By Tom Bandy
The internet has been valuable in so many ways. But the combination of digitalization and miniaturisation has raised ethical concerns especially for lifestyle research.
- Social service, health care, education, and other institutions may use it positively to plan relevant policies and practices, clinics, and technologies. But other organizations might use it to invade our privacy.
- Developers and municipalities may use it positively to anticipate housing or customize emergency services. But other agencies and factions might use it to manipulate or limit our lives.
Many churches and denominations also use lifestyle research (as we do), but there is always a risk that institutional priorities and hidden biases might unconsciously lead us to use the data wrongly.
So, here are five basic principles that help guide the ethical use of lifestyle research. Use these principles to evaluate specific practices, but also use these principles to test hidden habits.
- Use lifestyle research for empowerment, not manipulation. The materialistic world tempts us to treat people as objects to be used for persona advantage or corporate gain. The philanthropic world encourages us to treat people as subjects who deserve respect. The more we understand the needs and preferences of different publics, the more we can work together to achieve each person’s full potential.
Church members often expect newcomers to accommodate themselves to institutional aesthetics and habits. Now churches can use lifestyle research to adapt ministries of hospitality, worship, education, small and large groups, shape policies for accountability, and train leaders to help different groups to connect with God for different purposes, through different relationships, in different ways, for different outcomes.
- Use lifestyle research to follow “flyways” rather than create “pigeonholes”. Longtime members of a church often view households and communities as static. Their assumptions about people change very little. In fact, households and communities are constantly changing. Lifestyles transition. Lifestyle groups travel. Average residency for member households may be measured in years, but average residency in any given neighborhood may be measured in months.
Churches that regularly update People Plots can see how households are evolving within and beyond the church. They can use color-coded mapping to literally see how diverse publics are migrating between rural regions to central towns, between cities and suburbs, and between one neighborhood to another. We can plan ahead to renovate, upgrade, customize, initiate, educate, train, and prepare for the future.
- Use lifestyle research for segmentation, not segregation. The two words sound similar but mean opposite things. Segmentation examines lifestyle groups to understand the dynamics of the whole mosaic of culture. It builds unity with empathy. Segregation studies lifestyle to separate groups from the larger mosaic of culture. It encourages inequality through condescension and even persecution.
Churches can use lifestyle data not only for information about different lifestyle groups but discover ways to communicate between lifestyle groups. We can identify the neutral locations, customize the most hospitable environments, and find and equip the best mediators and catalysts who can host and facilitate understanding and reconciliation.
- Use lifestyle research to bless people, not recruit people. Churches are tempted to use lifestyle research only to increase membership and stewardship for the purpose of institutional sustainability. Authentic faith communities, however, use it for the benefit of others without any reciprocal expectations. Church growth is secondary to the holistic needs of individuals and the positive transformation of society.
The more we empathize with the lives and lifestyles of the different publics in our community, the easier it becomes to set aside Christendom habits, look beyond membership entitlements, and think outside the box to bless strangers to grace. For Christians, lifestyle research results in what I call “heartbursts” for mission. Our hearts open to someone other than ourselves.
- Use lifestyle research to manage stress, not make judgements. The more our hearts open, the more our lives change. It isn’t easy for churches to shift attitudes, modify traditions, redeploy staff, retrain laity, renovate facilities, upgrade technologies, and reprioritize budgets. The frustration of leaders and the reluctance of members often creates unnecessary tension.
Lifestyle research allows us to compare membership preferences to community expectations. We can help members understand the missional rationale for the changes we make. We can be persuasive and avoid confrontation. We can make change through conversation rather than confrontation. “The harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (James 3:18).
Today both regional denominations and local congregations are learning to use lifestyle research to see, know and serve the whole diversity of the American public.
I often refer to the story of the birth of the Philippian church as an example of lifestyle sensitivity (Acts 16). Paul has a vision of a Macedonian pleading: Come over and help us. He and his team take enormous risks to go to where the seekers are, befriending strangers, and adapting message and methods to a unique culture. He did it with respect, flexibility, gentleness, generosity, and selflessness.
Imagine what might have happened to the mission to the gentiles if Paul had the tools for lifestyle research. He could train his team in advance of the trip. He could anticipate all the different kinds of Greeks … not to mention Ephesians, Romans, and Americans … hoping to experience God in ways uniquely relevant to their physical needs and spiritual yearnings.