Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Interviewing for Education and Social Science Research: The Gateway Approach,
Carolyn Lunsford Mears, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009, page 2

Carolyn Mears is a Columbine survivor. Although her own child was not killed in the 1999 High School shooting, as a parent with a child at the school, she suffered much of the trauma and distress of the community. She concluded:

I decided that one way others might "get it" would be for someine inside the community to take on the task of communicating across the boundary of experience.

She will say more about that boundary or barrier later, but for now goes on:

I wanted to collect stories of the Columbine experience, not in the way that a journalist might report the event, but for the purpose of documenting the elements of the tragedy and then analysing what was being expressed so that lessons could be learned.

Compare this - although of a completely different magnitude - with the way the church has historically treated, and in some quarters continues to treat, Jewish believers in Yeshua and you can grasp some of my motivation is my own research programme.