3.3 Data Collection Procedures
3.3.2 Sampling
One of the most difficult things for any observer of the Emerging Church to pin down is what, exactly, counts as an Emerging Church. Though it is frequently possible to
“know it when you see it,” defining an a priori sampling criterion is somewhat more difficult. Emerging Church members have adopted no global characteristics and have avoided issuing anything that might amount to guidelines or edicts. Indeed, I cannot imagine where such statement would even come from as there is no overarching organizing body which has that kind of power within the Emerging Church. Although some websites do maintain lists of Emerging Churches by region or city, they rarely claim to be comprehensive (in fact, quite the opposite), and there are often no criteria for being included other than to ask or to be identified by a visitor.
Indeed, the closest anyone has been able to come to defining the Emerging Church is Gibbs and Bolger’s (2005) book which lists 9 characteristics of Emerging Churches8. In order to qualify for their study a congregation had to declare itself as emerging on its website. However, not even they pretend that all Emerging Churches have all 9 characteristics or that there is a certain minimum number that a congregation must meet in order to qualify. Defining the parameters of a resistant organization is an
8 Gibbs and Bolger claim that in general, “Emerging Churches, (1) identify with the life of Jesus, (2) transform the secular realm, (3) live highly communal lives. Because of these activities, they (4) welcome the stranger, (5) serve with generosity, (6) participate as producers, (7) create as created beings, (8) lead as a body, and (9) take part in spiritual
inherently difficult task. Normally, we can count on people within organizations to do a pretty decent job of alerting us to the fundamental characteristics of their organization by watching how they police their own borders, if not through vigilant monitoring then at least by declaring the minimum requirements for membership in some written form. One of the things which makes a resistant organization notable, however, is that the people in them consistently not only refuse to make these declarations or take action to prohibit free riders, but that they do just the opposite. They open the door for everyone and anyone to identify with the organization. Of course, this does not always happen.
Indeed, diversity is a key point of concern within the Emerging Church. Although everyone is theoretically invited to participate in the conversation, history has shown that members, especially vocal members, are skewed toward those with traditional sources of power in our society. Thus, congregations and especially leaders are overwhelmingly white, male and well educated. This is a situation that has been identified as a problem within many congregations and a variety of efforts are being employed to rectify the situation-one of which is described in detail throughout this dissertation when I discuss the efforts to create a training program for Emerging Church leaders. Although most of these initiatives are still in their infancy, they have not been as successful as my
respondents and the popular literature and websites would like.
This should not be taken as an indication that there is no there, there, however.
Individual congregations and congregants profess to belong to the Emerging Church.
The Emerging Church is characterized in a number of different ways which convey the desire on the part of the speaker to retain the status of the Emerging Church as an
evolving organization. Thus, individual congregations often assert that they are a part of
the Emerging Church “movement” or “conversation.” Indeed, during my time in the field, the topic which seemed most dominant in casual conversations about the Emerging Church regarded this status and whether it was still a conversation or if it had evolved into a movement and whether or not this change might be a problem. Conceiving of the Emerging Church in this way allowed participants to retain the constantly evolving, uninstitutionalized status that they desired as opposed to the rigid, static traditional churches most of them had come from.
The issue of sampling in this project then must be taken up on two levels. First, I needed some method for justifying the inclusion of any particular congregation. Second, I needed a way to identify particular respondents within these congregations. In chapter 1 I argued that the Emerging Church in general is a good place to look for resistant organizations due to the highly technical and institutional nature of the field of religion.
However, it is not feasible or even possible to sample every Emerging Church in the U.S., in part due to the definitional problems identified above. However, I have also established the theoretical necessity of a multi-sited approach to data collection for this project. Thus, rather than trying to sample for representation, I have collected a
purposeful sample. A purposeful sample requires two, mutually reinforcing assumptions (Creswell 1998). First, in contrast to the grounded theory method, the researcher must have an extensive understanding of the theory he/she wishes to explore. Second, the sample can be determined only after the researcher has made several visits to the research setting, when “the researcher will know who to sample for the purpose of the study”
(Coyne 1997:624). Each of these assumptions is consonant with the general
requirements for the extended case method described above9.
In line with these two principles, I chose particular congregations because of theoretical reasoning in the organizations and religion literature which suggests that particular characteristics are especially salient for religious organizations. In particular, congregational size, affiliation, and worship style are variables which help to determine the unique character of a religious organization (Chaves et al. 1999), while longevity and organizational size are important determinants of institutionalization (Powell and
DiMaggio 1991)10. McAdam and Paulsen (1993) argue that in the absence of a control group or experimental set-up, careful theoretical reasoning can help to mitigate the danger of sampling on the control group. I do not have a dataset of failed resistance with which to compare my results in part because of the lack of scholarship in this particular area, and the importance of intention for resisting institutional pressures makes anything other than a longitudinal study subject to a degree of retrospective bias which would render the data and results potentially unusable. It is quite possible that some or all of the organizations in this study will eventually be included in a dataset of failed attempts at resistance. However, I do have solid theoretical reasons for examining the specific organizations that are in this study and thus good reason for suspecting that the activities described below contribute to the project of resistance and are not simply extraneous or
9 Burawoy (1998) advocates for sampling “theoretically,” though he goes to great lengths to distinguish this method of sampling and the extended case method in general from grounded theory.
10 Additionally, through my reading and experience with the Emerging Church I identified some variables of particular importance to people in the Emerging Church such as gender diversity of the leadership and urban or rural setting. I include these variables in the table for their substantive importance, but this should not be confused with the theoretical justification for sampling that I am providing here.
spurious. Additionally, I point out when their activities either deviate from what the theories would lead us to expect, counteract their intention to avoid institutionalization, or simply fail to produce a noticeable effect. Such an occurrence would not, however, mitigate the importance of this study and the theoretical insights produced. The information generated from this investigation will necessarily be a starting point from which a more powerful theory of organizational resistance can be derived through careful refinement and long-term study and observation.
Of the numerous purposeful sampling options available, I used chain referral or snowball sampling in order to identify potential congregations and congregants with the characteristics identified above. I chose this strategy in order to deal with the amorphous boundaries of the Emerging Church (Miles and Huberman 1994:28). My research leading up to the data collection led to me to identify a few geographic regions (often centered around a particular congregation) as the foundation for much of the Emerging Church in the U.S. I utilized snowball sampling in order to take advantage of the contacts I already had in two of these areas. These relationships acted primarily as sponsors into individual congregations, limiting the amount of time I needed to spend developing trust and rapport in order to get people to talk with me. This is crucial since it was already established that a single site ethnography would be inappropriate for the research question. Thus, snowball sampling proved to be a highly efficient strategy.
Additionally, by starting my “snowballs” in multiple locations, I was able to get a diverse sample (Babbie 2001). Although my initial entree into a congregation was usually sponsored by an existing contact, I did not let that suffice as my only strategy for identifying potential participants.
Once I attended a congregation, I was particularly concerned with trying to increase the diversity of my sample by increasing the number and location of my snowballs (Babbie 2001). I decided that I would always talk with the people sitting on either side of me at the worship service. These people were rarely my only source in entree into the congregation, my only “snowball,” but they did provide a nice form of triangulation to the relationships and contacts that I had already established in the church, which were usually with people in leadership positions. In this way I was able to ensure a variety of perspectives surrounding common events. I make no claims that this sample is representative. Achieving a representative sample was quickly dismissed as a
possibility for these organizations which not only keep no formal lists of members or attendees on a given week, but indeed resist such accounting efforts. Additionally, there is certainly an element of bias introduced into this sample as is the case with any
snowball sample. Although I have attempted to rectify this situation by starting multiple points of inquiry, there is always the presence of self-selection. Potential participants could have simply avoided me once my identity was known or even beforehand for reasons beyond my control (e.g., status as white, male, married, coupled, single).
However, during the course of this research only 3 participants declined and/or failed to show up for an interview11.
11 These three consisted of one woman and two men who all appeared to me to be in their late 20s or early 30s. The woman failed to show up to an appointment and failed to specify a reason. The two men simply declined interview invitations citing busy schedules. All three were at different congregations.