Surveys

Hi. Lizzy here again

I've been thinking about surveys lately, because it feels like I've been surveyed a lot since we came to New Zealand.
First off we've been selected (well, Mothy has) to take part in the "Migrants’ Experiences of New Zealand Longitudinal Immigration Survey" by Statistics New Zealand. Which basically means a nice lady comes to our house every year and asks him lots of questions about what we think of living in New Zealand - our jobs, friends, health, and how long we're going to be staying here.

Then because we're foreigners in a foreign land we got interviewed a few months ago by Jon for his PhD, and he was asking us about our experiences of racial discrimination and other such fun subjects.

Also our friend Kerri is just about finishing her masters thesis on volunteer tourism, so we both got asked lots of questions about different trips we'd done in the past. Me to France, and Mothy to Poland.

In addition I got polled on the phone a few weeks ago, with regards to the general election which will happen later year. It was quite bizarre, cos I'm hardly the most politically astute person around, but I tried my best. The questions were all fired at me in a very dull tone of voice, by someone who was stupendously bored of asking the same question and tapping in the same answers all day long. Most of the questions needed a response in the form of "strongly favourable, somewhat favourable, no opinion, somewhat unfavourable, or strongly unfavourable". Honestly! When do you ever tell someone you're "somewhat favourable" toward Helen Clark? The best bit was when I was asked what was the single most important issue facing NZ this year. Spiritual apathy was my eventual response, and for the first time the clicking of the keyboard on the other end of the phone fell silent! Hah! Now they need to make a new category.
Or probably I'll just be "other" I guess.

But what really got me thinking was the report I've just read by Martina, a German masters student who used our church home group as the basis of a nine week ethnographic research project, on how the group meets each of four basic social needs for its members. Her report makes quite fascinating reading, especially as an 'outsider's view' of what us crazy Christians get up to.
See? I'm doing it already! One of her observations was that how when the members of the group were chatting they 'very often distinguished themselves from non-believers by mentioning whether or not this person was a Christian'. Does that make us sound horribly prejudiced, living in a Christian bubble, and them-and-us cliquey? I fear it does.


Overall Martina was really really positive about the group though, and said how much fun it was, and she was surprised at how much she enjoyed attending the group. Which can only be a good thing, surely. (She also referred to a 'young couple from the UK' at one point. That's nice!) The four needs that she observed the group met were the need for spirituality, support, socialising, and a sense of belonging. This is true for all of us of course, as we are such an international group, with many people far from their homes. In her words the 'small social group even becomes a surrogate family'. Which is kinda interesting as isn't that what the Bible says we should be?
Naturally she wasn't able to write in her report but I really do hope and pray that while she was busily observing us at Bible study, and joining our fun meals together that at least something of the gospel became clearer.
I believe that the reason that the group does meet these human needs must be that God himself meets them through his Holy Spirit and his Church, and I hope Martina comes to realise that too.