Main areas of agreement
A summary of these research models or the core data that these methods have in common
revolves around two areas: information about the evangelical church in its varied expressions and
information about the environment where the evangelical church finds itself. The first is often called
Harvest Force and the second Harvest Field. It is, however, also important to take a look at the
purpose for which these research models collect data and what they typically do with that data
once they have it. These influence our understanding of both the harvest field and force
information.
How the common denominators were found
Any evaluation of this nature is going to be subjective. However, I have tried to
make it as
systematic as possible. I took the main works of each of the models. After reading each of them I
took special note of the sections that discussed how research was to be done, what questions
were to be asked, what reports were to be made and to whom they were to be given. Some of the
most detailed information came in appendixes and some in chapters given over to the task of
research. That information for each of the models was put in outline form. I then took those
outlines and attempted to find larger groupings or divisions for all of the models. It appeared to me
that of all the models, the ASCP had the most divisions and subcategories so I used it as the
guide for organizing the others. However, there were, of course, categories within those divisions
that did not fit within the ASCP model. Those categories were considered and added to an
expanded guide. Each division was given a spreadsheet. The columns of each spreadsheet were
the seven models and the rows were each of the categories. Not all the models had something in
each category. So in order to find a common denominator only those categories with three or more
models were considered to be part of a common denominator. These are shown in the
appendices. Using a frequency of mention of three may be considered too few to be counted as a
common denominator. Three was chosen because of the subjective nature of this study. When
comparing the difference in content between the two lists it shows that when the frequency of
mention is four there is a 59% reduction in content from the other list. For this reason and for the
reason of subjectivity the frequency of mention for the common denominator was set at three.
There are five large divisions: Purpose of the research, Harvest Field, Harvest Force,
Analysis of the
Data and Product or Report. Each of these five has categories and below those are often a set of
subcategories. It should be noted here that I attempt here to maintain as much of the original
wording, categories and subcategories as possible. There has been some synthesis but I have
tried to be true to the texts as I found them.
This list was based on the writings of the various church planting and research models.
If a senior
researcher for one of those models would disagree with the things that I left out I would have to
simply say that I did not find it in the description of that research model. I believe that it would
be
very helpful to have the authors of these models discuss this idea of a common denominator
research model. They would certainly come up with a better list than I have come up with from
their books.
I welcome any comments you might have.
Linked here is a spreadsheet with this same information.
