Welcome back once again to those of you who’ve been following our discussion on measuring spiritual impact. If you’re new to the blog or joining us for the first time on this discussion, please feel welcome. The series kicked off with How Would You Measure Spiritual Impact? followed by the first portion of an interview with Gilles Gravelle: Discovering Spiritual Impact in Mission.
Want to know why this series matters? If you’re in cross-cultural ministry, or you support one, this series offers you the latest on assessing outcomes for:
- Better stewardship
- Better accountability
- Fulfilling your mission
Without further ado, let’s dive into the second portion of the interview with Gilles Gravelle.
Johanna Fenton: Why is the ministry of Bible translation especially in need of crowdsourcing?
Gilles Gravelle: Think about crowdsourcing as a way to view the community — the people receiving the translation — as co-producers and not necessarily consumers. I know that sounds a little odd when talking about producing a Scripture translation, but given the urgent social, physical, spiritual and development needs these days, including as many people as possible in the project has a lot of benefits. A previous blog topic covered that, but for now this means they bring incredibly rich feedback on every stage of the translation project, from the very start. Translators have always valued feedback, but in this case the feedback is not just responses to questions after a translation is more or less codified — in other words, when it’s not very open to significant revision. Pride of ownership and engagement with the Scripture text from the start, often in unpredictable ways, is true localization. It doesn’t bear the mark of foreign importation or adaption.
JF: You emphasize the importance of timing with the phrases “from the very start” and “at every stage of the translation project.” It seems you’re talking about measuring spiritual impact in the early stages of translation projects. Is that true?
GG: Determining from the very beginning why a group of people want to do a Bible translation in their language is important. In the past, the reasons were fairly general, such as to spread the Gospel and help people know Christ better. Of course, those are good reasons, but these days many people see Scripture addressing human development needs as urgent—that is, scriptural solutions to various kinds of human impoverishments. This is the everyday practical or applied theology goal of Bible translation. People have unique needs, depending on their circumstances. So what needs to be addressed sooner as opposed to later? Spiritual understanding for victims of trauma, human trafficking, AIDs? When the people identify what they want their Scripture translation to accomplish in their community, then they can plan for that, monitor how they are doing, and regularly assess the degree of beneficial impact their translation is having in those areas. This is spiritual impact measurement. Better to plan from the start what you want to measure later on.
JF: Okay, so another part of the equation is the cost involved. Why the emphasis on discovering an inexpensive method of measuring spiritual impact?
GG: There are two simple rules in the area of impact research: (1) Don’t measure things you have a pretty good, informed guess about. Just measure things that you really don’t know but need to know. (2) Start simple and cheap to build on discovering what you don’t know for the purposes of learning. Simple and cheap is more repeatable, and iterative learning leads to improved ways to discover impact. Pragmatically speaking, few agency leaders are willing to spend a lot of money and staff resources on measuring the unknown. As learning increases, so does people’s confidence in the measurement method, and support grows.
JF: Now let’s change course a bit. Can you tell me, how might these experiments become relevant to what’s happening in the U.S.?
GG: Knowing the degree of spiritual results that any ministry, including a local church, is achieving with all of their God-given resources has not been a priority. The leaders have simply assumed that significant beneficial impact was happening. But these days, more people want to financially support and personally participate in high impact cause-oriented projects. This means measuring spiritual results will be necessary to confirm the good use of funds and human resources. This will also help their donor and volunteer retention rate. People don’t want to waste their time or their money. There are many other ministry opportunities out there. They literally numbers in the tens of thousands, so competition is a reality. Small and even medium-size churches are struggling over low income these days, and this is one of the reasons. Parachurch organizations, which come in all sizes and tend to be more innovative, also need to make spiritual impact measurement a priority.
Question for readers: How has this series helped you? What next step has it encouraged you to take?
About the interviewee: Gilles Gravelle has logged over 30 years in global mission work. He enjoys research, writing, and speaking on 21st Century church, mission, and philanthropy. You can follow @gillgravelle on Twitter.
How has this series helped/encouraged me? A couple things come to mind. It’s on my radar already to seek input from other people on ministry concepts, strategies, structures, activities, etc. But where I need to expand that is to be more inclusive of people who may not, on the surface of things, seem to have as much to contribute to the process. Maybe these are stakeholders, maybe they have different vocations or disciplines than those I’d normally call upon. But actually, they may be the very ones who have indigenous understanding to discern *priorities* for serving within their culture … which is something that often gets those of us who are outsiders in trouble. While we can perhaps identify problems within cultures that aren’t our own, we’re actually not in the best place to discern what to do first there – that is, if we want to support indigenous disciples to own their expression of church.
The series has also reinforced the importance of working as teams and crowds to figure out what issues to measure in a project or ministry, and what local values those connect with, and how that all relates to qualitative measures of “deep change.” It reminded me of an article on church transitions and innovations that came out in the mid-2000 decade, titled, “We know more than our pastor.” It was kind of shocking at the time and some took even the title as an affront. But underneath is the idea that the aggregate always knows more than any one individual, and whether the leader of a church or the leader of a cross-cultural mission/translation team, no one person is EVER the entire Body. So, why aren’t we/I more inclusive. By showing more hospitality to invite in, and humility to serve from the sidelines, we/I might just validate the voices who have the most important pieces of the puzzle that will make the ministry sustainable in the long run …
Going from “so what?” to “now what?” – for me, I think it’s continue in the same trajectory, but amplify the intercultural, interdisciplinary aspects. While that’s a lot more easily quantifiable, i trust it’ll bring some deeper, qualitative changes to the table.
Thanks for this series. I know there have to be more people out there working on credible assessment of transformation, and believe your work will help them too.
Brad,
thanks for so many great comments and insights. I, too, read the article “We know more than our pastors” a few years ago, and have referred to it a few times about how the Web is so rich in resources that any regular person can contribute richly to a crowdsourcing endeavor. But, as the article reveals, it also keeps people accountable. We think there are many people, even in remote places, that could provide rich feedback and insights in regard to effects felt from a Scripture translation, or any other ministry effort. They can know more than their “missionaries.”. Sorry, couldn’t resist that last statement.
Brad, let us know how it goes for you as you seek to include even more people. Would love to hear your story. Thanks so much for sharing so many insights with us.
Thanks for this series. I really enjoyed reading the three parts in the series. One thing that I have appreciated is your organization’s openness in having this discussion. You are asking important questions that don’t have easy or quick answers, and that to me is refreshing to read. The other thing that I have appreciated is the discussion about measuring spiritual impact among other cultures. I am not an expert in scripture translation, however I have a background in community development and the principles seem to be similar. It seems like sometimes the thing that is often forgotten in impact assessments is just letting the people speak for themselves about the project and its outcomes. I’m so glad it was brought up in part 1 of Gilles’ interview. Who would know better how a scripture translation has impacted a community, than the community itself? We had some posts on our blog last week about crowdsourcing too: http://www.wciujournal.org/blog/
Heather,
Your comment on community development principles is probably the most important aspect of crowdsourcing. That is because the community (i.e. the crowd), is producer and not just consumer. They feel pride of ownership from the start, and they become he natural distributors (the localizers) of what they are helping to produce. I think this allows a text, lesson, or translation, to flow more naturally through the culture. Surely that is a goal of community development.
Thanks for commenting!
Thanks Heather, we appreciate your feedback. I felt this blog series was a bit of an experiment, so it’s nice to hear you found it refreshing.
Looking forward to talking with you more!
It certainly is true that “Determining from the very beginning why a group of people want to do a Bible translation in their language is important”. But one of the great things about the Bible and the way the Holy Spirit uses it is the unanticipated, or surprise, benefits.
My father’s generation supported Bible translation in principle. They had a theological commitment to it. Because of that commitment, they could go months without any news and years without seeing any clear or direct impact and yet still keep on giving and praying. They did not know what impacts they expected, they just knew that they expected impacts. This is not to pine for the past, or say that the next generation is missing the boat. Rather, if we have a serious theological and missiological commitment to Scripture Engagement, then we should expect that the impacts will be all over the map. The biggest impacts may well be ones which neither the people nor TSC anticipated when they first formulated their rationale for a project. So measurement of impact has to be open to the Spirit blowing where he wants.
Say a translation is done in a group with few believers with an expectation that it will help with the sharing of the Good News. What if the evaluation shows little impact in that area. Would we dig far enough to discover that the translation is giving joy and encouragement to believers in the middle of persecution?
I will come back to an issue I raised in the first blog on this question. Will we be disappointed to have funded a translation that does not result in numerical growth, but only in joy and encouragement of believers? Alternatively, will the ways God chooses to use the translation reshape our thinking about what is important? About what the Bible is for? About impacts and aspects of spiritual growth that we under-value? I think that has to start with TSC staff and proceed to your donors.
Foibled said, “The biggest impacts may well be ones which neither the people nor TSC anticipated.” Exactly! But we have to be careful about assuming good impact happens just because the translation was done. Just look at the US. Lot’s of Bible translations, but what sort of impact? Measuring spiritual results should inform our theological assumptions and our methods. Then, are we willing to make adjustments if the results are less than satisfactory?
Doing translation is not enough. Apparently, reading the Bible in personal devotions is not as good as reading and studying it with a group of people. (according to FCBH research and the research done for the book “Move”).
It appears that two of the variables that needs to be considered in measuring the spiritual impact of a translation is whether it is used privately and/or publicly and another is whether is it used haphazardly or in organized study.
What encourages me about this blog? Simply that other people are interested in impact. That is already a LOT for me.
These are great thoughts. After reading the last paragraph, I thought about the reality of what Gilles said and how it was shown recently with the Kony 2012 video. People really do want to know how much of their funding is going to direct aid and how their money is being spent. Measuring spiritual impact will be more and more important as we move on from here.
This discussion is very timely for me. I am a graduate student at Bainbridge Graduate Institute (www.BGI.edu) and our tag line is “Changing Business for Good”. We are seen as the thought leader in what it means to be Sustainable as you enter the business community, we graduate sustainable minded MBA’s with the hope that they spread this message around the world. My focus is on what has been referred to as the Quadruple Bottom Line (People, Planet, Profit, Purpose aka Spirit). This school term we are studying “Means and Measures” which leads me to my interest in this blog – How do you measure Purpose? I have a team project to develop a business plan for a alternative cemetary and for the CEO Dashboard I have come up with a couple of measures for compassion and respect under the category of Spirit. The method for driving these goals/metrics is to caputure customer feedback via surveys then using the Lickert scale to measure progress, etc. but this seems very basic. I know I am approaching this issue from a slightly different lens however I believe that modern day corporations have huge influence and they are missing a significant measurement – embracing the Spirit. I promise to stay tuned and contribute ofen.
Blessings for this work…B-Rad
B-Rad, glad you commented on this topic, because your comments and course of study are confirming. They confirm what we are seeing in many sectors these days, that proof of good results for business and the social sector, as well as ministry, needs to be evaluated in the spiritual, phenomenon, or deeper good, whatever terms people use. It’s difficult to do, so it seems everyone is in a learning mode on the topic right now. We will report back what we discover as we move forward with assessing spiritual impact.