Cultural Exegesis

Effective exegesis is a vital skill for pastors. In its normal usage, “exegesis” refers to the process of digging deep into a passage in order to properly understand and interpret Scripture. I don’t question the importance of this ability, but I believe that a different kind of exegesis is just as important for any kind of ministry leadership. I think of it as “cultural exegesis.” Cultural exegesis is the process of digging deep to understand and interpret the history and norms of an organization in order to inform leadership decisions. Consider the following examples that I’ve encountered:

• A church near Johnson Space Center has many members who work for NASA. The NASA culture places a high value on analysis and eliminating risk. After all, the cost of failure is extremely high when sending a manned rocket into space. In a church, however, a mindset of analyzing to the nth degree can completely clog decision-making.
• In a college town, the local church is filled with faculty and staff members from the nearby university. In their setting, it seems normal to have lots of committees with overlapping authority and competing agendas. Of course, this can cause confusion and conflict if it’s brought into the church.
• An entrepreneurial leader starts a new ministry and attracts other like-minded people to the team. The ministry is built with a permission-giving environment that resists structure and formal processes.

In each of these cases, certain ways of thinking and making decisions become normalized for those on the inside. But an outsider coming it to lead the ministry may find it bewildering. That’s why cultural exegesis is so important. The more that you can understand why people (or groups) behave in a certain way, the more effective you will be in leading them. You probably can’t convince a NASA engineer to turn into a wild-eyed risk-taker overnight. But you can better understand how he thinks, and you might even be able to decide on the color for new carpet in less than three meetings. Just like biblical exegesis for a sermon, the time spent on cultural exegesis is a valuable investment. It’s easy to receive my blogs by email. Just sign-up on Feedburner by clicking here.]]>