SCM Research

Action Research and a Practice of Preaching

Jason C. Boyd

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780334056447
• eBook ISBN: 9780334056461
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

This new volume in the SCM Research series argues that both preaching and Action Research are inherently exposing practices. They require a deep level of self-consciousness, and a willingness to hold oneself up to critique and comment. But at their best they are both formed within a deep and supportive critical community. Applying a methodology rooted in Action Research as way of Doing Theology (ART), and drawn from the author's own research within a specific 'community of practice', "The Naked Preacher" demonstrates for preachers and ministers new ways to be critically and constructively self-aware. It also offers an important contribution for practical theologians with an interest in action research and critical reflection.

1

Action research: a messy business

There’s science and there’s science, is all I’m saying. When humans are the subjects, it’s mostly not science. (Fowler, 2014, p. 272)

The embryonic stage of forming my inquiry correlates with Coghlan and Brannick’s observation (2010, p. 144) that:

in action research you typically start out with a fuzzy question, are fuzzy about your methodology in the initial stages and have fuzzy answers in the early stages. As the project develops, your methods and answers become less fuzzy and so your questions become less fuzzy.

This forms part of their argument that due to the emergent nature of AR, there is an increased burden on the researcher to demonstrate rigour and quality by making research processes transparent and defending the choices made (cf. Zubber-Skerritt and Fletcher, 2007, p. 431). Reason and Bradbury (2006b, p. xxix) regard explicit choice making as ‘the primary “rule” in action research practice’. My purpose here is to recount the blurry beginnings of what I sought to discover as I moved towards greater clarity and to critique the choices I made as my inquiry unfolded.

My question first formed in a seminar at the outset of a postgraduate programme. We were asked to put into words an area of ministry we would like to research. I had no hesitation as I explained that I wanted to understand what happened when a sermon was preached:

• What was going on in that space between the preacher and the congregation?

• Why did people hear what I was sure I never said?

• Why did others fail to hear what I intended them to hear?

• How did I know if I was communicating effectively and whether or not the sermon changed anything?

One person joked that I was trying to research the work of the Holy Spirit!

My questions arose out of a decade of preaching on a weekly basis and wondering whether or not I was an effectual communicator. I attempted to measure quality by reading my sermons to Viviane and taking into account her suggestions and criticisms. Then after the service I would ask her how she felt I had preached. I valued this feedback even though I recognized that she could not represent the perspectives of the whole congregation.

My inquiry is set against the background of four jolting responses to my sermons. One was a positive experience of engagement when a group of about a dozen people huddled at the church door engaging in a discussion with me. This was exciting! I wondered how it had happened and whether there was a way I could encourage it.

The three other responses were intensely negative and had profound consequences for the quality of my pastoral relationships with the persons concerned. In order to protect the identity of those involved I will not recount the specific details of the incidents. The first had to do with my authority as a preacher. It took place early on in my ministry and at a time when my preaching had a dogmatic tone. I had been advocating a particular moral stance, with which one person strongly disagreed. Their voice rose as they argued their case. I lost my temper and shouted, ‘Do not speak to me like this. I’m your minister!’

The second and third incidents had to do with people hearing what I did not say. In both situations the sermon was interpreted through the lens of the hearer’s experience. Each heard the sermon in a way I had not intended and were deeply offended. Despite dialogue and attempts to reconcile, the two pastoral relationships were permanently scarred. The manner in which I have told these stories cannot convey the distress felt. Even now the memory of them sends a shudder through me and fills me with regret. Each instance was marked by self-assuredness and lack of awareness of the impact of my words on the people who heard them. Running through each situation was the question of my own authority as a preacher and my powerlessness to guarantee that people heard and understood what I had intended to communicate.

Following the first tentative forming of my question, I encountered action research. I was transformed in my thinking through reading Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970, p. 138) and in particular a story he told in connection with ‘renouncing’ myths. A coordinator for a group called Full Circle presented a group with a picture of a rubbish heap on a street corner, the very street on which they were meeting. A participant identified the location of the image as Africa or Latin America. When the coordinator asked why it could not be in New York the response revealed the myth: ‘Because we are the United States and that can’t happen here’ (1970, p. 138). The Freirian concept of conscientization coincided with my introduction to Argyris and Schon’s (in Dick and Dalmau, 2000) concept of espoused theories and theories in practice. My research question required the exploding of ‘myths’: the gap between my espoused and practised theology of preaching. A postgraduate AR module provided the opportunity to explore my question in a pilot project. I invited people from my Scottish congregation to form a focus group. This project was a chance to ‘do’ AR and develop towards authentic practice.

On the cusp of the research co-planning meetings with my congregation in Witney, I sought to give definition to the exact nature of what I wanted to discover:

One of the main drivers behind this exploration is to become a better practitioner of preaching. I want to have a greater understanding of what I think I’m doing and what I’m actually doing. I want to know how my congregation is hearing the words I’m speaking and how they perceive what I say in relation to what I do. It is important for me to assess the level of integrity between actions and words, words and actions. I am interested in exploring how the sermon is understood and whether it seems to make any difference in my life and the lives of hearers, even if it is only a perceived difference. In other words, is preaching transformative? (Boyd, 2013, p. 86)

This inquiry began with a concern to improve my practice of preaching and to understand the congregation’s experience of my preaching. The adoption of the AR orientation pushed me beyond this initial concern towards the possibilities that AR opened for ‘doing theology’ of all kinds. My preaching practice was challenged and transformed and yet it had a much wider impact. The AR process through the method of Word Café created a space for God-talk about the preaching–worship–life nexus, which spilled over into other practices of congregational life. My initial concern with improved practice and transformation resonated with AR and opened up vistas of theological possibility.

Defining action research

I begin with an overview of the complexity of defining action research. In keeping with the AR approach of contextualized knowledge generation, I critique the way I collaborated with my congregation in a local definition. Through the data in my journal and the transcriptions of the co-planning meetings, I identify themes ripe for dialogue with the literature. I offer a definition of AR from the ground up, which will provide the framework for engagement with AR literature.

It is not within the scope of this book to give an account of the history of AR and its extensive diversity of practices. A thoroughgoing introduction to the history and strands of AR is found in Greenwood and Levin (2007), the two handbooks brought together by Reason and Bradbury (2001, 2008c), and Coghlan and Brydon-Miller’s encyclopaedic treatment (2014). Intermediate overviews of AR are offered by Herr and Anderson (2005, pp. 8–28) and Coghlan and Brannick (2010, pp. 35–50). Brief surveys include Reason and McArdle (2004, pp. 114–18), Kemmis and McTaggart (2005, pp. 560–3), Pasmore (2006, pp. 38–40), Bradbury et al. (2008), Eikeland (2007a, pp. 345–7), and an innovative philosophical critique by Cassell and Johnson (2006).

The elusive definition

AR eludes a concise definition. Ladkin (2004, p. 536) observes that ‘Even a cursory review of the literature reveals little agreement on a sole definition for research methods which claim the label of action research.’ She recognizes the challenge of pinning it down and yet maintains that definitions are ‘helpful as starting points’ (p. 537). She distils two qualities of AR based on McKernan’s definition: the practical and the claim to be scientific, a definition that encompasses a process of ‘cycles of inquiry’ (p. 537).

Eikeland (2007a, p. 345) concurs ‘that action research is far from being an unambiguous concept or practice. For novices, the field of action research is bewildering.’ This difficulty should not deter us from attempting a definition so long as we recognize that it will always be partial and provisional. He identifies a key characteristic of AR: it is located within a web of practical knowing (p. 345).

Reason and Bradbury (2006b, p. xxii) have drawn together the many and varied strands of AR in two handbooks. These capture its diversity by describing it ‘as a “family of approaches”’, emphasizing that ‘action research is a complex living process which cannot be tied to definitions. Action research is far more a work of art than a set of procedures’ (2008a, p. 698). Though AR defies a neat definition, an indicator of ‘quality in inquiry comes from awareness of and transparency about the choices open to you and that you make at each stage of the inquiry’ (p. 698).

The difficulty of defining AR is not unique. Hillon and Boje (2007, p. 360) stress that AR shares ‘the same type of vagueness that characterizes the label qualitative research’. Despite the debate that rages over the nature of AR, they note that action researchers are not prevented from working together. Crucially they identify quantitative and qualitative research as ‘the false dichotomy’ that AR has attempted to bridge. They hit on what I consider to be the key aim of this orientation, which is to ‘address the simple pragmatic question of “What works?” Thus, we cannot take the positivist’s easy path to restrict arbitrarily the field of objective inquiry, nor can we drift to the subjective extremes of constructivist-interpretist approaches’ (p. 360). The question ‘What works?’ holds together differing positionalities (insider–outsider) and ways of knowing (objective–subjective), refusing a division between theory and practice. We will return to the question of what works after considering the collaborative development of an AR definition with my congregation.

Finding a local definition

In working towards a definition I return to the presentation I made to the Church Meeting of Witney Congregational Church on 16 March 2010. In the Congregational Way, the Church Meeting consists of all members of the local church and is the ultimate decision-making body. I had sought permission from the previous Church Meeting to make a presentation on the research I hoped to conduct with the congregation. The purpose of the presentation was to be explicit about the questions I wanted to explore, to explain my theological presuppositions and to define AR. The presentation was dialogical and culminated in the decision by the Church Meeting to allow the research to take place. I used the presentation slides at subsequent co-planning meetings as a springboard for discussion.

Crucial to the Church Meeting and the co-planning meetings was introducing the congregation to the concept of AR. This presented me with the challenge of a definition. Bearing in mind that my own understanding of AR was still evolving, I was not aware that anyone in the congregation had any working knowledge of it (though two deacons had been involved in World Café3 processes in their work places). My exposure to AR had been in an academic setting and I had to find a way of introducing the idea to those who did not have this kind of background. Defining AR involved the meeting of two ‘cultures’. As part of an overall presentation were two slides offering a definition:

Action Research is:

• a lifestyle of being together with others in asking questions, of noticing what is happening inside ourselves, of listening to others and of planning change together

• learning by doing

• the 3 Cs: collaboration, co-learning and change

• recognizing power in relationships and finding ways of sharing power.

It is about:

• freedom, truth, value, and beauty

• contributing wisdom and knowledge, which everyone has: teachers are students and students are also teachers

• relationships

• finding out what works

• finding out what doesn’t work and planning how to make it better.

These were not intended to provide an exhaustive definition but to give shape to the contours of AR and stimulate the beginnings of engagement.

These bullet points built a bridge from my own understanding of AR to my congregation, unfamiliar with the approach. Altrichter et al. (2002) highlight the predominant western origins of AR and the challenges faced when action researchers collaborate with ‘indigenous cultures’. They point out (p. 126):

how the western action researcher who, at the beginning of a project, is usually more experienced with research strategies and techniques than other participants, must be prepared to ‘give away’ or share their knowledge of action research, which is anyway what action research advocates as part of the collaborative research process.

The article contrasts McTaggart’s cross-cultural approach with Holly’s idea of the ‘meeting of cultures’, in which culture is not principally about ethnicity but concerns ‘different systems of thought and action developed in relatively unrelated places within one society’ (p. 127). Though these remarks refer to the dramatic interface between AR and non-western cultures, they are pertinent to the action researcher co-researching in Western contexts with those not familiar with AR. It is crucial to collaborate and find a definition that does not alienate. They seem to be suggesting definitions that are collaborative, ‘incremental rather than normative’ (p. 126). Those researchers who tend towards purist definitions may describe such research as being ‘“non-action research” or “limited versions of action research”’ (p. 127). Holly (quoted on p. 127) dissents from this rigidity and proffers that ‘too purist a definition (of action research) is disenfranchising’. Thus any definition of AR must be contextualized, open and flexible. A definition serves the real-life situation and its value may be measured by the values of inclusion and liberation.

Arising out of Feyerbend’s work, Altrichter et al. (2002) offer a diptych-style definition: axiomatic (the meaning of the phrase AR) and empirical (measures of what makes good AR). What does action research mean (axiomatic)? First, it is self-reflection and improvement of practice. Second, it is weaving together action–reflection. Finally, it is stepping into the public sphere with action–reflection on practices held in common with others.

How do we know we are doing AR well (empirical)? It is essentially democratic and must be thoroughgoing, first in enabling full participation and second in leading to the liberation of all. Third, it is essential that the methods are tested in pilot situations similar to the context in which they will be implemented to ensure that data gathering will ‘work’. Finally, AR is authentically collaborative when it engenders long-term ownership of the research data.

A concrete example of my congregation owning the research project occurred when I experienced a significant crisis in writing up my research and felt unable to carry on. I shared what I was contemplating with my appraisal group and then the diaconate (PJ, 5.12.2012). I was urged on and given a month of study leave in January 2013. Later, the Church Meeting gave me nine weeks’ paid study leave combined with ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Interlude
• 1 Action Research: a Messy Business
• 2 Action Research as a Way of Doing Theology: is It an ART?
• 3 Word Café: Opening Up Communicative Space?
• 4 The Bible Transforms the Preacher: Let Those with Ears Hear
• 5 Looking the Congregation in the Eye: The Naked Preacher
• 6 The Visible Preacher: Finding a Place to Stand
• 7 The Unfinished Story: Continuing to Negotiate the Insider–Outsider Terrain
• References
• Index of Names and Subjects
• Copyright