The communicative strategies of Church of Christ campaigning missionaries: an ethnography and comparative analysis

Abstract

Church of Christ campaigning missionaries, those members of this Christian denomination who voluntarily participate in a mission trip for a limited period of time, often underoo rites of passaue in their mission experience. This rite of passage is transformative and makes the campaigner return to the community with a new identity. The community, however, does not recounize the transformative nature of the mission experience so it pressures the campaigner into repressing the transformative experience and assuming once again the previous communal identity. The campaigner is sensitive to this pressure since the community provides the financial support and backinc, for the campaigner. The campaigner, however, also desires to affirm the new identity since it was obtained at a areat cost. To negotiate this tension, campaigning missionaries strategically tell about their mission experience through personal experience narratives which satisfy communal demands and personal needs. This strategic negotiation is revealed using an ethnography of speaking approach and a comparative analysis of both the worship service speech event, where communal pressure is particularly creat, and the interview context speech event, where the communal pressure exists to a lesser decree.