Field Research: Jon

My interviews revolved around these three questions basically.
What are your top three priorities for the next year?
What thing impacts your decision making process the most?
What is the connection between Jesus and your relationships with others?
With the people that I knew, I asked them to get together for coffee, or a meal so they could help me with a class project. It allowed the conversation to continue and for much longer answers. For the mall people, I stopped asking mall shoppers because of their short and hurried answers and asked people that were working there that weren’t busy. It was much easier to get some thoughtful answers, and I got some free coffee.

I would say that people are very focused on themselves, or at least their family. Generally, people’s top priorities for the year revolve around themselves and some level of self-improvement. I think a lot of this has to do with the timing of the question and an immediate association to New Years resolutions. I didn’t use the phrase “New Year’s Resolutions”, but even the use of next year, or 2007 brings people to the familiar new year’s resolution. Anyway, most of them revolved around some level of self-improvement. Many seemed to be issues that had been nagging them for some time i.e. get in better shape, finish some project they have been putting off, or actually following through with a transition (new job/relationship). Most of the people I interviewed had some sort of family/relational commitment that informed their priorities as well. They weren’t very measurable, but rather more qualitative such as improve my relationship with my Mom, brother, etc. Just out of curiosity’s sake I followed this question by asking how the other person thought about the relational situation, and how that relationship would be different if it were “better” or they had “gotten closer”. Most were followed by blank stares which led me to believe that when they shared that family/friends were a priority it was mostly because it sounded good or that is what others might say.

As far as the decision making process was concerned, again I could see a strong egocentrism revealing itself. People really saw their own feelings and their experiences as the authority by which to make future decisions. Most of them seemed to connect with who they thought they were or who they wanted to be. After a bit of discussion there became an obvious connection between who they thought they were and their connection to some sort of family/or friendship relational connection. No one shared that they were impacted by a larger sense of calling or cosmic responsibility of some sort. The answers were seemingly small minded and strongly connected to their immediate surroundings.

The connection to Jesus and their present relationships was the question that fell to the floor the quickest. People were generally pretty defensive, and had little response. One thing that did surprise me was this guilt-ridden realization that confessed that they never really thought about Jesus, and certainly in the context of their relationships. Usually is came in the form of “I guess there isn’t a connection?” None of the people I interviewed considered themselves “active Christians”, but there was still some level of guilt by all but one guy who looked at me like it was the stupidest question he had ever heard. Two of the people I didn’t know wanted to know my agenda when I asked the Jesus question. I think they were afraid I was going to try to save them in the next question (I had withheld the fact that I was a pastor and a seminary student until this point when two of them asked).