Researching Practice in Mission and Ministry: A Companion

Introduction

If you want to research practice in ministry and mission, you are engaging with the field of practical theology. Practical theology enables those engaged in ministry and mission to think theologically about what they do and to draw belief and action closer together. As a rapidly developing sub-discipline within theology, practical theology is attracting growing numbers of students from across the Christian tradition. This book welcomes that flourishing and seeks to accompany those setting out on the journey of researching practice.

This Introduction contains essential material if you are to make sense of this book. It sets out the purposes of the book and who it has been written for. It introduces the authors who will act as companions talking you through the process of designing, conducting and writing up your research project. It then invites you to examine your motives for undertaking research before reassuring you that you already have many of the skills that good research requires. The final part introduces two important theological issues: What is practice? and How does practice relate to theology? Like the chapters in the book, this Introduction finishes with some questions that you may find helpful to address before moving on to the next chapter.

This book can be used at a number of stages in the research process. If you are thinking of undertaking a course of study that involves research, it should help you get a sense of what will be involved. If you are about to start a research project, it is designed to give you a step-by-step plan for managing your project so you can schedule it around the other realities in your life. You may be a more activist learner and so have already started your research and got stuck. This book tries to identify some of the more common problems researchers encounter and suggest ways round them. However, a successfully completed research project is like building a house: if the foundations are dodgy, it is unlikely that the completed house will stand up. This is reflected in the book’s structure, as it is Chapter 7 before we get round to conducting the research.

The purpose of the book and its audience

There is no shortage of books on how to undertake research.However, this book is for a particular audience and brings three purposes together. It is written for people engaged in ministry and mission, who wish to research either their practice or aspects of the Church and world that provide the context for their practice.

The three purposes of the book are to demonstrate:

1 how to design research that enables questions about practice to be answered

2 how to understand the underlying approach or method­ology of research

3 how to manage a piece of research as a project alongside other responsibilities.

Most research methods books focus on one of our three purposes, but we want to bring them together as being of equal significance in successfully completing a research project.

Few books on research methods are aimed at those working in theology. This one affirms and seeks to build upon earlier books that emphasize the importance of methodology for practical theologians. To take two key examples:

Elaine Graham, Heather Walton and Frances Ward in their book Theological Reflection: Methods offer a vision of the practice of theology as ‘a disciplined reflection, providing indicative models of understanding [of] how talk about God emerges from human experience and questions’ (2005, p. 8). They identify three practical tasks for theology, namely the formation of character, the building and maintaining of the community of faith and the communication of faith to the world – all tasks with which the researching practitioner­ can identify.

John Swinton and Harriet Mowat in Practical Theology and Qualitative Research look at the normative role of theology as revealed truth. They advocate ‘critical faithfulness’:

Such a form of faithfulness acknowledges the divine givenness of scripture and the genuine working of the Holy Spirit in the interpretation of what is given, while at the same time taking seriously the interpretative dimensions of the process of understanding revelation and ensuring the faithful practices of individuals and communities. (2006, p. 93)

This book arises directly out of our experience both as colleagues undertaking research together and also as teachers of an intensive course on research methods. Both these experiences convinced us that there was room for a book that avoided the ‘cook book’ approach – follow these instructions and you will produce something as ideal as this picture. Our approach is to engage with the messy reality of research and talk you through some of the common problems researchers face, particularly in faith-based settings. We also wanted to write the book because we are convinced that thoughtful research can enable ministry and mission to achieve greater faithfulness.

The purposes of the book now need spelling out in more detail.

How to design research that enables questions about practice­ to be answered

It sounds obvious, but research needs to be designed in such a way that it produces the answers to the questions you want to ask. This means understanding different research methods and what they are likely to produce. The even-numbered chapters give you an introduction to the five most commonly used research methods in practical theology, highlighting the particular issues that arise in a faith-based context and giving examples of how we have used them. These chapters also look at the limitations of each method. Learning to design research is a craft that involves learning from the experience of other researchers and getting feedback on the design you intend to use.

How to understand the underlying approach or methodology­ of research

There are different approaches to doing research, which carry different assumptions and therefore affect the way you design your research. Doing research in theology, which is particularly interested in beliefs and assumptions, means it is important you understand the approach you are taking. Methodology is the term used for ‘approaches to research’. Different research methods can be adapted to make them suitable for particular approaches.

How to manage a piece of research as a project alongside other responsibilities

Many books on research methods assume that the researcher is working full-time on their research with few distractions.For most people studying ministry and mission the opposite needs to be assumed. They will usually be doing their research part-time alongside a demanding work role and domestic ­responsibilities.¹ Each part of the research process makes differ­ent demands and planning for these demands can ensure a finished project. There are two types of research project – ­perfect ones and finished ones. Our aim in this book is to show how you can avoid catastrophic mistakes, learn from the minor mistakes that will inevitably be there, but above all, have a plan to finish.

Finally in this section, we want to say more about the people for whom the book is intended.

Masters and doctoral students in practical theology, missiology­ and ministry

If you plan to do research that takes you beyond a library or archive into the world of practice, then this book will give you a framework. If you are on a Masters or doctoral programme, there should be much in that programme that reinforces and supplements what this book offers. If you are doing a part-time PhD or an MPhil, there may be much less support and so you will need to work harder at putting the structures in place that you will need.

Supervisors of research projects

The rapid growth of practical theology means that a good proportion of those supervising student research projects will have had no hands-on experience of conducting research on practice themselves. It is hoped that this book will act as a pedagogical aid to such supervisors. The key points at which students get stuck are identified and activities suggested to help move things on. Often the most helpful thing you can do is take the student away from the task that is defeating them and suggest something else which may enable them to see the task differently. We have taught supervisors and students together, and after an initial reticence they have found it helpful to swap perspectives on the research process. Talking to your student about what you agree and disagree with in this book can help diffuse the false expertise that students sometimes expect of supervisors. Having a more experienced colleague to turn to is important if you are to give your student the feedback they need to complete their research and pass their degree. For doctoral students, annual reviews of progress are vital to ensure that the project is on track and that you are meeting the expectations of both the university and student.

Sabbatical and practitioner researchers

For many people, it is working towards a qualification that provides the necessary spur to learn how to research but there is no reason why it shouldn’t be a regular part of being a reflec­t­ive practitioner in ministry and mission. It is tempting to feel that practitioner-initiated research doesn’t need to follow the rigours of work done for a degree, but giving in to that temptation often means a piece of research that isn’t completed or fails to have the impact the researcher desired. It is a good idea to find someone who will supervise your research, ideally with a Masters or doctorate in a relevant discipline. The hope is that this book will act as a companion in working together. Appendix A highlights some particular factors to bear in mind.

Leaders in ministry and mission

Leaders are often expected to make use of the results of research to shape policy or practice. This book should give you sufficient insights into the way in which research is designed to evaluate the quality of the research you are being asked to use. It can be tempting to use the phrase ‘research says . . .’ to make your point. However, the claims made for research are often exaggerated­ and in faith-based contexts, and research which is illuminating in one context may be misleading in another.

Like all worlds, the world of research has its own jargon.Because the book is written for a number of audiences the following terms are used to simplify the text:

Researcher – anyone undertaking a piece of research.

Student – someone undertaking research specifically to gain a degree.

Dissertation – the writing up of research for academic purposes – for Masters students it is usually called a dissertation and for doctoral students a thesis.

Supervisor – the person advising the researcher on their pro­ject and guiding them as to the standard required.

Mentor – a person offering support to the researcher as they manage the interaction of their research with their other responsibilities.

Ministry – work done by anyone whether lay or ordained, paid or unpaid, full-time or part-time which they regard as part of God’s mission to the world.

Introducing the companions

In this book we share something of our experience and development as researchers. We also talk you through the process of doing research from our perspectives. So unusually for a book on research methods we want to share some information about us, to help you evaluate what we say. As we have already said, practical theology is a rapidly developing field and so you will come across approaches that differ from ours and as you grow in experience you will want to challenge what we say. Practical theology encourages reflexivity, that is the ability to acknowledge how your experiences shape your assumptions and so your research.

Helen Cameron

My interest in researching practice developed during my doctoral studies. I retrained as a social scientist (after a first degree in theology) by doing a Masters in Social Policy at Brunel University and received some excellent teaching in methodology and methods from Dr Johnston Birchall (now a professor at Stirling University). This was before the huge burgeoning of books on research methods and before much training was given to doctoral students. I had the benefit of studying full-time for my Masters and some periods of full-time study during my doctorate. It was only when I started to teach part-time Masters students in practical theology that I realized how important it was to bring together the project-management elements of doing research with the methodology and methods.

After my doctorate I was fortunate to get lots of experience designing research projects to answer questions being asked by the organizations commissioning the research.² This focused me on getting a good match between the questions being asked and the methods used even when this involved persuading those commissioning the research to be more adventurous than they initially wanted to be. During this period I co-edited Studying Local Churches (Cameron, Richter et al. 2005), which tried to show the assumptions that four different disciplines brought to studying the practice of the local church. I also developed a personal assumption that you only really learn what people believe when you see what they actually do.

Being an academic involves supervising students’ research, acting as an examiner of dissertations and theses and reviewing art­i­cles for academic journals. All this develops skill in evaluating the research of others and learning lessons for your own practice as a researcher. My own early education was somewhat variegated, and so I’ve always been interested in how people learn. This book is a reflection on some of the common problems people experience in undertaking research and how they can be overcome.

From 2007 to 2010, I set up the Oxford Centre for Ecclesiology and Practical Theology (OxCEPT) at Ripon College Cuddesdon. This research centre brings the research approach of practical theology to bear on issues in ministry and mission. An important collaboration for OxCEPT was with the Pastoral Studies Department of Heythrop College on the ARCS project (Action Research: Church and Society). As a research team we realized that we were trying to develop a more collaborative way of doing research that started with the agenda of the practitioners rather than of the academics (Cameron et al. 2010). OxCEPT also provided the opportunity for Catherine and me to collaborate on an intensive research methods course, which was open to Masters and doctoral students and their supervisors as well as sabbatical researchers. Teaching this course convinced us of the value of giving people an overview of the whole process.

As a practical theologian I took a step closer to practice at the end of 2010, when I became Head of Public Affairs for The Salvation Army. Lobbying policy-makers and politicians means having the data to back up your assertions, and so this role is full of conversations about what constitutes credible data and the practical challenges of assembling it without getting in the way of the