The Cat and the Toaster: Living System Ministry in a Technological Age

By Douglas A. Hall, Judy Hall, Steve Daman and Eldin Villafañe

Living system ministry is an approach to Christian ministry in the Western world that recognizes the differences between cats, the world God created, and toasters, the world we create using our technology and our capacities, limited as they are.
The church is the Body of Christ, a living system. Neighborhoods, cities, and cultures, too, are complex and interrelated living social systems. Why, then, would we try to do God's work in a church or social system using tools and methods designed for non-living systems? We do it because our culture is very organizationally - and technologically - centered. We have grown accustomed to thinking of our social contexts not as living systems, but as things we can easily measure and control.
Embracing both perspective and procedure, Living System Ministry is about doing better ministry by seeing a better picture of what exists in the total system. Like farmers, rather than technicians, we learn to be involved in and to be "in tune with" what causes fruitfulness. We never cause fruit to happen. God does! But as our work becomes better aligned with what God is already doing in his complex, living-system environment, there is an explosion of life. We discover the fruit that remains.
Writing from his forty-five years of experience as an urban ministry practitioner in Boston, Dr. Doug Hall introduces us to an approach to missions that recognizes the lead role of God's larger, living social systems as powerful engines for doing far more in our world than we can even begin to imagine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jan 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781498277013

Douglas A. Hall

Douglas A. Hall is the President of the Emmanuel Gospel Center in Boston (www.egc.org), where he has served with his wife, Judy Hall, since 1964. He is also an adjunct professor of urban ministry with Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Book preview

1

Overwhelmed by Complexity

So You Want to Be a Missionary?

We came to Boston in 1964. Now it is 2009. We’re still here. Same neighborhood. Same church. Same job. But in many ways, everything has changed!

In 1964, I had completed my first year at Gordon Divinity School in Wenham, Massachusetts, now Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. We were living near the school, an hour north of Boston. My wife, Judy, who had been substitute teaching that year, was working a summer job housecleaning while I also worked and continued school.

One day, at an adult Sunday School class at the Beverly Farms Baptist Church, our teacher started out with this question: Many of you have come here from various parts of the country. What, for you, has been the most different aspect in coming to New England?

Originally, we were from the Midwest, both graduates of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, where we had met. After we married, we both enrolled at Michigan State University, where I earned a masters’ degree in counseling and guidance and Judy studied elementary education. Even after a year in New England, we were still adjusting to our new environment.

Several people responded, and then my wife, who never has trouble saying precisely what is on her mind, blurted out, There are no Black faces here! And, indeed, it was true. Our circles on the North Shore were almost all homogeneously White. We hadn’t, until then, realized how much we had missed the interaction with people different from ourselves.

For the previous six years in school, we had been in constant interaction with African Americans through children’s Bible-story classes in homes in Chicago and then in Lansing, Michigan, through both a Sunday School we had started in a downtown mission and at the urban public school where Judy taught. At different times in our past, we had close friends from other cultures, such as some great friends who were Native Americans. Recently, Judy had met one Haitian woman at our church with whom she started having some rich fellowship. But for the most part, we found ourselves isolated from the diversity we were used to.

People smiled kindly at Judy’s embarrassed and frank answer to the teacher’s question. But one of the women in our class, Verna Thompson, remembered a request that had recently come into the seminary placement office where she worked. The next Sunday, she tracked us down and gave us a phone number. I didn’t even put this up on the board because I thought you might be especially interested in it. It’s a live-in job at a mission in Boston, she explained.

Days later, our black Ford Fairlane was zooming down coastal Route 1 and over the Mystic River Bridge into Boston. Judy had the map while I negotiated the expressway traffic. She kept up a running commentary as we drove. Look at all this construction! ‘Government Center’ it says. We’re supposed to continue on this highway until we get to the Albany Street exit, she informed me, watching the signs fly by. The expressway dove into a tunnel. We were barely back outside, squinting in the bright summer sun, when she said, Albany! There it is! I made the turn off the highway. Now, we go down Dover Street. Then three lights to Tremont Street. Wow, this is like skid row. Look over there! There’s a mission. But it was not the Emmanuel Gospel Center. Judy read the sign aloud: ‘Union Rescue Mission.’ It looks pretty big, she continued, chattering with excitement. Let’s see, okay, Doug, a left on Tremont and then left again on West Dedham.

Judy loves cities. In fact, on a moonlit night a few years before, as we looked out over Lake Michigan from Chicago’s Oak Street Beach, and as I gave her a diamond, she looked up into my eyes and said, dreamily, Promise me you won’t make me live in the suburbs!

In moments, we could see our destination, 84 West Dedham Street, a little red brick, two-and-a-half story storefront packed in a row of taller tenements and warehouses, identified with a lighted cross hanging over the sidewalk. I parked on the nearly empty street, and we got out of the car and walked up to the open front door. As we stepped inside, Jack Mark greeted us.

Dr. Mark, as everyone called him, had been the president of the board since the center’s founding in 1938, twenty-six years before. Tall and friendly, with twinkling blue eyes, he invited us into a room at the rear of the chapel where he introduced us to two more board members, Scotty Fearing and Bill Buehler, and gave us a brief overview of the ministry of the mission.

Emmanuel Gospel Center is a family mission, Dr. Mark explained to us. It’s not just for drunks, but it is an outreach for the working people in the neighborhood. Its purpose is to get people saved and into a good church. We have a gospel service held by different church groups every night of the week.

Dr. Mark, Scotty, and Bill took us to a restaurant in Boston, tucked away in a part of the city that was then a warehouse district, but has since become the tourist Mecca called Quincy Market. Eating out in those days was an incredibly rare and golden experience for us. The restaurant, Durgin-Park, has been open since 1827, and is still there. We chatted over fried chicken, cornbread, and Boston baked beans.

On the ride back, Dr. Mark explained, "Your job as superintendent would be to make sure there’s someone to take the service. In other words, if no one shows up, you preach! The person we have right now is resigning because he has heart trouble.

There used to be a Sunday School here, he continued, run by a church that used to be in the neighborhood. If you want to start it up again, that would be fine. You get to live upstairs rent free, and the salary is $200 per month. Do you think you can live on that?

As we entered the building for the second time, some elderly women who were there for the nightly service met us. Others joined us, including the present superintendent, Bob Barnett. We sang some hymns, then Dr. Mark preached.

Afterward, they took us on a tour of the living quarters upstairs. I remember discovering to my amusement that the cold-water tap produced hot water. Most rooms were piled nearly to the ceiling with boxes of used clothing, an odd array of old furniture, and miscellaneous junk. I wondered what Judy was thinking, though she looked as if she were mentally decorating as she eagerly looked around.

It really needs to be cleaned up for anyone to live here, Bill Buehler admitted. My wife said she would be happy to help you get settled.

Night had fallen by the time we got back into our car and started home. To the left was an alley lined with red brick tenements. As we turned into it, we saw a small child, not even two years old, sitting on the very narrow sidewalk in front of her house. We continued around the block, past tall, bow-front, brick rooming houses; taverns; a drug store; and a luncheonette. I looked over at Judy, who was sitting quietly, looking out at the houses going by the car window.

For quite some time, we had been praying with friends at the seminary about what God would have us do with our lives. At one point, we both felt strongly we should find a way to go to India. Now God seemed to be answering our prayers in an unexpected way.

Why not? I said aloud. We’ve been praying about becoming missionaries. Here’s an opportunity to see what missionary service is all about. It’s as if God is saying to us, ‘So, you want to be a missionary? Well, here’s a mission field. Let’s get started!’

Why not? I said aloud. We’ve been praying about becoming missionaries. Here’s an opportunity to see what missionary service is all about. It’s as if God is saying to us, ‘So, you want to be a missionary? Well, here’s a mission field. Let’s get started!’

We called Dr. Mark and said Yes! After a quick trip back to the Midwest to see our families, we moved into the Emmanuel Gospel Center on August 4, 1964.

What Have You Done?

From the very first day on the job, we were hit with a sense of tearing fragmentation. We felt pulled in a million different directions at once. As the days, weeks, and months went by, we longed to focus on just one task, but it seemed as if we were always trying to manage eight or nine mammoth projects at the same time, the whole while being interrupted by many people and their immediate needs. We felt manipulated by the restless city and overwhelmed by the complexities of the lives of its individuals. Handling the complications in the life of just one wounded person alone could be a full-time job. It certainly is for that person! Judy clearly remembers how busy we would be taking one person to the outpatient clinic, to the grocery story, to the social security office, to apply for food stamps and fuel assistance, to the welfare office, typing up forms and applications for her, helping her deal with her addiction and relational problems, and dealing with her crazy boyfriend who was trying to kill her. Such was our life at the time.

We had been on the job five months when Judy and I were invited with the rest of the board to the home of Dr. and Mrs. Mark for a Christmas party and baby shower. Judy was now six months pregnant with our first child. We welcomed the invitation as it gave us a chance to take a much-needed break from our nonstop, hectic life in ministry. After dinner, the women went off in one direction and Dr. Mark corralled all the men into another room to conduct some board business. He started by asking me questions about what I had been doing at the center. How could I even begin to answer? All I could think of was how crazy every day of the last five months had been. Every day, thirty different things were happening for us to try to deal with, and by the end of the day, I could hardly remember anything. It was all so fragmented. I stumbled around for an answer to the question, but my mind went totally blank. Dr. Mark pressed on. The more questions he asked, the more I couldn’t remember. Then, obviously frustrated with me, he bellowed, You’ve been there five months. What have you done?—like we hadn’t done anything!

Admittedly, I have a weak ego and I took this as a personal attack. It made me angry. "‘What have you done?’ Oh, sure! What hadn’t we done?" I fumed inside. I am afraid I heard little else at that meeting.

When the women rejoined the men in the living room, Judy could tell I was upset. As soon as we got outside, I started telling her about what had happened, and then my anger and indignation unstopped the cork from the bottle of my memories. My gosh, Jude, the first week we moved in, I had to fix the plumbing! The toilet was flushing hot water!

And then we had to get rid of all the used clothes the board’s been putting up there for the last five years, Judy chimed in.

And then there was this! I said.

And remember we did that! she added. We kept it up all the way home.

In the next few days, our anger at being misunderstood fed our memories even more and we began to write down every job, duty, and act we had performed in the last five months, no matter how menial or insignificant. After all, they had all taken time, precious time, usually much more than we anticipated. We put down how many hours we spent on each activity. When Judy typed it up, we had filled six two-columned, single-spaced pages.

At the next board meeting, I silently handed out mimeographed copies of our report for everyone.

What’s this? muttered Dr. Mark.

It’s a report of everything we’ve done since we came here. I believe you asked me for it at the last meeting, I answered.

"Well, how long did it take you to do this?" he growled.

I was ready for that one. That’s right there on page three, bottom of column two. Let’s see, six hours. That includes Judy’s typing.

Dr. Mark was about to say something disparaging when the unheard-of happened! Another board member stood up to him. "Well, you did ask him what they’d done, Jack!" grinned Bill Buehler.

The process of compiling that report reinforced the feeling that our lives were fragmented and the needs and complexity of the city were overwhelming us. I began to ask myself if we were really doing any good. What were we trying to do in the chaos? What were our goals?

Jack Mark was a businessman of the old school. He was hardheaded and demanded good work, but he was also fair and never held grudges against us. Though it was never easy having him as an accountability agent, eventually I was able to work out a very positive relationship with him, and knowing Dr. Mark taught me many valuable things about leadership styles and how to run an organization. After that night, I came prepared for each meeting. I would anticipate the questions Dr. Mark would ask and I would have my answers ready.

The process of compiling that report caused Judy and me to step back and begin to think objectively about what we were doing. It also reinforced the feeling that our lives were fragmented and the needs and complexity of the city were overwhelming us. I began to ask myself if we were really doing any good. What were we trying to do in the chaos? What were our goals?

Apart from the original board mandate to get people saved and into a good church, it seemed like our basic, working goal in this harsh environment was fairly low—just to be active in ministry without causing too much damage. I realized I had no idea how to understand what was going on around us, much less what good or bad we were doing.

At the end of any day, a huge number of unplanned activities had occurred over which we had no control. It seemed to me at the time that reality was so chaotic that the practical, Western approach of trying to divide these many needs and activities into manageable pieces and dealing with them separately would have only burned us out. It was hard enough to come up with an orderly list to tell Dr. Mark what we had done.

If we couldn’t fight it, I pondered, could we find a way to thrive in the chaos? Was there some way to learn to go with the flow of the constant ups, downs, and unexpected swings that each day would take and eventually bear fruit in that constantly moving reality?

Over the years, I have watched people in urban ministry take various routes to deal with the fragmentation of the city. Some sequester themselves in defined aspects of ministry and choose not to look at the real city beyond their narrowly defined sphere of influence. Others burn out. Still others simply enjoy the chaos!

I was determined at that time, however, that even though we had no material resources—nothing!—we were going to come to a place where we could actually do something, that we would not just be manipulated pawns in a very secular city that was being destroyed by riots and crime. We determined before God that we wanted to see him do something here and we wanted to be a part of it.

Doing the Bible

I’m not going to just be manipulated by all these forces, I announced to Judy one night. Somehow we’re going to get above that; we’re going to make a major shift in our thinking. We began to keep our eyes and ears open to discover how the system worked and how we could work within the chaos for the good of the kingdom.

It appeared that everything was constantly moving. Did anything in the city not move? I reasoned that, if I could find something stable, like some truths about society that were consistent across thousands of years, then I would be onto something, and I would have something firm to build on, a place to stand in the midst of the chaos of the inner city. I went on an intense quest to find something to stand on, to find what I called the basic stuff of life and ministry that would not change, regardless of where and when we lived in history. God must be able to connect with our times. His gospel must work in my city.

I reasoned that, if I could find something stable, like some truths about society that were consistent across thousands of years, then I would be onto something, and I would have something firm to build on, a place to stand in the midst of chaos of the inner city.

As I searched for answers to understand our times and how to do ministry in my difficult urban environment, I leaned on God all the harder and prayed all the more. The feelings of desperation in my heart kindled within me a desire to not only believe the Bible, but to do it. My quest to find the basic things was grounded in a growing desire to see the Bible alive and active in my own life today. The writer of Hebrews said, For the word of God is living and active, and I desperately wanted to experience that life and activity (Heb 4:12a).

My growing desire was that my life should be so lived that people would look at it over time and not merely say, This is a Bible-believing person, but that people could see that the things that happened in the Bible also happened in my life, that in my day I had been a part of what God was doing, that I had participated in events that confirmed and expressed the message of his written word. I felt that a quest for truth should not merely be an earnest desire to know truth cognitively, although that is certainly involved, but also a passion to find out how to do the truth experientially.

I call this concept doing the Bible. Please understand I mean more than doing what it says, which is a starting point. By doing the Bible, I mean that I want to see that the things that happen in my life are biblical things, the experiences I have are biblical experiences, and the patterns I see working in my life I also see working in the lives of people in the Bible.

This thought of doing what I saw in the Bible really captured my imagination. I remember asking myself, If the apostle Paul came to Boston and were here for two years, what would be the result? The answer I found in the book of Acts: churches would result from his ministry! Therefore, I concluded, if I am to live biblically here and now, if what happened in the Bible is going to happen in my life, I would expect to see churches as a result of my ministry!

By doing the Bible, I mean that I want to see that the things that happen in my life are biblical things, the experiences I have are biblical experiences, and the patterns I see working in my life I also see working in the lives of people in the Bible.

So one night I ran the idea of church planting by our board. I was very excited about the idea. Planting churches would be doing the Bible. It would be bringing a biblical action into the midst of complexity. It could work! We would be following the pattern of Scripture, and God would bless it and make it come alive. The word of God would be living and active in my city.

I went home that night puzzled. These men were strong, mature men of God whom I knew would rather be martyred than deny the Bible as the word of God; they believed it thoroughly. I had great respect for each of them. And yet, to my surprise, they were very opposed to my suggestion of church planting. They felt the center was a preaching station and that was what it always should be. Their answer was no. In the years since, I’ve wondered why they said no. I really don’t know why. To me, at the time, it seemed that there was a big gap for them between believing the Bible and doing the Bible, that their mental models were frozen into one pattern and breaking out was difficult for them.

Let me quickly add that, regardless of why they resisted the idea at first, eventually the board also caught the vision for new church development, although a few people always felt the center should only be involved in direct face-to-face ministry—providing services, not starting churches. In those early days, neither Judy nor I nor any of the board could have imagined how God would eventually use the Emmanuel Gospel Center to support the birth and growth of literally hundreds of new churches in the coming decades through various supportive ministries and partnerships. We have seen the book of Acts demonstrated in our city! But more about that later.

Fostering a Find-a-way Spirit

The resistance we encountered from the city’s complexity was so strong at times that we were faced with a clear choice: we could either give up, or we could develop a dogged determination to find a way to do whatever needed doing. I remember feeling, If I don’t do this thing because it’s too hard, everything else will be too hard, too, and then I’ll end up doing nothing at all!

When we arrived in 1964, we already faced a huge challenge. The city had published a comprehensive urban renewal plan for our whole neighborhood. Our building and the four-square-block area around it were slated to be taken by eminent domain and demolished. Two years later, we found a way to address this by participating in the founding and development of a community-organizing neighborhood renewal effort that launched all of us into fourteen years of incredibly hard work. To our amazement, the Boston Redevelopment Authority of the City of Boston accepted the city planning scheme of the action committee formed by members of our community, a team we called the Emergency Tenants Council (ETC), and granted us the privilege to redevelop our entire neighborhood. Eventually the whole area was developed into what became a model for other low-income housing developments in the country.

While Judy and I worked alongside our neighbors to find housing and rebuild community, ETC demanded that the city make available a building for our ministry at a very reasonable cost. That was how, in 1971, we were able to acquire an old photo lab just a block from where our original building once stood. It took seven years of effort with few monetary resources to rehab the entire building, but we were grateful for the way that God had provided it through the efforts of people in our community. We realized that God would find a way when none was in sight if we were faithful to serve and obey him.

Another time we learned to find a way was when we faced a challenge related to street evangelism meetings. In 1969, a local pastor asked us to help some churches hold outdoor meetings. When we approached City Hall, officials told us we could not have sectarian meetings on public property. There had to be a way! We then discovered that, while the city bureaucrats had no trouble turning down an individual church or organization, the city was receptive to political pressure. So, the next time we wanted to hold an open-air meeting, we didn’t ask for a permit for one meeting, but for forty meetings sponsored by thirty churches. The permit came immediately—no questions asked.

For many years, the Emmanuel Gospel Center coordinated these street evangelism meetings with a mobile soundstage we built and hauled behind a van. The show must go on! That was the spirit with which we operated. One night we had an evangelism meeting scheduled, but the unpaved street next to the center was a sea of mud because the water main had broken and was pouring water into the street all day. How would we ever get our trailer out? Would we be able to pull the heavy, portable stage-trailer with the van through that morass? I realized we’d never be able to drive it out; we would have to push it out by hand. It took two hours to do the job, but we got through.

All the pressures and resistance to ministry could have burned us out. Instead, they reinforced in us a level of perseverance that ultimately taught us that God does have a way, no matter how impossible the situation. When obstacles and hindrances showed up, we learned to adopt a Marine Corps-like mentality with God: Yes, Sir. No, Sir. No excuse, Sir!

The find-a-way attitude became more than just dogged determination. The quest to find a way helped us to learn, study, examine, and explore until we would find out that, while there were a lot of things that just wouldn’t work no matter how hard we’d try, there still just might be another way to accomplish the task.

By the late ’60s, God had begun to surround us with a team of coworkers. I will describe how that team came about later. But around that time, our team felt directed by the Lord to start a program for the teens in our area, and having a find-a-way attitude helped us prepare. We studied other ministries and discovered that youth ministries with untrained, volunteer leaders usually self-destruct after eighteen to thirty-six months, soon after kids begin to make commitments to Christ. That is also when the youth begin testing the commitment of the youth workers. This often culminates in destructive behavior in the youth centers. However, we learned that there were some urban youth centers that had never experienced this vandalism. Two common elements of the successful programs at that time were that they started with trained, not novice, youth workers, and they started their programs on the streets, not in a building. Starting with Pete Kispert, and later Dale Karasek, we hired trained youth workers to staff our youth program. They began their programs on the streets and developed neighborhood sports leagues, only later moving indoors where we had a successful youth center for many years.

There was a way, and God wanted us to find it, but it took a never-give-up, find-a-way spirit and some practical research to find out what really was working so that we could decide what needed to be done.

A friend from industry told me, When you are in the learning phase, don’t begin anything until you have done your homework. I took his advice seriously. The combination of a find-a-way spirit and doing our homework were two more building blocks that helped us to find God’s way to fruitful ministry in the city. Through these, we learned the rudiments of applied research, a critically important starting point in any ministry project.

There was a way, and God wanted us to find it, but it took a never-give-up, find-a-way spirit and some practical research to find out what really was working so that we could decide what needed to be done.

2

Understanding My Culture

Primary and Secondary Relationships

Armed with determination to figure out how the complexity of the city really worked, one of the first things Judy and I stumbled upon was a social construct that has become a cornerstone of how we do and teach ministry. It started when Judy noticed that our neighbors had a very basic way of classifying people into two groups, as epitomized in a statement a woman named Rose made to her:

At first I was really afraid to meet you, but I found out you’re like a real person I can talk to—not like a social worker.

Judy was pretty flabbergasted until she realized that Rose was not castigating all social workers. Rather, Rose was referring to the estrangement she felt relating to professional people. When talking with a social worker, a person who was talking to her for some practical reason, she experienced an us/them dichotomy of herself as the client versus the professional person in charge behind the desk, a person who does not really know me.

We began to see this dichotomy everywhere. On one end, close, personal, first-order or primary relationships shaped the way people related to each other. At the other end, the way people related were shaped by impersonal, second-order or secondary relationships. We saw that these two ways of relating are so different that many people have trouble crossing from one to the other. Rose distrusted people who related to her impersonally. She perceived that Judy was safe and that she wouldn’t betray her friendship by telling on her to the powers that be, those who lived at the other end of the primary/secondary dimension.

That sense of being on the other side of the powers that be was very strong in our community. We saw it clearly in our friend Roy’s experience of going to the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Roy, a one-armed Vietnam vet, observed, "Their attitude is, ‘I don’t know who you are or what you’re here for, but—you’re wrong!’ For Roy, close, safe, personal, honest, face-to-face relationships were a stark contrast to the man"—persons filling roles in the bureaucratic, impersonal structures that common people constantly feared.

A person relying on primary relationships might spend time at the checkout counter talking with the cashier who takes her money, because she knows the person. People who are more secondary in their relationships see the cashier as an extension of the store’s operation. They may or may not exchange any words at all, except for How are you today? which the clerk may be required to say to each successive customer, or Have a nice day, neither of which really demands a response.

Soon we found examples of these two kinds of relationships everywhere. Our close friends Ruth and Johnnie often had us over for coffee and fellowship. They were involved in a small Puerto Rican storefront church where, Judy can remember, we once heard Ruth preach passionately in Spanish about serving God humbly under the mighty mano de Dios—the hand of God. Johnnie drove a taxi. We would spend hours together, they with their broken English and Judy with a little Spanish and my total lack of linguistic ability—but we all got along, eating rice and beans and cracking jokes right and left.

At that time, we also had another close friend who was Latina, a Cuban widow with a passion for God whom we had met at a downtown Anglo church that was beginning a Spanish service. So one day we brought Isabel over to Ruth and Johnnie’s for coffee. They talked incessantly in Spanish for two hours and seemed to get along fabulously. Later, when we drove Isabel home, she said, Those people are not Christians. We were shocked at that, but even more dismayed when, upon meeting Ruth and Johnnie some time later, they said, That lady you brought over here—she is not a Christian!

We had had many conversations and had prayed and fellowshipped with both the couple and the woman, and knew all three of them to be sincere believers. Why did they distrust each other? Certainly national and class differences did enter into the picture, but there was something more. We finally began to see that the class differences created two relational styles. Ruth and Johnnie, who were lower class, related to people from a primary relationship orientation, while Isabel, who was from a more upper-class background, had a communication style shaped by her secondary relational characteristics. Between the two relational styles there was a rather wide gap which interfered with deeper communication. Both parties wrongly assumed this perceived gap was due to the absence of true spirituality.

Primary and Secondary Cultures

As we continued to explore these ideas, it was very easy for us to see the mainstream culture of the broader society in Boston as being dominantly secondary in nature. That is, most of the people in the culture had secondary relational characteristics. We began to call the broader culture secondary culture.

We also began to see that many people from the various ethnic cultures exhibited more primary relational characteristics, and so we began to talk of groups of people who collectively took on characteristics of the relational dimension as primary culture.

So while we started out recognizing primary and secondary relationships, we then began to speak of entire cultures as being either primary or secondary. We knew we were onto something, and that our thinking on this subject would need to continue to grow. As the years went by, I continued to reflect on it and to add to the content.

Primary cultures, we began to observe, had great strengths in meeting social needs. Daily, we were involved with the very poor, broken people who were part of broken subcultures, people for whom neither the relational strengths of primary culture nor the institutional benefits of secondary culture were available. I can remember conversations with Pastor Sam Hogan, a friend we met during those early days who was the pastor of an African American church, talking about Blacks who left what we were calling the primary culture to enter into the mainstream, secondary society. They’re out there, he would say, and as long as the job and the money hold out, it’s okay. But if those things fall apart for them, there’s nothing underneath.

The something that is underneath them to hold them up is the primary relational system that is always there to catch the person who is falling. Dr. Willie Richardson’s church in Philadelphia seriously considered adopting a formal (secondary) program to minister to people who were homeless, but first thought they should survey how they already were helping people who were homeless. It turned out that a large number of people who were homeless or at risk for homelessness already were being served by their church members who were housing the lost sheep of their families in their homes, people who were one step away from the street. For these family members, the relational system was underneath. The ministry that the church then developed included helping family members cope with the needs of those they were already serving, such as addiction, job training, physical and mental health issues, and so on.

So, in 1973, we jumped into teaching our first class of seminary students about primary and secondary cultures. We defined a primary culture as one where most of the people rely on personal, primary relationships and demonstrate such correlating characteristics as oral communication, learning by modeling, identifying with extended family systems, and a spiritual approach to life. We said that, in a secondary culture, the majority of the people rely on impersonal, secondary relationships and demonstrate such correlating characteristics as individualism; a preference for written communication over the spoken word; emphasis on a nuclear family rather than large, extended family groups; a preference for formal learning rather than modeling; and a scientific rather than spiritual approach to life. At first, I was most impressed by the power of primary culture, and that has not changed. Only much later did my concept of the valuable role and potential for good in secondary culture also begin to grow. But that would take time.

Contrasts Between Primary and Secondary Cultures

Below is a list of five areas of contrast between the two cultural systems. This list is not exhaustive. I would challenge you to think of other contrasts from your experience—but let’s start with these:

The first of these five contrasts has to do with the way people meet needs. Or, another way to look at it is that this is how the two cultures get their work done.

Getting Work Done

In a primary culture, people share tasks together; you may be busy cooking while I help you with a concern you have. One person helps design a hinge for my door, and I help their family better design their chimney for indoor cooking. The basis for meeting needs is relational.

A barn raising is a good example of a primary culture way of meeting the need of building a barn. In rural America’s history, when someone needed a barn, neighbors would often come together and work as a team to accomplish the task. While the men fashioned and erected the structure, the women in the community would provide food for all, and the children would be around to help and to join in the fun. Years later, these same children would coordinate their own barn raisings. In a barn-raising event, people relied on relationships to meet a need.

People in primary cultures can know hundreds of people personally with whom they live in close proximity; each person continually can become more aware of the history of past generations of all the people and why what they do now makes sense.

In a secondary culture, we don’t depend on these relational ties. We can hire a construction firm—a group of people we may never have met before—to come and build our barn, and we pay for this work. They come with specialized tools, heavy equipment, plans and blueprints and permits, and even a Porta Potty. There is little relational interaction between the workers and the landowner. If the man wanting a barn were a dentist, he would not be expected to help the construction company by doing their dental work in a barter/exchange system; instead, he mails a check.

A second area of contrast is how primary and secondary cultures view families.

Extended Family Networks

A few years ago, Judy and I learned the strength of extended family systems. We were coming back from a trip to India with an Indian friend, Rev. C. M. Titus, where we had been the guests of his extended family. When we landed in New York, we were stuck. Logan International Airport in Boston was closed due to snow. We could not get a flight home, and the airport hotel would not honor our airline vouchers. Rev. Titus called a relative in Queens who picked us up at 1:00 a.m., gave us a big Indian meal, sent us off to bed, gave us a ride back to the airport at 7:30 that morning, and felt privileged to do it all. We had spent weeks in the hospitality of our friend and his network in India, and that relational networking and the resources of his extended family did not stop when we got back to the States.

Contrast that with the way we in the Western world most often solve such a problem. Even if our vouchers were not honored, we would probably pay someone we don’t know with our credit cards to stay at a noisy airport hotel. If room service were available all night, someone else we don’t know would prepare and serve us food, perhaps left by our door on a tray. The computer would ring our room phone at exactly 6:00 a.m. so we could make our flight. We could take care of our own needs. But the exchange would be money for service, and the entire night would transpire without any real interrelationship.

Different Ways of Communicating

People from these two types of culture tend to use different communication methods. Oral communication is very powerful. Even when nothing is being said, much is being communicated. The oral communication of primary cultures is actually highly complex, requiring a lot of subconscious understanding of people, such as their family relationships and personal histories and even each person’s birth order. A pause in a conversation can have paragraphs of meaning although no actual words are spoken. (I must have a primary culture relationship with my wife. Judy can give me two paragraphs in one look!) Oral communication may also incorporate different expressions of body language and inflections.

Written communication can seem inadequate to those from primary cultures. One person told me how, in learning to read the word tree, he at first felt the tree was now trapped on the page of the book! While it is possible that our barn-raising predecessors had some sketches and plans, usually these were all carried around in their heads. They did not come with laptop computers or briefcases of blueprints, permits, and contracts that contractors now carry around with them.

A fourth area of contrast is in how we learn.

Different