circle represents unbelievers or unchristian behavior. In this paradigm the focus is
on simply doing what is right so that one is inside the parameters of what is Christian. The
second paradigm is a dot, which represents Jesus. In this paradigm people aren’t inside or
outside a circle, rather they are at different distances from the dot. The people can either be
moving toward the dot or moving away from it. A person who is closer to the dot and moving
away from the dot is in a more precarious position than one who is far away from the dot and
moving toward it. The trainer emphasized patience. Often people will try to evangelize others
by trying to bring others up to speed to the evangelist’s understanding, instead of meeting others
where they are at and discovering what the next step toward Jesus would be.
In session 4, the trainer said, “Jesus spent 30 years learning how to talk effective to
Jewish culture.” He was emphasizing the importance of listening, patience, and preparation.
Then we moved on to analyzing American culture. There was a board on which the trainees had
written words that describe what American culture revolves around, 2 days ago. We spent time
identifying which of those words were players in American culture, which were tools in
American culture, and which were the core foci of American culture. The core foci were
identified as self, entertainment, pleasure, status, money, and sex.
During session 5 we did the same culture activity with the book of Acts, writing words
that described the culture in Acts and then classifying them as either players, tools, or core foci.
The core foci we identified for the book of Acts were the Godhead, body of believers,
salvation/healing, and reaching the unreached. It didn’t skip my notice that the mission of AFM
is aligned with these core foci. In comparing the core foci of American and Acts cultures, it was
noted that in one self is the center while in the other God is the center. And in American culture
the other foci have to do with pleasing oneself, while in the Acts culture the other foci have to do
with other people. Such a radical difference! It was noted that quite often in American culture
people will use “tools” from the Acts culture and they will believe that they are true Christians,
when the truth is that their core foci have not changed, and they are completely leaving out the
call of discipleship that identifies a Christian. For example, music can be played in church
simply for entertainment.
Date: August 6, 2015
Day of Training: 13
Notes: The first session started out with a story about a maturing church practicing what they
believe. The trainer described several instances where a church implemented programs where
they cared for the sick or helped out people in their communities, and members of the
community wanted to get baptized not because of church doctrine, but because of their
experience with the church members. One of the stories was about a lay pastor who beat his
wife because he didn’t know a better way of being in control of his family. This story was told
in the context of church members’ responsibility to help people understand how to apply the
gospel to their lives. The lay pastor had read the Bible verse that said that men should be in
control of their families, and they only way he knew of to be in control was to beat his wife.
Instead of chastising the lay pastor and rescinding his role in the church, the trainer (who was a
missionary at the time) had the lay pastor help him teach the community productive ways of
dealing with conflict. They role-played and discussed scenarios. By the end of the training, the
lay pastor was stricken with repentance and told the trainer/missionary that the was well
disciplined.
During the second session the trainer introduced the idea of “soft teaching” to the
trainees. He suggested that this is an important aspect of sharing the gospel with people of
different cultures. Soft teaching is telling stories without giving a reason why or explaining
them. Instead, the teacher tells many stories and lets the audience infer their own meaning and
glean their own lessons from the stories. It suddenly occurred to me that this trainer has been
using this same method with the trainees.
In the middle of the second session the trainer started talking about spiritual warfare. He
prefaced the topic by explaining how the book of Genesis can be seen through the lens of
spiritual warfare. His idea is that the book’s theme is sons and seed - and the Moses is following
the descendants of Adam in an effort to keep track of the line of the messiah. This appeared to
be a new concept for many of the trainees, and several of them gasped or vocalized their
appreciation at this idea. Then we started going through a list of Bible verses that have to do
with spiritual warfare. The tables were split into groups and each group would analyze a
different verse, and then come back together to share their findings.
During the second half of the lunch break, the trainees met for a penguin circle. This
time, instead of being led by the trainer, the penguin circle was led by one of the trainees. The
circle started with affirmation of what has been working well. Then, the floor was opened up for
any issues. Again, the issue of time management was brought up. Several members of the group
spoke up, and they made sure to analyze the problem before trying to speak about solutions. I
was impressed, as this showed a good foundation in group decision-making. Another thing that
impressed me is that the trainees decided that they were willing to spend extra time in “class” in
order to get as much training as possible from one of the trainers who will be leaving after
tomorrow.
The afternoon sessions started as a continuation of the morning session, with the groups
testing Bible verses to glean principles of spiritual warfare. This continued into the fourth session
of the day, except instead of working in groups, the whole group worked together. I believe it is
because the trainer felt pressed for time.
Date: August 7, 2015
Day of Training: 14
Notes: This morning I found out that today is only going to be a half-day of training. This sort
of disappointed me, as I have been immensely enjoying attending the training. Is it ethical of the
investigator to get so invested in her research project? I’m unclear on this.
The first session started out with the trainer addressing the fact that some of the trainees
were fasting. This was a reminder of dependence/reliance on God, one of AFM’s core values.
After this announcement, another trainer took over the session. He started to talk to the trainees
about realistic and unrealistic expectations. He had the trainees list both realistic and unrealistic
expectations for their year abroad in relation to the host culture/people. As trainees called out
realistic and unrealistic expectations, the trainers would occasionally insert comments or stories
to affirm what the trainees were saying. Once all of the expectations (both realistic and
unrealistic) had been listed, the trainer broke down/analyzed each one. After all of the
expectations had been analyzed, the trainer asked the trainees to make a list of their goals/plans
for the upcoming year, taking the exception into account. He then broke down/analyzed each of
their goals.
The second session started out with a case study of a short-term mission trip. It was a
satire of the way many mission trips are organized and led. In the case study, a group from rural
Mexico was requesting to come to “our” home church on a mission trip. Their plans did not take
into account any of “our” culture. After he was done reading the case study, the trainer asked
what should have been done instead.
Once the group was done discussing the case study, the trainees listed realistic and
unrealistic expectations of their future dealings with the career missionaries. These expectations
were analyzed in the same way as the expectations listed during session 1.
Session 3 continued with the realistic expectations listed in session 2. Then, as it was
close to noon, the trainer wrapped up the day—and his time with the trainees—by giving the
trainees a lot of advice about how to interact with the career missionaries, what to do or not to
do, what should be discussed in their first meeting, etc. I felt that the advice he gave the student
missionaries will have the effect of increasing the integrity of their projects. But so far, the word
integrity has not been mentioned in the 3 weeks of training.
Date: August 10, 2015
Day of Training: 15
Notes: The first session today was on discipleship. The trainer asked the trainees to use 5 words
to describe their weekend. One by one we went around the room sharing our weekend
experiences, and in this way strengthened our sense of connection and community. Once we had
completed this activity, we spend one minute reflecting on being present in the moment with all
of the individuals in the room. The trainer made the comment that this past weekend (a free
weekend for the trainees) was practice for this coming weekend, when they will disperse around
the world and no longer live together. This thought hit me in an emotional spot. I have become
attached to the trainees, and I don’t even live with them! I can’t imagine their sense of loss come
the end of the training.
The next item that we spent a minute reflecting on was a person who has invested into
our lives and helped us become the person we am today. After we reflected on this person, the
trainer requested that the trainees thank the person who has been their mentor, and that they find
someone else to pay it forward to. That they become a mentor and invest in someone else’s life.
I noted to myself that this would be discipleship in practice.
Next, all trainees were instructed to spend five minutes designing their dream garden.
After the five minutes were up the trainees shared their dream gardens with the people around
them. Then, we spend a while talking about gardens and what it takes to maintain a garden.
During the second session, the trainer became passionate about the persona that he would like to
be. He talked about his past when he was super conservative and vegan and would not eat
anything that had been processed. He confessed that this was not the person who he wanted to
be, because he had been trying to gain his salvation through diet. After this confession, he
brought the conversation back to gardens by mentioning that the Master Gardener is who can
change him to be the person he wants to be. It is not his work to prune his own garden, but the
Gardener who will work out the roots and blaze the new paths.
Sometime during this session, the trainer admitted that he is a “prayer kindergartener”
and has a lot to learn about prayer. When he mentioned this, I understood him to be
demonstrating an attitude of humility and the willingness to be instructed in prayer. After
concluding his comments on prayer, the trainer turned the topic to Bible study. He borrowed a
water bottle from one of the trainees and asked each of the trainees to take turns studying the
water bottle and observing something new about it. I began, and therefore had the easiest job. I
mentioned that the water bottle was slightly less than half full. As the water bottle made its way
around the room, other trainees observed that it was plastic, orange, well-used, had a grey lid,
could stand up on its own, was durable, held water, etc. After all of the trainees had made an
observation, the trainer picked it up and made at least 10 more observations, showing how little
the trainees had scratched the surface of describing the water bottle. This activity was used to
illustrate the importance of slowing down to study the Bible. That reading the Bible with a
cursory glance does not constitute study.
During the afternoon a new trainer came specifically to talk to the trainees about medical
emergencies and protocol and wilderness medicine. Because the trainer was not affiliated with
AFM and was not attempting to transmit organizational values to the trainees, I did not have her
sign an informed consent and did not take notes during the afternoon sessions.
Date: August 11, 2015
Day of Training: 16
Notes: The three sessions this morning were a continuation of medical training. I sat through the
sessions, but did not take notes.
After lunch, the trainer who has been leading out the discipleship training returned.
Sometimes this trainer has had the trainees work in groups, but this afternoon we all worked as a
group to complete the discipleship workbook. TO start out with, we looked at 1 Corinthians 12.
This is the chapter that likens the church to a body. The trainer commented that as humans, we
need each other. He had the trainees turn to the person next to them and say, “I need you.”
Though not related to God, this emphasizes the value of reliance.
The next session focused on the parable of the talents. The point of this study was to
show that the parable’s moral is not related to abilities/talents, but rather to
multiplication/discipleship. The servants were given talents (the master’s property, which could
be equivocated to his work/life work) according to their abilities. The talents, therefore do not
equal abilities. At the end of the parable all of the servants had ‘talents’/the master’s property,
but only the ones who had increased/multiplied the investment were rewarded.
During this session I noticed that the trainer has stated many times over the course of the
one-month training period that it is his deepest desire that the trainees will apply what they are
learning to their lives, and teach what they have learned to others. It suddenly occurred to me
that this might tie into the motivation the trainees have to adopt organizational values. If they
have an affinity or liking towards the trainer and they wish to please him, they might work
harder to adopt organizational values.
During the final session of the day we looked at the first chapter of Acts. We looked at
the verses through the lens of discipleship, and the importance of the calling, and inspiration
with belief in the ability to change the world. The trainer was very passionate about his subject,
and his enthusiasm appeared to be contagious. He truly believes that if the trainees alter their
behavior to model relational healing, they can change the world. I believe that his passion may
have rubbed off on the trainees. His absolute belief in the method he teaches may motivate them
to put his teachings into practice.
Date: August 12, 2015
Day of Training: 17
Notes: The theme of today’s training was “the inward and upward journey.” The trainer started
out by saying, “the very core of what you bring to Adventist Frontier Mission is your heart.” He
continued to say that it is manipulative to send out student missionaries without addressing two
items: 1) everyone has a heart that has been hurt by life, and 2) salvation looks like healing, both
the healing of hearts and the healing of relationships. At this point the trainees were each given
five minutes in which to draw their hearts, including the scars.
Next, the Training Director handed over the training to a guest, who led the rest of the
morning session. I did not have a chance to speak with this guest speaker beforehand, so I did
not take notes during his session. Afterward, he gave me verbal permission to have observed his
presentation. What I remember of his presentation is that it dealt with his personal experience
with depression and relational healing with God and his wife.
During session 2 we talked about how the brain processes information with images. the
trainer emphasized that the brain processes falsehoods with the same efficiency with which it
processes truth. The trainees were asked whether God loves them. The answer was a quick and
definitive yes. Next, the trainees were asked whether God likes them. This time, the trainees
hesitated. Nobody seemed to want to commit to the idea that God might actually like him or her.
The trainer then displayed a list of statements of what God thinks of individuals such as “I am
God’s masterpiece,” “I am God’s beloved friend,” “I am the one who ravishes God’s heart,” and
the trainees took turns reading these statements. I was surprised at how good it felt to read the
statements and hear them read. Warm and fuzzy doesn’t even begin to describe how empowered
I felt after this activity.
Session 3 was more focused on the upward part of the “inward and upward journey.”
There was a prayer journey in which the trainees were asked to close their eyes and imagine the
Biblical story when Jesus welcomed the children to come to Him. Next, the trainees were
instructed to see themselves in the place of one of the children, to imagine themselves held in the
arms of Jesus. The trainer encouraged the trainees to practice this activity on a regular basis and
to put themselves mentally and emotionally in the shoes of Bible characters.
I don’t remember how, but the prayer activity led into a section on structures of healing.
A diagram was projected that showed two different tracks that somebody can use to guide their
behavior and outlook on life. In one track, wounds lead someone to believe lies and distortions
about themselves or the world around them, which result in emotional upheaval. The emotional
upheaval leads to dysfunctional behavior that influences life situations, often causing more
wounds. The key phrase for this paradigm is “hurting people hurt people.” But people don’t
have to live their lives this way. “We can choose to act like an unhealed wounder, or we can act
like a wounded healer.” What this means is this: people have the ability (with God’s help) to
break out of the wounding cycle. If somebody allows God to heal him/herself, he or she will
begin to believe in truth and acceptance, which results in comfort and peace. The feelings of
comfort and peace leads to empower living that influences life situations, often causing healing
to begin for other people. Of course the empowered living life track sounds much more
appealing to us (the trainees) than the dysfunctional behavior life track.
The guest trainer used to be the training director for Adventist Frontier Missions. Right
before we stopped for lunch, one of the trainees asked the guest trainer for a piece of advice.
The answer was two words: dependent vulnerability. In order to be effective, the student
missionaries will need to be dependent in community with their host culture. They will also
need to be open and vulnerable with them. He told a story about his first contact in the culture
where he was a missionary and about how that contact died, and how he mourned for months
with member of the host culture. After months of mourning with them, the people said “he isn’t
a missionary. He is one of us.” In a tragic way, he needed his contact to die in order for him to
truly connect with people and be dependent and vulnerable with them. The guest trainer then
challenged the trainees to go and meet people and to connect with them.
Student missionaries who were returning after their stint in the field arrived for their
Reentry training. They led out in the afternoon sessions. The trainees were split into groups
depending on what type of work they would be doing in the field. There was a group of English
teachers, a group of nurses, and another group that I don’t remember. I sat in on the friendship
evangelism group. The student missionary leading out this group had spent a year as a
missionary in Ireland. Because she was not a formal AFM trainer, I did not take notes on her
session.
Date: August 13, 2015
Day of Training: 18
Notes: Today when I arrived, I found out from the Training Director that I should give the final
values survey this afternoon instead of tomorrow, like we had been planning. Unfortunately I
was not prepared with the survey, so I had to leave to print off copies of the survey. Because of
this, I missed the first hour of training. The returned student missionaries at AFM for Reentry
gathered together with the trainees and took turns giving them advice. I arrived for the last 10-
15 minutes of this session. But because none of the Reentry missionaries knew about my
project, I did not take notes during this session.
Session 2 was similar to session 1 in that the trainees met with the student missionaries,
but this time it was segregated. All of the boys met upstairs to talk about issues that men deal
with in the mission field, while the girls met downstairs to talk about issues that women deal
with in the mission field. Again, the Reentry missionaries did not yet know me, so I did not take
notes during the session. But I appreciated the foresight of AFM to provide this opportunity for
the trainees.
During Session 3 the trainees split into groups by the country that they would go to. This
session was also led by the Reentry missionaries. I went with a Reentry missionary from China.
She was meeting with a random group of people including myself who didn’t have Reentry
missionaries for their destination country (Cambodia & Turkey, and myself). I was excited about
the Reentry’s mission. If I were to go as a missionary, I would want to do what she did. Though
I did tell this Reentry missionary about my reentry role, I did not have her sign an informed
consent and I did not take observation notes during this session.
Lunch was an hour late today. The Reentry missionaries cooked lunch for the trainees,
which was very nice. But it kicked everything back. The afternoon session, which was
supposed to start at 2:00 didn’t start until 3:30. To begin the afternoon, the asked the trainees to
talk about what they found beneficial about having conversations with the returning
missionaries.
Next, the Training Director continued with the topic of the inward and upward journey,
discussing how a person can go from wounded to healed. Most of this processes is an inward
journey, though, so there was a quiet activity that took up most of the afternoon. Each person
was given an outline of a person. The trainees were instructed to reflect on lies that other people
have told us about ourselves (15 minutes of reflection) and then to reflect on lies that we have
told ourselves about ourselves (15 minutes of reflection). We wrote those lies down on the
outline wherever the lie corresponded. For example, a lie that I have been told about myself is
that I have already reached my potential. I wrote that near the head since it deals with my
intelligence. A lie that I have told myself was that I am not capable of love. I wrote that near the
heart since it deals with a heart issue. Next, the trainer gave each of the trainees a list that
included all of the Bible verses pertaining with how God sees us. This is the same list that we
read through that gave me the warm fuzzies yesterday. On our paper, we crossed out each lie,
and wrote on top of it a truth of how God perceives us. This took approximately 20 minutes. It
was a very powerful and healing activity for me. I did not have the opportunity to speak with
other trainees about how it affected them, but I would hope that it was just as healing for them.
As the trainees were completing this activity I handed out the final values survey, and the
Training Director left the room. The trainees brought their survey to me as they completed it.
Date: August 14, 2015
Day of Training: 19
Notes: The last day of training. I have a heavy heart because training has become such an
important part of my life. I don’t want to go back to an 8-hr workday without the trainees there
and without learning important skills about dealing with people from different cultures and
treating them from a basis of relational healing!
Today was not a typical training day. The trainees did their final exam, which consisted
of them each designing a training to pass on what they learned. They needed to come up with
how they would train student missionaries to be disciple makers. I think this is a great way for
trainers to have the trainees synthesize what they learned as well as receive feedback about what
they could do to improve training.
While the trainees were completing their final exam, the career missionaries gave
presentations about their plans for their missions. I attended these presentations. One family is
going to Cambodia, one family is going to Turkey, and one family is going to Iraq. I was
impressed with the amount of thought and planning that each of the career missionaries put into
their plans.
And that was it! I slipped away at the end of the presentations, knowing that this
wonderful phase of data gathering is over.
APPENDIX H TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH AFM TRAINING
DIRECTOR
July 16, 2015
Investigator: All right this is Caralin McHan and I'm interviewing Laurence Burn, the Training
director at Adventist Frontier Missions. Thanks again.
AFM Training Director: You’re Welcome
Investigator: My first question is: what are the values of Adventist Frontier Missions?
AFM Training Director: We have, we've got five core values that articulate the behavior that
we expect for missionaries. So, I’ll start with that, and then we’ll look at our mission statement
and the values that are implicit in the mission.
So first core value—if you going to our website you'll see we have a one word, a sentence and a
paragraph that describes each of these values. The first one is reliance, is the word, reliance. And
in essence what we’re describing there is that if you want to be a part of Adventist Frontier
Missions, one of the behaviors, the non-negotiable behaviors is a willingness to depend on God
for resources, for strategy, for the success of your work; it's really heavily dependent on God
because, you know, obviously there’s the fundraising dimension, we’re working in very different
difficult areas, etc. So reliance is the first value. And that's kind of where it starts. That's the
beginning of the journey. And all the way through, you know, that's kind of where it starts:
Reliance.
Then, the second core value is integrity. And what we mean by integrity is that we actually want
to work towards enduring results. So that would be the key word. So this is not permission to
play kind of integrity although that that's included in the description, you know, that we work
with a code of honesty and such; but really the core idea as I see it and teach it is this idea of
enduring results so that the missionaries when they work in the field will work towards leaving
something behind that will be there when Jesus comes. That we don't want to do a flash in the
pan and then and then leave and then have it all crumble. So we understand it's a very high ideal
but that's our goal. That's a core value we spend a lot of time and energy and money, and to have
that kind of integrity that will actually bear the weight. Like if you think of this table, if the
table has integrity, it’s because it can carry the weight that it was designed to carry. So that's the
kind of…
Investigator: That’s the kind where you, where people talk about products or structures having
integrity.
AFM Training Director: That’s correct. So we want to work in such a way that our project and
outcomes have integrity. That's the goal, the final product. So this is where it starts, and then
that’s the final product. Those are the first two and how we define them. Then you’ve got three
others, and those three are humility, teamwork and transparency.
So what we mean by humility is that, you know, if you want to be a frontier missionary then
humility is not an option. So learning another language, you know what it's like. You have to be
willing to become like a little child and learn from other people. Another way that humility is
described, and is expressed in the organization, is that anyone can teach anyone. Like I could
learn something, no matter, even though I’m the director of training, but I could learn something
key from one of the missionary children, and am willing to have an attitude of I’m teachable no
matter what, that I have what we call dependent vulnerability, and that it is the sense of openness
and vulnerability and a recognition of my dependence on God, and my dependence on you, and a
willingness to learn from others. So that would be humility.
Teamwork is a core value because our work is a team sport. It's kind of like saying teamwork is a
core value to soccer players. You know, it's pretty obvious. And that means that we play, we
spend a lot of time building cohesive teams that work well together. A huge part of that is that I
believe the way we live together is the Gospel we preach so functional teams is not simply for
getting results but it's actually, the functional team delivers results; that in order to communicate
the gospel we have to have healthy relationships to do that because the gospel is that
relationships can be healthy. Does that make sense?
Investigator: Yes
AFM Training Director: So if I were to go and share the gospel with highly dysfunctional… we
‘re actually being duplicitous. So to have high-functioning teams and to build high functioning
teams both internally and externally. So when we establish movements we’re wanting to
establish high functioning teams, you know, community that will work and that are healing, and
then, when we are actually internally, and in movements, and in our relationships with other
agencies, you know, with the church. We play nicely with other people as part of our core values
and you can understand why, you know, the mission is too big for us to play by ourselves.
And the final one is transparency, and the idea behind that is that if I have something that I need
to talk to you about, I'm not going to talk to anyone else. I'm going to talk to you about it. So I'll
be transparent. I’m not going to be political with you, and kind of hint or be nice to you, your
face and then tell other people about all the bad things about you. I'm actually going to be
transparent. And then the other thing is that if we make a decision in a committee, we actually
publish that decision for all of, you know, unless there's some confidentiality issue, like if we,
you know, have an employee and they have something private that we have to discuss and then
we'll protect their confidentiality. But other than that we're, our president writes, you know, sends
an email to all the employees about anything that’s come through committees or we’ve decided,
just, like transparency.
So we’re committed to a culture of transparency, a culture of teamwork and a culture of humility.
And that's how we go from reliance to integrity. Those three; the how, where we start, and where
we end. So those are values; those are explicit values that we call behavioral values and they
come within the context of, where that idea came from is from a work by Patrick Lensioni; he’s
got a booked called The Advantage, and he talks about how there's two things, companies can be
smart or healthy, and that it's very difficult to maintain a competitive edge by being smart. But
healthy organizations, because it takes the human dimension, healthy organizations trump smart
all the time. You’ve got a healthy organization that becomes smarter. If you’ve just got a smart
organization, it can actually become stupid if it's not healthy. So you start making stupid strategic
decisions, stupid financial decisions that actually start harming the business and harming the
collectivity in result because it's not healthy. And there's two things that make organizations
healthy: one is cohesion and the other one's clarity.
Investigator: So you have that with the teamwork and transparency
AFM Training Director: High-functioning teams, and then clarity around 6 questions, and I will
go through all those 6 questions.
Investigator: You know them off the top of your head?
AFM Training Director: I’ll give you what I remember. The first one is ‘Why do we exists?’
That’s the question of purpose. The second question is ‘How do we behave?’
Investigator: So the culture.
AFM Training Director: Yes. That’s these values. These values describe how we behave.
That’s the culture. All right? And then the third question is ‘How will we succeed?’ which has
got to do with strategy. And the fourth question is, um, I’m missing one. So: ‘Why do we
exist?’ Oh! ‘What business are we in?’ So, are we in the education business? Are we in the
service industry? Are we in the food industry? We’re in the faith-based NGO. That’s our
category.
Investigator: So it’s different in that one is about what you are and the other one is what need
you’re meeting?
AFM Training Director: Yeah. So, it’s ‘Why do we exist?’ ‘How do we behave?’ ‘What
business are we in?’ ‘How will we succeed?’ And then, ‘What’s most important right now?’ and
then ‘Who must do what and by when?’ So those six questions are questions that create clarity,
and there’s four disciplines that actually help create a healthy organization and that’s building a
cohesive team at the top, creating clarity around those six questions, over-communicating clarity,
and then reinforcing clarity through human systems. So that structure has really deeply
influenced my thinking when it comes to the place of values in an organization. That values are
really about shaping culture, and that culture is actually part of the vision of a healthy
organization. So organizational health, right? Now, for a church-planting organization, all of
those are like, really critical to our mission. So, you can have a widget-developing organization.
And having health just helps them make more profit and be more innovative and have a better
competitive advantage. But with people just using their widgets, you know, there’s not a direct
connection outside of the by-product of health. It’s clever, it’s competitive, it’s functional,
etcetera. For a missions agency that’s focused on church planting, organizational health is the
core of what we do. Because we need to be a really healthy organization in order to plant
healthy organizations. So our organization’s mission is to be a catalyst for organizations. So
organizational health. So that’s why values are critical within the context of our mission, our
purpose for existence. Does that make sense?
Investigator: mmmhmmmm
AFM Training Director: Okay. Now, there’s one other thing. That those are explicit values.
There are implicit values as well, and those come from our mission statement. Our mission
statement is to establish indigenous Seventh-day Adventist church planting movements amongst
unreached people groups. So, what’s implicit in that is this idea that we start something, typically
where there’s nothing. That’s the idea of establishment. So one of the things that we’re wanting
is kind of a pioneering spirit. And as I say, these are implicit values. All right. And they’re not
behavioral values, but they’re things that we care deeply about as an organization. So, I’ll cite
Romans chapter, I think it’s chapter 10 or chapter 15. It’s Romans chapter 15. Paul says, ‘It’s
always been my ambition to lay a foundation where no one else has built.’ Paul wants to be the
first one who is starting a new work. What’s implicit in that is pioneering. So establish.
And then indigenous. And this idea that we’re not actually coming in from the outside and
wanting to export American culture or African culture. We’re actually wanting to establish
something that’s relevant and owned locally. So that’s indigenous.
Seventh-day Adventist assumes a partnership with the church that when we are planting
churches, we’re actually planting churches that will be integrated into the sisterhood of churches.
And so there’s the idea of teamwork that’s built into that. And theology. Our theology tends to
be very aligned with the denominational theology. We’re not here to do theology or to change
theology. We’re actually here to support, you know, what the church does. So Seventh-day
Adventist.
And then church planting movements, that we’re looking at multiplication. So the idea of
movements is very very important to our mission. And we highly value that.
And then there’s a specific place. And that’s among unreached, and the idea that if you would
take the global population, 7 billion, about 1/3 of that population—it depends on where you
look—but 30-40% of the global population is unreached. And that means that they live outside
of the reach of the gospel.
Investigator: Despite all of the interconnectivity nowadays
AFM Training Director: Exactly. And that if I were to reach all my friends and you were to
reach all your friends, they still wouldn’t be reached because they live outside of those networks,
that they’re isolated from that. And that can be by geographic, political, economic, racial, social
barriers that create those pockets. Religious barriers that create those pockets where people are
unreached. So if you were to take our mission statement and eliminate all the adjectives it says,
‘To establish movements among people groups.’ So at the very core is movements. So all of our
teaching, then, focuses around how do we shape people or how do we equip people to do that?
Does that answer your question?
Investigator: It does. And as you were speaking, I realized that I had another question that I
hadn’t put down here. And it’s just from looking at the website, in that I think it’s in the
disclaimer at the bottom of the website, where it says that AFM does not have an affiliation with
the Seventh-day Adventist church. But then, when it describes what a church planting
movement is, the last stage is the transferal. I can’t remember what the name of the stage is, but
the stage when the church gets transferred over to the Seventh-day Adventist church. So how do
you have a relationship without being affiliated? This is more of a technical question.
AFM Training Director: No, it’s a good question. Our name is Adventist Frontier Missions.
And Adventist is a registered trademark with the legal entity that is registered with the United
States. So it’s actually copyrighted. So in order for us as an organization that exists as a separate
legal entity from the Seventh-day Adventist church, we actually have to have permission from
the church to use that. So we have to have formal permission to use the name Adventist as part
of our name. And part of the agreement, as I understand it, is that we need to have a disclaimer
that explicitly states that we’re a separate legal entity. We’re not under the jurisdiction of the
Seventh-day Adventist church. Although, indirectly, we have several of our board members who
are employees of the Seventh-day Adventist church. But AFM is a 401-C3, a non-profit
organization that is registered with the state of Michigan as a separate legal entity. And the
church could tell us to jump and we would say, ‘thank you for your suggestion.’ They have no
legal authority over us as a completely separate. We are considered separate but supporting. So
a supporting ministry is an organization that is funded separately that that has positive
relationship with the church and a posture of support of its mission. So that ‘s how those two are
connected. We’re not affiliated. We have to say that in order to have that.
Investigator: Thank you. I’ve been wondering that for months now. I’d just never asked you.
The next question is, you mentioned the values, the core values as well as the implicit ones. And
I was wondering how you consciously incorporate those into the classes that you teach.
AFM Training Director: So we have two ways of doing that. One is explicitly, and the other is
implicitly. So we have classes on teamwork. So we’re literally going to be training people in
teamwork. We emphasize, model, and coach a posture of humility. And when we see a need in
that area, we work very very diligently with people to cultivate that spirit.
Transparency is, our teaching style is very vulnerable. So we tell a lot of stories about ourselves
and our own journey and our own experiences. And then with our students we actually foster
humility and transparency in terms of addressing things. So there’s a lot of vulnerability that’s
fostered in the training process. The idea of real. You know. We’re not looking for people to
posture; people need to be free with their stuff and be confronted with who they are. Because a
missionary is basically the DNA, you know, they’re taking their DNA.
Reliance, we’ve done a, I think, probably a better job this year at least, than years gone of
nurturing—at least from my perspective, from my own involvement—of nurturing a spirit of
reliance through prayer. It’s how we integrate prayer into the overall experience and the way that
we lead. So practicing that.
And then integrity. There’s a lot of talk about how strategy and why we choose to do certain
things and not to do certain things. So for instance, we use 2nd CIRCLE, the acronym; 2nd C-I-
RC-L-E to describe the process that we use for church planting. So 2nd stands for 2nd-coming
focus, which implies integrity to last until Jesus comes. Then the first C stands for connecting
with people. And then I stands for Introducing them to Christ. Renew their thinking, Cultivate a
Christ-centered culture, Leadership development, and then Expect multiplication. So that
paradigm embraces the values. Those values are inherent in that. So there’s congruence
between the strategy and the values. They mutually support and are enriching. So training them
trains around that. So to have integrity, rather than just present information, we’re actually
coaching people, we’re actually presenting people with, you know, giving them an opportunity to
embrace the gospel by meeting Christ. There’s a process of worldview transformation so that
with renewed thinking people begin to see. If you want to make small changes, you change
behaviors. If you want to make big changes, you change paradigms. All right?
Investigator: But that’s not an easy task.
AFM Training Director: Right. And so what we use in missiology, we don’t say paradigms.
We say worldview. Okay? So, missions is actually a process of worldview transformation. And
worldview transformation, we understand that worldview is shaped through life experience, how
that’s interpreted both culturally, through, like “this is what that means” explicitly and implicitly,
and our emotional response as a result of that. And that life experience, interpretation, emotional
response, and then encountering new life experience and reinterpretation kind of reinforces how
we see and think and respond to life, right? Well, when you have worldview transformation, that
actually is shifted, so that we begin to see the same life experience, but now we interpret it
differently, and different emotional response, and different behavior that results from that.
Scripture is actually reshaping that. The power of God’s word and the power of His Spirit are
actually reshaping how people experience life, and interrupting a worldview that is not tending
towards life, that isn’t tending towards the gospel, good news of reconciliation and restoration
and salvation and all those things.
The training event that we do, we have several teaching strategies or didactic strategies. One is,
as I shared with you, is very vulnerable. It’s very personal, it’s very deep. We do deep work and
we build a lot of trust through the process of going through this together because we’re really
wanting to address real issues with people because they’re the vehicle of the gospel. And they
need to experience the gospel themselves in order to share it. And not just have like, their cards
and they can go read a script to do it. It’s really, we’re calling people to live their life, 10 years,
12 years amongst the people group is kind of what we’re calling people to do. So, it’s very
vulnerable.
The other thing that we do is, our process is designed, rather to be focused on information, it’s
focused on transformation. So we’re really interested in seeing growth. Not only thinking, but
behavioral and emotional growth. Like healing. I actually want to see that taking place. So we
see training as an immersion experience. And we use terms like simulator or immersion to
describe that once you arrive, everything that you experience, whether it’s something at morning,
night or noon—the whole experience is designed to embed these values and confront you with
issues, you know. So that’s kind of the philosophy of training that’s designed to prepare people
for a task of frontier, cross-cultural church-planting movement making. I don’t’ know. Does that
answer your question, is that helpful?
Investigator: It does, but I have another question to interpolate into the questions I had here,
since you used that word earlier this week. It has to do with, when you were talking about the
mission statement, emphasizing the indigenous, but it seems to be slightly incongruous with the
thought of changing world view, which is part of the mission statement. Is there, I don’t know,
any dissonance between those two concepts?
AFM Training Director: What we believe is that; well, first of all, what happens is that in the
first term, the major focus on our missionaries is language acquisition and culture study. So they
get to spend significant time—up to three years—deeply immersed in the process of trying to
understand the culture that they’re working in. And here’s what we understand.
We understand that every culture is that people group’s attempt to answer life’s deepest
questions. And so, you’ve got cultural components. There’s three categories of culture. The
first category is what we would call morally or biblically neutral. That means that they’re just
there. Like, do you eat with your hands or do you eat with chopsticks or do you eat with a fork,
or do you drink your food? Exactly. So, that’s neutral.
The second one is biblically aligned. So there’s actually elements of cultures, every culture has
elements that are biblically aligned, that are actually, if you were to take the biblical worldview
and overlay it on the culture, you would actually find that there’s reinforcement. For instance,
American culture is a post-Judeo-Christian culture, right? However, there’s a lot of
JudeoChristian influence in American culture. There’s a high work ethic; you want to be
productive, you want to do something. And bringing good into the world, like doing good. And
generosity is a huge thing in this culture, right? Well, this culture is actually tremendously
individualistic. Right? So people live in relative isolation from one another. Whereas in other
cultures where there may not be the same level of ‘let’s do good in this world,’ there may not be
the same level of generosity or expression of generosity, there actually may be a very high regard
for elders and respect and honor, which is actually much closer to a biblical world view. All
right? So the language of honor and the idea of shame is very close to a middle eastern, you
know, where we got shaped this way.
Then there’s a third dimension. So there’s neutral, there’s positive, and then there’s a third
dimension which is dimensions of culture which are contrary to a biblical worldview. So there’s
actually gaps, or it’s actually in conflict with a biblical worldview. So the idea is that when the
gospel is introduced, the gospel is good news to every culture. All right? And that the places
that are not aligned with scripture are not culturally neutral, they’re actually places that are
inherently destructive within the culture. For instance, one of the things that Hudson Taylor, no,
William Carey was horrified by when he went to India was bride burnings, which was based on a
world view that assumed that if your husband died, then you actually did your husband’s family
and your family honor, and earned merit by being burned with him. Okay. And so that is based
on assumptions about life and death and what happens after you die, and how one sets yourself
up for the best possible life after death. All of those are based on assumptions that are not
necessarily aligned with scripture, and actually result in tremendous suffering for individuals. So
their husband dies and then they are going to die a horrible death, burned alive, basically they’re
burned alive.
So that would be an example of worldview transformation, where aligned with scripture a loving
God. And that person may still wear a Sari, and eat with her hands, and may still speak her local
language, build their houses with a certain architecture, greet in a certain way, all of those things
which are culturally inherent, but that practice is unbiblical. And so the gospel confronts those
things which are destructive within the culture. Now, that doesn’t mean to say that you have to
become, dress like me and be like me and even think like me in many ways. But there’s till good
news for them. Many cultures are animistic. That means they live in fear of the spirits. And
they live in a world in which you manipulate spiritual realities by using magic. The Bible
actually addresses that, and one of the very wonderful things about the gospel to animistic people
is that you don’t need to be afraid of the spirits; that Christ has given you freedom. Now, they
may still live in grass huts and wear grass skirts, and hunt for their food and drink out of rivers.
But they’re no longer afraid of the spirits because the gospel has described the spiritual reality in
a way that actually has a greater level, that’s more aligned with the truth that’s present in the
gospel so that there’s no longer fear. Does that help? So that contextualization, the
deculturalization, we talk a lot about that because it’s easy for me to come from South Africa, for
me to come to you in California and say, “you guys don’t have it right. You need to become like
me in order to become Christian. You need to eat Marmite” and, you know, many of those are
culturally neutral elements. So in the past, missionaries have made the mistake of designing
worship services and having liturgy and clothing and everything that’s aligned with their culture,
and they were actually exporting their culture rather than Christianity. And that’s what we talk
about when it’s indigenous.
Investigator: Okay. I respect that a lot. It’s one of the big questions I’ve had with evangelism
in the last several years.
AFM Training Director: And it’s something that’s so easy to do. And even with our care, we
realize that we really have to be vigilant that we’re not forcing our culture on people with a sense
of cultural superiority. Like, you know, “we’re Westerners, and therefore electricity and gasoline
and power motors, and laptops, and those are more sophisticated than you and more advanced
than you or more intelligent than you.” And often, cultures that seem to be more primitive are
actually more resilient or more, there’s actually some really wonderful things about them that are
closer to a biblical world view and that we shouldn’t be coming in and changing there. For
instance, an example would be weddings. A western wedding is deeply pagan. Except for the
pastor and the preaching and the vows before God. Like, all the bridesmaids and grooms and,
highly individualistic…but you’ve got a lot of pagan rites within our weddings. So when we go
into another country we don’t need to necessarily force that form of marriage on them. Because
they may have cultural elements that are biblically neutral. They may not be invoking evil
spirits and getting drunk and those kinds of things.
So the question is, how do you parse those out? That’s a huge missiological question. People
debate, and we wrestle with those things, but that’s part of our job; part of our professional
responsibility to discern our way, pray our way through that. And the best way to do that is to
introduce the gospel to nationals and then walk alongside nationals as they make those decisions.
Because then it’s owned by, and is an expression of the gospel as it works itself out in their
midst, rather than coming from the outside and saying, “this is how we say you should do it,”
which is definitely not a paradigm of indigenous churches. It’s a paradigm of a foreign invasion.
It’s a more imperialistic model of missions. So AFM’s deeply committed to having Christianity
sprout up in a way that the local people say that “God has saved us. The Creator has saved us.
And this is a faithful expression of God’s work in our community.”
Investigator: Thank you. So, I think you’ve already answered my third question, because it
was really close to the second one. It was: what strategies do you use to communicate AFM
values to individuals during AFM training? But we sort of incorporated that into the other,
second question.
AFM Training Director: Yeah. So the biggest one is immersion learning, and then we have 3 or
4 didactic environments. One is the team and how it works together. We have the classroom, and
the classroom is a lot of dialogical learning, So we’re having conversation around issues, right?
So there’s the simulator and how people live together, that’s one. Then there’s the classroom and
the way that the classroom is structured. And then the third one is the Crucible. The crucible is
immersion learning, but we’re actually doing a lot of one-on-one mentoring and coaching, etc.
But the Crucible, what we do is, you know, you’re going to be coming on the Crucible, and I’m
happy for you—if you can—be a participant observer….The idea is that this is kind of an
initiation in our values. So it’s very intense. It’s designed to be a very intense experience. And
we’ve got structures, but the structures themselves are only servants to what happens between.
It’s in the spaces between, that ‘s where the real learning’s taking place, as we interact with. So
we’re watching the human interaction, we’re watching how people hold up, we’re watching
emotional responses, how we communicate, and then we’re coaching them through that. There’s
a lot of impromptu training that’s taking place in the crucible.
Investigator: I have a sudden question about it because I know that people are encouraged not to
discuss it afterwards. So, should I even go, because if I experience something like that, it would
be hard to keep what I’ve learned or observed out of my writing. Or I’m sure it would change
the way I see things.
AFM Training Director: So here’s what I think, and we can discuss it. Our goal, part of the
Crucible is unknown. So, there’s certain elements and activities that we do that are supposed to
be surprises. Like people aren’t supposed to know. You know, we’ve done it long enough and
there’s enough that’s leaked out that people, like, have an idea of kind of what we do and the
structure. But we still have this element of surprise. People ask us for information about us, and
we’re like, “well, ask us any question that you like,” and we don’t tell them anything. We’re just
like, ‘alright.’ So there’s that. Now, the real Crucible is something that people bring to the
Crucible. It’s not what we do. And that’s sacred. Those are sacred spaces that are very personal.
Now, as a researcher, I would be comfortable with you analyzing and reflecting on the
experience on two conditions. One, that the personal experiences and the anonymity of the
individuals are protected. And then number two, that it be done in a way that it doesn’t
compromise the value of the experience by divulging particulars about it. And I think it’s
possible that you can do that, because the real value of the Crucible is not in the structure or the
suspense that’s created.
Investigator: It’s not a sensational piece that I’m trying to write here.
AFM Training Director: Well that’s true. You’re trying to get answers and you will notice
behaviors that we as coaches exhibit that you could probably document that may be helpful to
your objective. Then of course, if you have questions, I’d be happy to give you feedback in
terms of whether or not that language would be considered helpful or not helpful if you’ve got
any questions.
Investigator: Definitely. Especially that section, I’ll let you look it over before I would let
other people see it.
AFM Training Director: If you want to attend the whole training, missing the Crucible would
really set you back. Because that, it’s 72 hours of intense time. And that is a major shift.
There’s a major shift that takes place in terms of our objectives. So you would be missing more
than 75% of the overall learning experience by not going.
Investigator: Wow
AFM Training Director: That’s what I would say. You know. Between 50-70%
Investigator: As an ethnographer, I really want to be there.
AFM Training Director: Yeah. And, you know, I can’t tell you what you’re going to learn.
Because each group’s different. Does that make sense?
Investigator: Yeah. Well, each person is different so you couldn’t possibly tell me what I’m
going to learn.
AFM Training Director: That’s true, too. The curriculum comes to the Crucible, and we
discover it together. That’s the thing about the Crucible; it’s real life. So we have space that we
create, but it’s not the space, it’s really the conversation around it that’s the classroom.
Investigator: I didn’t interrupt you when I started asking about the Crucible did I?
AFM Training Director: No, you had basically said that you were done because you had
answered the third question…
Investigator: Okay. Sometimes I will interrupt people and I am trying not to.
AFM Training Director: No, you didn’t do that at all.
Investigator: Okay. Excellent. So then I have the answers to that. And I’m so glad that we
have technology to record it. Because I can’t possible take all of the notes, and I live having eye
contact and watching you, so that’s really going to help.
(Interruption by Training Director’s son)
AFM Training Director: All right, well, I hope that was helpful.
Investigator: I have one last question. It’s a closed question followed by the open part of the
question, which is, do you think knowing the AFM values—I supposed both the explicit and
implicit ones, do you think it will help the missionaries in the mission field? From listening to
your talk, it sounds like so, so the following question is if so, how, or if not, why?
AFM Training Director: There’s two answers to that question I think.
(Interruption by phone call from Training Director’s mother)
The values help to create clarity. And clarity is critical to organizational health, right? People
need to know what their behavioral expectations are. And I think values need to be deeply
aligned with two things.
(Interruption by Training Director’s son)
The other thing is, there’s actually three things. One is it helps to create clarity, and people are
aware of expectations. Number two, that our values need to be deeply aligned with our mission.
And I believe that they are. Number three, and this is a final element that I think is important.
And that is that I think that values need to be aligned with your mission, it’s really important that
people have clarity. But there’s a truth. And that is that values really ultimately are defined by
the leader, and they’re defined by the behaviors—these are core values—are defined by the core
behaviors that the leader expects and opposes. So I’ve discovered that culture radiates from
leadership. So in order for values to truly be core values, they actually have to be the values of
the person with the greatest authority in the organization, which typically is your president,
okay? Does that answer your question?
Investigator: It does; that tied together with everything else that you had already mentioned. I
think it really helped going through the mission statement as well. Of course, the five core
values, and the mission statement, and the importance and what you see is a succinct version of
what they signify.
AFM Training Director: So I think that the clearer people are on their values, the greater the
clarity they have around the values, the greater alignment we have in the organization, the better.
It creates a healthier, more cohesion, and moral, etc.
Investigator: So by organization are you referring to AFM?
AFM Training Director: Yeah, I’m referring to AFM, because then we know what we’re
expecting and why we’re expecting it and so on. I think it’s also fair to say that in terms of
AFM, the training department is kind of the guardian of the values. So in terms of understanding
and thoughtfulness, and mindfulness, we spend much more time and energy thinking about and
clarifying and defining and reinforcing our values than any other dimension of the organization.
Explicitly. But, other dimensions of the organization will reinforce them more implicitly.
Investigator: Okay. That makes sense, because of your function.
AFM Training Director: Right. So, the President’s going to call for a one week/month of
prayer and fasting. He’s reflecting the value of reliance. He’s not necessarily going to make the
connection explicitly. We’re going to ask people to serve with AFM for 12 years so they can
actually deeply establish and nurture, and then once they leave we send them back for five years,
once a year, for follow up, after that, with their project. That’s integrity. But it’s implicit. So
that’s implicit. We expect people to learn the language. And to become life-long learners.
That’s implicit; humility. Then, typically, our individuals go out and work with teams, work with
the church, they develop collaborative relationships. That’s one of the expectations, part of their
job description. Developing healthy teams and maintaining them. That’s implicit; teamwork.
And transparency, I mentioned how the President writes a document called the AFM Worldview
that basically gives a global perspective of what’s going on around the world, and that’s an
example of transparency.
Or, for instance, I just had a phone call today with some missionaries who, there was a conflict
with a donor and concerns and it just got pretty emotional. So I heard from those missionaries
that they were discouraged because they, there were all kinds of questions, etc. So my response
was to say, “let’s get together and we’ll have a phone call and sort it all out.” So we spend two
hours, this morning, of our time, carefully listening to one another, piecing through the details,
checking out the gaps, taking ownership for our contributions to the misunderstanding, and the
emotional apologizing for the pain, and just restoring trust. So, you’ve got several things going
on there. You’ve got transparency, tell you what it is. And if you made a mistake, you’ll admit it
and ask for forgiveness. We’ve got teamwork because we’re restoring teamwork. You know, the
five dysfunctions of a team, the first dysfunction is a lack of trust. So we’re restoring trust. And
then humility is saying, “we need all people at the table to sort this out and we can have a
conversation; we can clear the air.” And it’s worth spending $30 on an international phone call
to do that. So that shows that’s a value. That we’re willing to invest in that. Does that make
sense?
Investigator: Yes, it does.
AFM Training Director: Okay, so we’re not going to have as much conversation about values
Investigator: But they still guide all behavior.
AFM Training Director: That’s correct. I would go even further to say that I think value
statements can be modified. So there’s a difference between core values, which are like gravity,
they’re like principles. They’re there whether you name them or not, because they just have to
be there in order for your organization to accomplish its mission. And they’re just there from the
present. Okay. So how you name them is different from what they are. I believe that we can
shift how we describe them, and we can do that so we can say we want to shift them so that we
more accurately describe what we’re talking about. So I think the core value itself doesn’t
change.
Investigator: Okay, that leads me to another question, which should be the final question now.
Who, then, gave AFM the names for the core values? You had said that they often radiate from
leadership. Where do the core values that you currently have come from?
AFM Training Director: Yeah. So we had a set of value statements, which would be more like
statements of belief. You know, “we have a high value of scripture, we’re theologically
conservative, we support the Seventh-day Adventist church.” Those are all kind of statements,
not defining behaviors. And when I joined Adventist Frontier Missions, we were going through
a culture crisis in the organization. And one of my tasks was to research—and it wasn’t just me,
I had an assistant—and we researched how values are shaped in an organization. We realized
that core values were important. So we got a group of, our executive team got together, and we
wrestled with what would be our statement of values. And our values are actually modeled, the
way we structure them are actually modeled after REI. I was doing research on them, and I
really loved the way that REI did it. One word, and then a paragraph, a sentence, so that you can
remember. So, our founder was the President at the time. He presided over that process. And
we kind of hammered out those statements.
Investigator: Did you create what you wanted to be, or did you describe what you thought you
already were?
AFM Training Director: Well, that’s a debate within the organization. Core values should
describe who you are. And the greater effectiveness with which they do, the more powerful they
are. So, I worked with an aviation company to help clarify their values, and we came up with
three. They had 10. We came up with three. And when they said them, they were just like,
“That’s us! That is totally us.” Values that, when you describe behavioral values that don’t
perfectly align with who you are, we talk about aspirational values, not core values, right? And
there are some of those that, within the organization, feel are more aspirational than core. But
I’ve felt—and this is partly because I’ve spent so much time thinking and articulating and
teaching those—I think we could really make a fairly strong argument that all of those that we
currently articulate them are core values. But you would find, if you spoke with other directors,
a person might say, “well, for this reason I think this one is less of a core value and more of an
aspirational value.”
Investigator: It would make sense, though, that the longer that the training is functional, the
more that people go through the training, the more they actually becomes a core value, rather
than just an aspirational.
AFM Training Director: Yeah. So, we’ve had really horrendous problems with teams. We’ve
come a long way to build high-functioning, healthy teams. Like, a long way towards that.
Humility. I think that’s, you know, if you’re not willing to be humble, you’re not going to be an
effective cross-cultural language learner, culture student. And frontier work is just so difficult
it’s actually impossible to do; the reason people aren’t reached in 2015, after 2,015 years of
missions, is because they’re really, really resistant to the gospel. So you need to have humility in
order to actually go and engage that, and part of humility is, “I can’t. I have to trust that God
wants to do something for these people and that He may be wanting to use me.” Anyway, I see it
as much more core. And I recognize that it’s partly because of my own immersion.
Investigator: That makes sense. Thank you. I took a lot more of your time than I meant to, but
thank you so much.
AFM Training Director: You’re very welcome. I think you’re going to enjoy being immersed
in the process. I think you will. I hope it’s a blessing to you, beyond your research.
APPENDIX I TRANSCRIPT OF FOCUS GROUP #1
August 4, 2015
Investigator: This is Caralin McHan and it’s August 4, and we’re doing a focus group. I have
nine questions that I would like to get your take on, but you don’t have to give an answer to
everything. So if a question I ask doesn’t really connect with you, you don’t have to answer.
But if you do have something to say, I would suggest that you say it. And the reason for focus
groups is so that you can bounce ideas off of each other. There might be something that one of
you remembers that somebody else doesn’t. The first question that I have is, I want to know what
values are of Adventist Frontier Missions?
Focus Group: I would say integrity is one of them. Another one is vulnerability.
I would add transparency.
Service. Serving people—the needs of people.
Community.
Relationships—building relationships, healing relationships. To establish movements is one of
them, I would say. Establish movements.
Giving people more than friendship.
Christ-centered model is one of their values.
Investigator: Is there anything else?
Focus Group: Uh, Cultural sensitivity.
Contextualizing, Christianity that will fit their culture, their ideas.
Adaptivity, Adaptability.
Investigator: All right, I’m going to go to the next question. It’s whether or not you think it’s
important for missionaries to act according to a specific set of values (say AFM values). And
why or why not?
Focus Group: Could you ask the question again?
Investigator: Yeah. Do you think it’s important for missionaries to act according to a specific
set of values? Why so or why not?
Focus Group: I would say that they should act according to Christian values, and I believe that
they’re all the same.
Investigator: The reason being?
Focus Group: The Bible. That’s where we get them from.
Do you mean kind of there are a set of values that are right –if you think that there are certain set
of values that are right to have as a missionary and there are those that are not compared to “it
doesn’t matter at all?” Is that the question?
Investigator: I suppose it comes from a basis of believing in values, so everyone has some sort
of values that you value but you prioritize them. So I suppose I’m asking if it’s important to
have a specific prioritization of certain values.
Focus Group: At the same hierarchy of values.
I think if you are on a team it’s really important because you need to have the same hierarchy of
values as other people on your team. Whether the missionaries in Africa and those in Asia need
to have the same hierarchy. . .like obviously they’ll be similar if it’s Christian but whether or not
they need to be the same, it’s not important particularly… but I think with any team, within a
project, they need to be similar, especially within an organization.
Yes. The same with similar principles, they can differentiate in the ways that they are expressed
based on the culture and the way people are used to grow up but the value and the principle in
itself should be the same, otherwise you’ll be pulling in different directions and won’t be a team
anymore.
I mean, as far as all the values that we named, I would say those are important values to go by,
pretty much whether you’re a missionary or not.
Investigator: Yeah. So my next question is sort of linked to this last one that I asked. It’s if you
think that knowing the values of AFM or Adventist Frontier Missions will help you in the
mission field.
Focus Group: Yes.
Yeah, yes.
Yes, it makes you come from the same direction as the people you’re working with—it just
aligns everything.
And you don’t want to be a part of an organization that you may not agree, because you are a
representative not just--of course, first of all representatives of Christ, but the organization also
has a place to play— ‘cause they will associate you with that.
It avoids misunderstanding.
And even if there are differences to the values AFM gives us here, it even gives to the people you
are working with, even then they are valuable. They will help us even to bridge differences, if
there are any.
Investigator: OK. I know you’ve mentioned a couple reasons why it’s important to have similar
set of values, so then what does it look like. I’m hoping for a couple examples of what it would
look like for someone to act according to the values of AFM.
Focus Group: I mean, you will be able…adaptability is one of the values. Of course different
cultures, and I’m speaking for myself. Different cultures have different values. So you can’t take
one value, and say, vulnerability to one people group—that, they don’t do that, can’t do that. So
you have to adapt. You know what I mean? If they’re not vulnerable, you can’t be vulnerable to
that magnitude. You have to respect their culture, ‘cause you might offend them. If that makes
any sense.
Or the value about being Christ-centered value. For example if you go to a certain people group
and, you cannot come there with the opportunities that you have and try to teach them with the
tools that they might not have. So, for example, if they don’t have Ellen White books translated,
you are not going to use those books because they don’t’ have access for that. It’s basically,
you’re looking at Christ how he was doing his mission work and we see that he was mingling
with people, serving to their needs, living their life and actually living one of the most difficult
lives, so that people who are poor, people who are struggling can also relate to him. So they
live—what I appreciate about AFM values, they live the life of the people and this is how they
show that their values go together with the theory and practice.
AFM’s values are based on the gospel. When we live by the values of AFM, especially
adaptability and culture sensitivity, we’re living the gospel we preach.
Investigator: I recognize that.
Focus Group: I know, but it’s really cool. I’ve thought a lot about it. It would look like. . .
We’ve been here for two weeks. Essentially, we’ve learned to live by a lot of AFM’s values. And
things have kind of gone, you know, streamlined. Like, when we got here, we were really
random; we did random things, we left random things undone. And now we’re doing them and
everything kind of flows together and meshes.
Investigator: I’ve noticed that and I’m not even living here, but I’m starting to live my life
differently.
Focus Group: When you put food color into water. You get one color at the end. It’s not a
whole bunch of little different sparse bits. I don’t know. It’s very—I don’t know…
Investigator: I like that. My next question is: What do you think is the most effective method
that AFM has used to communicate the values that they have—so the ones you listed at the
beginning.
Focus Group: They live them.
Yeah. Leading by example.
They are vulnerable with us and explain their past mistakes so we can learn from them. That’s, I
believe that’s where they get a lot of their values from. Experience.
But also this is the values what you’re going to live by. They set up the principle behind it—and
maybe don’t even tell you what the value is, but the principle and everything is so clear that you
form that value almost subconsciously.
Yeah, I agree. Like learning from experiences. Not telling you, this is what the value is or the
goal is, but you are figuring it out in the process of the conversation--
--Discovery--
--Yeah, discovery method.
They provide us with opportunities to learn by discovery such, as the crucible.
Investigator: When was a moment when one of the values that AFM has just clicked for you
like an aha moment? If there were any.
Focus Group: I think the vulnerability value really clicked for me when what’s-her-name
decided that she couldn’t do the upper body stuff anymore, on crucible. Just like her being
vulnerable and realizing that, as a team, someone, if you have an issue, you need to say
something about it and be vulnerable it for the sake of the whole team. And if she hadn’t ever
said anything about it, it would have hurt the team as a whole. And it just kind of hit me, and I
was like, Oh OK, this is what it’s about. Especially since I was raised, I just grew up, developed
this thing of not being vulnerable with people. So yeah, it was cool.
A similar experience when someone was telling about his life story and made himself really
vulnerable just by telling how much he appreciates this group and that he never had this before,
and just to feel and see what it created in our group—
--the atmosphere— --and
in myself too.
One of them that clicked with me is on the unspoken crucible event. One of the biggest things
that they spoke about before the crucible was, you have to be a good follower to be a leader or
you have to listen first to really understand people in that sense. In that process of the crucible,
whatever we did in that crucible helped me understand that following is, being a good follower is
sometimes more important than being a good leader.
Investigator: Were there any other moments when something just made sense—either in the
classroom or outside the classroom? No? OK. So the next question is somewhat related, but I’m
asking: What, if anything that happened has persuaded you to act or to change your behavior
based on the values of AFM? Does that make sense to you, the question?
Focus Group: What caused us to change?
Like something which you did not agree before with and then you said, Oh, ok, this makes sense,
I’ll change my ways. Like that?
Investigator: Perhaps, although most of the things, I would imagine, that you listed you already
believed in but perhaps you might change the way you behave. Or what, if anything, has
persuaded you that you want to act a certain way?
Focus Group: For me a lot of this transparency, vulnerability and the way, how they teach us
and live it—how to solve differences between each other, just made me aware how important
this will be in the coming year. And I think I’m much more aware of it than I would be without
the training. And also for me, I took a position I wanted. And I want to do everything that I can
do, even though it costs me a lot of effort, to be that transparent –to make myself vulnerable.
Hearing the stories and examples from their own personal experience about how missionaries
have come in in the past and not identified with the people but kind of kept themselves separate,
and just hearing the results of that and real life examples really stuck out to me. Especially since
I’ve already been in the other culture for a short amount of time. Like, I’ve seen in myself, how
I’ve actually been making some of those mistakes. And realizing oh, ok, this is what I need to
change because it’s causing a gap between me and the people that I want to reach out to.
I also think just hearing their life stories and all what they were able to give up for God’s sake
made me value, like we take a second look at how much do I really value what I believe? Am I
really ready to give up totally everything for God if he was to call me to do that? Not saying that
everyone will have to do that. Give up their family, house, I don’t know…anything that God
might require you to give up in practice. So that’s kind of…I’ve thought about it—how much do
I really value God?
Investigator: I feel like all of you have a greater advantage in learning and putting in to practice
what’s being taught just because of living together and being with each other almost 24/7. So I
was wondering if you’ve had experiences or if you’ve learned anything about AFM and their
values outside of the classroom experience, when I’m not around.
Focus Group: We do the shopping together. Groceries for 18 people….
Investigator: It might be hard to think of because it’s not direct, so you can take a moment to
think.
Focus Group: Well, the discipleship and the listening and the learning conversations and we did
that at lunch last Thursday, but we didn’t have time to get through everything, so we did it by
ourselves Thursday night and just like you’re learning, you’re practicing on your own. AFM
doesn’t say these are our values and we’re going to help you instigate them and we’re going to
keep helping you instigate them. They say, these are our values, now it’s up to you. It’s
discipleship. They’re teaching you how to do it on your own.
So you saw the way they ask us to put in practice what we learn inside of a group without their
interference.
And then they give us feedback, and affirmation and just really help us along the way.
Does the picnic count—like the potluck?
Investigator: Yeah
Focus Group: I think involving us in other events or suggesting us to help out with these other
kinds of community events and just helping, involving us—still giving us leadership roles, it’s
kind of hard to explain, but just working together and being able to see how this is something
that—seeing them live out their values and involving us in that with simple things like a picnic,
just reaching out to the community. And doing fun things with them without any pressure. You
know. Just having fun and mingling. I saw a lot of their values being laid out even just in that
simple event.
They are just making friends without looking at results per se.
They like to, after an experience, either good, bad, or anything, they like to step out and say, OK
what did we learn from this?-- --Debrief--
--They like to debrief everything which is very good, which is very good because you get to sit
back and think about it.
True. Which is important because in this culture everything is rushed, rushed, and you just get to
step away.
There have been times when I’m like, You’ve got to debrief this? Do we really need to debrief
this? Then I’m like, OK, we’ll just do it. Even if I didn’t really learn anything from it, someone
else did.--
--Then you learned-- --
Then I learned-- --From
the experience.
Some of the thoughts to me also is just to see how present the AFM staff is outside from classes;
whatever, events, evenings. They are sacrificing a lot of their time for just being present. Also
making a connection to us. They are just very, they are close to us. It’s not kind of a they are
somewhere up top and we are here.
One of the staff came through yesterday and passed out ice pops to everybody who wanted one.
And it’s just, I don’t know. Yeah, it’s a piece of frozen juice. But--
--It says something relationships---
--It says something. Yeah. And the fact that another one of them is taking the time to actually
read our journals…like some of us that’s on page 200, it’s like a lot. But taking the time to do
that, and critiques spelling mistakes or grammar, and then writing little notes. And like if he was
talking too fast and you missed something in your notes, he writes it in, “Hey, you missed this”
You know? And then at the end he writes you an encouraging note:, “I really enjoyed reading
your work. Or whatever. This is what you can work on.” And that takes him a lot of time. And
he’s just wanting to make sure that we’re getting it, that we’re keeping up, and that we
understand the principles.
You can see he doesn’t just look over it but actually reads it--
--He actually reads it. Like, I mean, most teachers don’t take time to read your whole paper,
probably.
Investigator: I’m a teacher. I read the whole paper.
Focus Group: So that was a gross assumption. But probably some just read the first page and
the last page. You can put filler in the middle. They don’t know the difference. I haven’t done
that-- my relatives did that.
Investigator: That’s awesome. Have any of you had the one-on-one session yet? No?
Focus Group: I am tomorrow.
Investigator: Yeah, I’m not until next week. But I don’t know if any of our answers would
change after having that session.
Focus Group: The 1:1 session, though, says a lot about them too. Like, they’re taking the time.
A Lot—
--I know! That’s a lot of time-- --An
hour each--
--That’s probably going to be like 20 hours of his time. That’s a lot. That’s half of a workweek—
--More than an hour-- --That’s
almost a whole day— --Day
and night
And it just reinforces their value of friendship, and time, adaptability and— --Valuing
people—
--Valuing people. Discipleship. You know, making that connection. Being available. Living the
gospel they preach. Christ had time. I think in many ways, here at training, they’re showing us,
doing for us what they want us to do for others.
They say by actions and explicitly, too. They say, if I’m successful, then you will continue doing
that.
Investigator: My next question, there’ two ways you can read it. And I don’t care which way
you read it as long as you sort of tell me which. The question is, Are there other values you think
should have been emphasized more during training? So that would be values you think would be
necessary for the field or values you think that AFM should have, or on the flip side, values you
think they have already that they aren’t talking about. Do the two parts of that question, or one
of them make sense to you?
Focus Group: So you’re asking, does AFM have any values, or is AFM lacking any values that
we believe should be in the value system, or does AFM have values that we would like to
reinforce?
Investigator: So they are ones they talk about that I identify, “Oh, that’s that value, or that
value.” But are there others that they have that they never talk about that maybe should be
acknowledged. So that’s the other part of the question.
Focus Group: I kind of don’t think so.
I mean that’s really thinking outside the box. I don’t know if I could…
They’re really big on communication. And so, a lot of their, I mean…yeah, as far as I know…
But if you don’t have communication, everything else is going to go down the drain. Like, it’s
like the root of, like, teamwork; the root of learning, everything in a lot of ways.
So I’m just saying it’s hard to think of anything because they’re so big on communication.
Investigator: I’m not saying there are. I put together these questions before the training ever
started. I wasn’t quite sure what the experience here would be.
No, I think they’re pretty on track. AFM is the most on track organization I’ve ever dealt with.
I can second that.
Investigator: Wow
Focus Group: They practice what they preach and they don’t have stupid rules.
I can agree with that. And I really like rules.
It’s true! There’s a reason behind their rules. Like some rules, like, let me think of one. No
running through the sprinkler during PE class. Or no swimming in the pond except during free
time. Like they just --
--They don’t have those--
--No having a telephone in your room. You’re not allowed to wear skinny jeans with boots, even
though you have boots on and you can’t tell they’re skinny. But you’d be able to tell they weren’t
skinny because then they’d bunch up. But there are little things where you’re like, I don’t know,
and AFM’s rules they’re just like, you know, cover yourself up.
I would say they just give you principle, and then….basically they don’t dictate you.
Right. They show you a lot of trust-- --They
teach the principle behind it, though
--And they leave it up to you, which is actually a really big risk, but they leave it up to us to
enforce the principles that they teach.
That’s the point. A lot of times in the Bible we don’t find exact rules. God gives us principles. If
you have the principle you know how to apply it to many different situations. You won’t be able
to find a rule to cover every situation.
But AFM, like some organizations teach rules. They have a rule book and this is what you go by.
But AFM’s like, these are our principles and if you can get a hold of their principles, you’re not
going find yourself saying, “What am I going to do?” It just covers everything, I think.
Investigator: I have one last question that I thought of after you were talking. But part of what
I’m trying to get at is what persuades people to learn a value. Because you can just sit in a
classroom and have somebody tell you something, but in order to actually want to change your
behavior a little bit more has to happen, and so I’ve asked you a little bit about that. About what
has persuaded you. But I’m also curious what type of learners you are. Some people have
categorized them as kinetic learner or audio learner. But what most helps you learn something—
if you’ve thought about it before?
Focus Group: So the question is what helps us learn or what motivates us to want that value?
Investigator: You could answer both of them, because it was sort of asking both of those in the
question.
Focus Group: I think, just seeing how their values played out in their own lives and giving us
practical examples, it shows me how it improves the quality of their life and so it makes me
think, oh, well, it’s probably going to improve the quality of my own life, too.
Investigator: OK
Focus Group: You can see it played out. You see that it’s an attractive thing. You think, that’s
what I want.
I mean they have values that are inherently good. But the whole reason we’re here is to reach
people. And to know that they have acquired values from experience and they have adopted new
things for the sake of reaching people, I admire that.
Investigator: So that the values are linked to their mission.
Focus Group: Yeah, reaching people.
If you’re referring just to learning styles and methods, I think the discovery method learning
when you learn for yourself—it’s not someone telling you. It’s not them just saying it, but you
discover it for yourself, through experience, basic hands-on, like games, just everyday practice
living. Then you learn it for yourself. That’s the method—the learning style maybe.
Right. And even through, just like the leadership roles that they gave us at the beginning, for
cooking and worships and everything, those are more opportunities for us to discover what kind
of values work well with this kind of group and what will work well in the field too.
Investigator: Well, thank you so much for helping me. I really do appreciate it. Because I have
my own take and my own perception of what works, but it really will help to see how all of you
were affected by their training methods.
APPENDIX J TRANSCRIPT OF FOCUS GROUP #2
August 5, 2015
Investigator: This is Caralin McHan, Focus Group #2. And, I’m, again, very thankful that
you’re helping me with this. I’m just really excited. From some of the things that I heard
yesterday, hearing reflected some of the things that I have experienced here in training. But also
some different things. Because I know I’m just one individual and you perceive things a little bit
differently. The first question that I have here is, what are the values of Adventist Frontier
Missions?
Focus Group: Teamwork. Do we have to go in a certain order of us talking?
Investigator: Any order. If a question doesn’t resonate with you, you don’t even have to answer
it. If one really does, you can talk a long time.
Focus Group: Okay. Got it. Service
Humility, Cultural Awareness
Obedience. We talked about obedience to God.
Spiritual Growth
There’s a lot there. It’s just hard. It’s like if someone asks you what your favorite song of hymn.
Then you’re like, I had a ton until you just asked me.
Investigator: Well, if you think of one later on in one of the other questions, you can pop out
and say, oh, this is was another value.
Focus Group: Well I would still say, like, multiplication, but it seems like— --Yeah,
but is it a value?--
--yeah, I think so: be fruitful and multiply— --yeah,
I think so—
--multiplication— --multiplication
Oh, discipleship. That kind of triggered…
Investigator: All right. And do you think it’s important for missionaries to act according to a
specific set of values?
Focus Group: If they’re with that organization, I think so. Because you don’t want to work
outside the values that the organization as a whole has, because I think you could do more harm.
Well, it will help a team function, if they have the same values and know of these values— --
right—
--So it just makes everything easier.
Investigator: Okay. And then, brining it home, bringing a little bit more personal, my next
question is: Do you think that knowing the values of Adventist Frontier Missions will help you
when you’re in the mission field? And if so, why? And if not, why not?
Focus Group: Definitely yes from me. Why? Because, don’t ask why, but I was thinking about
the “ready, aim, fire” this morning. I don’t know why. I was like, I guess there’s 3 commands
there: And I guess one is the readiness; and then the aim is so you’re not just like, ‘phew’, going
in like any direction; and then the firing is the actual launching out. And I was thinking of its
relation to missions, and what we’re doing here. We’re doing the ready and aim at the moment.
And I think it’s, I’ve experienced mission experiences where there wasn’t much aim, there was
just a lot of zealousness, “phew” do something, you know, like, just hit something. But it didn’t
work out that well. ‘Cause you lose motivation and a sense of direction very quickly. So,
this….what was the question again? The values?
Investigator: Do you think knowing the values of AFM will help you in the field?
Focus Group: Yeah, they will, because it’s very set aiming at what they value and what they’re
here for. And being saturated in that before is, it makes you feel very calm as opposed to just,
‘cause it’s just like that aiming, the crosshairs, and being, “that’s where we’re headed.”
It gives you clear direction as to where to stay. Like, you know, to keep on the analogy, if
you’re aiming, you could aim, but you may not see what you’re aiming at. Whereas having the
values, you can clearly see where you’re going. If that even makes sense.
Yeah. To me, it’s just very relevant. All the values that we’re being taught, they’re very relevant
for what we’ll be encountering in the field. So they’re very helpful, I think.
Investigator: Okay, and then to flesh that idea out a little bit more, I was wondering: what does
it look like for someone to act according to Adventist Frontier Missions values?
Focus Group: Well, that’s a tricky one in my mind, because I have a pretty set idea of like, that,
you could recognize it quickly if someone is living according to the values, or missionaries were.
But they’re not…a lot of the values that they are instilling here are not cookie-cutter makers;
they’re principle-makers. And we’re sent out into so many different countries and cultures that
one of the values that they have is to make us be aware and be able to function within a principle
set rather than be like, are you telling a line and all of these things that we told you. I don’t
know if that’s just muddying the waters, but maybe just the values of principle-driven action.
And that would slightly affect, if you were to meet them in different countries.
