Stephen W. Hiemstra's Blog, page 240

Stanley and Jones Preach Communication

Andy Stanley and Lane Jones. 2006. Communicating for a Change. Colorado Springs: Multinomah Books.

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

In my last year at Iowa State, out of obligation I took a speech class. At the time, it seemed like a wildly irrelevant class—why does an economist need to learn how to give a speech?  By the time I reached seminary, preaching was not only on my mind, I credited my preaching experience as an elder with helping me to understand my call as a pastor. In a world so desperate to know the love and salvation of Christ, where else can you get 20-40 minutes of people’s undivided attention—especially knowing that your own kids could be sitting in the front row?

In their book, Communicating for a Change, Andy Stanley and Lane Jones focus on seven points needed to communicate effectively. In the first part of the book, they outline the seven points in a truck driving analogy. In the second part of the book, they drive down into the seven points in more detail. The seven points are:

Determine your goal—what do you hope to communicate? (33)


Focus on a single point—if you provide too much information, your audience will not remember anything (39).


Make a map that helps you travel from information to relationship (44). Stanley talks about ME-WE-GOD-YOU-WE as the map or outline of how to structure a sermon.

This ME-WE-GOD-YOU-WE map requires some unpacking.  The ME section explains who you are. The WE section moves from what I am thinking and feeling to what we are thinking and feeling. The GOD section introduces biblical truth into the discussion. The YOU section is about application—what are you going to do about this biblical truth? The final WE section casts a common vision (48-49).

Internalize the message—“until you can deliver it with no notes, from memory, then it’s not your message” (52).


Engage your audience emotionally—“You have to connect with your audience around a real need in their lives. Something they feel.” This involves reminding the audience of “tension that they already feel” (58-60). You look for memorable points and go slow on the transition points to keep people engaged (63-64).


Find you voice. Stanley and Jones observe: “You are not talking to people. You are talking at people.” Your voice is the authentic you—present, vulnerable, the real you. The goal of finding your voice is to be able to take people on a journey, rather than give them a sermon (70-72).


Find your traction. Delivering a sermon on time every week is hard if you get stuck in the preparation. Stanley and Jones suggest a checklist of questions: 1. What do they need to know? 2. Why do they need to know it? 3. What do they need to do? And 4. Why do they need to do it? (80)

In parsing the first point, Stanley and Jones observe that pastors have really three primary approaches in preaching:

Teaching the Bible to people;
Teaching people the Bible;
Teach “people how to live a life that reflects the values, principles, and truths of the Bible.” (94-95)

Expert multiple choice test takers always go for the longest answer—Stanley and Jones clearly favor the third approach. Their incentive is captured in this brief statement:

“How would you communicate this message if your eighteen-year old son had made up his mind to walk away from everything you have taught him, morally, ethically, and theologically, unless he had a compelling reason not to? What would you say this morning if you knew that was at stake?” (98-99)

Stanley and Jones’ point is compelling and one of the points of the book that I remember most vividly.

Andy Stanley is the founder of North Point Ministries in the Atlanta area, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, and he author of numerous books. Lane Jones is also of North Point Ministries and a graduate of  Dallas Theological Seminary and a Christian author.

Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley and Lane Jones is a book recommended to me by my pastor when I started entered seminary and began preaching for myself. The book is engaging, easy to read, and proved to be a great help in preaching.

http://www.AndyStanley.com.

Living into the Image

Living into the Image

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

Service for Recommitment of Vows for Christine Nousheen Hiemstra and Douglas Warren Ferrer,

Centreville, Virginia, September 4, 2016

A quiet little secret in this postmodern age is often overlooked by those of us who seldom read our Bibles: marriage is God’s idea, not ours. Marriage was not enacted by an act of Congress or decreed by the Supreme Court; marriage was not invented by some church committee way or some really popular saint way back when. Marriage was God’s idea which we know because the Bible begins and ends with a wedding.

How do we know? (2X)

The short answer comes in verse 27 of the first chapter of Genesis:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27 ESV)

In other words, God created us together in his image and, in case there is any misunderstanding, this image couple was given a mission-statement in the next verse:

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28 ESV).

The vows are then repeated in chapter 2 where we read:

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Gen 2:23-24 ESV)

So after the wedding ceremony is over, Adam and Eve are a couple on their own, not living with mom and dad in stark contrast with the custom in pagan societies of the ancient world.

But what does it mean to be created in the image of God? (2X)

The answer to this question is found in our second reading from the Book of Exodus. The context for this verse is that after God gives Moses the Ten Commandments (and after Moses broke the first set of tablets), he says to him directly:

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exod 34:6)

Much like Congress after passing legislation will publish a “conference report” explaining how to interpret the new law, God reveals his character in five key words as a tool for interpreting the Ten Commandments. These five character traits are repeated throughout the Old and New Testaments in different forms, which is the Bible’s way of saying stop and pay attention here. Let’s take a moment to reflect on each of these five traits, as they give insight into God’s prescription for marriage.

The first of these traits is: mercy. Mercy is what you ask the judge for right after you have just admitted that you are guilty. Mercy is unwarranted and undeserved forgiveness.

Christine, offer mercy to Doug when he screws up; Doug, extend mercy to Christine when she has just done it again. When you offer mercy to one another, you honor God and make love possible.

The second of these traits is: compassion. Compassion comes from the Latin expression, with passion, in the sense of having passion out of understanding for someone else. A great example of compassion was going around on social media earlier this year—a policeman was called to grocery store to arrest a woman for shoplifting. She explained that she stole food to give her kids a meal and, instead of arresting her, the policeman bought her a cart load of groceries and drove her home.

Doug, take time to understand Christine when she screws up. Christine, walk alongside Doug when he does not seem to be himself. Understand each other before you criticize each other. Remember the policeman’s heart.

The third of these traits is: patience—be slow to anger. The Hebrew used here literally says:  be long nostrilled!  In other words, take a deep breath; listen; and count to ten before responding when something is not quite what you were expecting. Patience is so under-practiced in our “I WANT IT NOW” generation.  Be a rebel: practice patience!

The fourth trait is two Hebrew words, rav hesed (‎רַב־חֶ֥סֶד), which does not translate well into English. It literally means “great love”, but the context suggests something other than “abounding in steadfast love”. God has just given Moses the Ten Commandments—kind of like a superpower promising a military alliance to a small country in a dangerous neck of the woods. Love here means that you keep your promises—especially when it hurts. I call this “covenantal love”.

In my case, I told Maryam when we were married that I did not believe in divorce. I told myself that I would not let anything come between us in our marriage—not our friends, not our families, not even my own ego. Keeping our marriage vows was the priority over everything, short of my faith in God. For me, that is covenantal love.

The final trait is translated faithfulness. The Hebrew word, emeth (אֱמֶֽת), also means truth.  When the Apostle John says that: “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17 ESV), he is making an allusion to this very same verse in Exodus and, by inference, is making a divinity claim in reference to Jesus.

Faithfulness and truth go hand-in-hand, yet truth should only (2X) be told in a context of grace, otherwise it will simply not be heard.

Doug, Christine—be truthful with one another, but speak truth only out of love.

In closing, bear the image of God in your life with one another. Practice mercy and compassion, be patient with one another, honor your vows, and speak truth only in the context of love. Bear God’s image and draw closer to God and to one another as you do so. Amen and Amen.

Keller, Timothy and Kathy Keller. The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God. (New York: Dutton, 2011), page 13.

Prayer for a Friend

God of all Mercy and Compassion:

You are the alpha and omega; the beginning and the end; the one who is, who was, and who is to come (Revelation 1:9). For you created heaven and earth for your glory and we praise you for their beauty and our creation (Psalm 19).

Make your presence especially known among us for our eyes are heavy with tears and our ears barely hear. With heavy hearts we, your people, stand before you today confessing our sins and our doubts but confident of the love of Christ.

We thank you for sharing this friend with us during his season of life. We praise you for his compassion, his quiet dignity and devotion to family, his constant smile and companionship, and his daily presence in our lives.

In the power of the Holy Spirit, grant us a season of grief with his passing. Open our hearts; let us cry; help us feel and express our loss.

Place your hedge of protection around us as we grieve. Protect our persons and our spirits; protect our relationships; protect our jobs. Let us not have to choose between expressing our grief and other things.

May our grief be godly grief until salvation, not worldly grief that leads to sin and death (2 Corinthians 7:10). In our grieving, let us be like Job who did not sin in spite of many afflictions (Job 1:13-22). But let us turn to you in our lament, great giver of life, to empty our hearts of the pain, the shame, the guilt, and the grief so that we might once again enter your gates with praise. For we know that you grieved over Lazarus and the widow’s son, and raised them both from the dead even though no words of faith were spoken (John 11:1-46; Luke 7:11-17).

And we know that through Jesus Christ death is not the final answer. And we like Him will one day be raised from death to new life. Remind us daily that: “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

In the power of your Holy Spirit, grant us strength to turn to you in our grief, following the example of Christ at Gethsemane (Matthew 26:3), to live life in view of the resurrection and the eternal life that is ours in Jesus Christ (John 3:16).

In the strong name of Jesus we pray.  Amen.

 

Mentor

“Two are better than one,

because they have a good reward for their toil.

For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.

But woe to him who is alone

when he falls and has not another to lift him up!”

(Eccl 4:9-10)

Mentor

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

When I landed in the Finance and Tax Branch in Rural Economy Division (RED) in 1986, carryover work kept me busy for a number of months. Because of a thorough review process and a team of competent editors, carryover publications could take months or even a year to finish up. Still, I needed to get busy on the work of the new branch and earn my stripes in finance.

Although I had not been trained in technical finance, finance and the mechanics of trade worked hand-in-hand to affect agricultural exports. More importantly, U.S. agriculture required substantial investments in land, resources, and infra-structure that left it sensitive to changes in the financial environment. It’s funny—I never considered myself a derivatives expert, but my first lecture as a teaching assistant at Cornell University was explaining to my students in a retailing class how farmers could hedge their soybean crop in the futures market. I knew more finance than the typical economist, in part, because of my agricultural training.

My insight into the financial sensitivity of agriculture led me to have second thoughts about the Reagan Administration’s policy objective of dismantling agricultural support policies, particularly for grains and oilseeds, at a time in the mid-1980s when interest rates were both high and volatile—exchange rates were also volatile during this period and poorly understood in terms of their implications for agricultural trade. Rates of return on investment in land, for example, were about 1 percent during those years, yet interest rates had risen into the double digits as the Federal Reserve worked to tame inflation. Farm families were having trouble passing their farms onto a new generation, both because of these high interest rates and plummeting prices of grain. If price supports were then also removed, many farm families would be run out of business even faster than was already happening. In so many words, the Reagan policy seemed out of touch with their own republican base (most farmers at the time were republicans) and contrary to USDA own mission statement, as frequently and publicly espoused.

As I watched all this going on, I found myself repeating a rant about the financial implications of the Reagan policy initiative, even before I joined RED. After a while, I realized that this rant was both a real concern and could make a good policy analysis paper. Writing a paper critical of the policies of a sitting president was not, however, something to take lightly. In consulting with sympathetic colleagues, I was encouraged to go ahead and write the study. It was a relatively short paper with the title: Monetary Implications for GATT Agricultural Negotiations.

Because I had changed divisions in ERS, a finance paper would be reviewed by managers in RED, not International Economics Division (IED) where the policy implications would be more obvious. This meant that the paper would not be on people’s radar system during the review process and might potentially be published before critics would pay any attention—even if I offered to let them be reviewers!2/ It was important, however, to have administrative support when the critics finally woke up and began to raise questions.

My administrative support came in the form of a co-author. A friend and mentor had recently been promoted into a high visibility administrative position. He supported my critique and encouraged me to write the paper. In return, he became a co-author.

When my paper hit the news stands, the Reagan supporters went nuts and argued that the paper should be retracted from publication. A meeting was held; objections were noted; the paper went forward. In fact, the paper was so popular that it had to be reprinted twice. I was also invited to be a keynote speaker at a national conference with 6,000 in attendance[1] the week before the 1988 presidential election—I thought that my branch chief would pass out when I told him. As it turned out, that invitation was kicked up to the Secretary of Agriculture never to be heard from again.

Reference

Hiemstra, Stephen W., and Mathew Shane. Monetary Implications for GATT Agricultural Negotiations. USDA. ERS. Foreign Agricultural Economics Report No. 236. April 1988. (Revised reprint August 1988). 20 pp.

[1] My recollection was that it was the National Water Resources Association (http://www.nwra.org).

[2] As a mere economist, it was hard recruiting reviewers.

Gibson: Preach God’s Word in Season and Out

Scott M. Gibson. 2001. Preaching for Special Services. Grand Rapids: Baker Books.

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

One of the more perplexing challenges that pastors face is always being on call. Recently, the pastor on duty at a luncheon I attend got caught up in traffic; I found myself presented with an unexpected mic. For a plodder, someone who always works from a 5-year plan, these special occasions can be especially challenging.

In his book, Preaching for Special Services, Scott Gibson writes:

“A pastor must be able to step with ease into a number of different speaking venues. In addition to a regular preaching schedule, you as a pastor face an endless parade of special occasions at which you are asked to speak.” (Back cover)

He goes on to cite the Apostle Paul’s admonition: “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” (2 Tim. 4:2 ESV) The purpose of such preaching, he says, “is to give a clear, listener-sensitive, biblically based word to men and women who are sometimes eager and often desperate to hear it.” (18)

In this short book, Gibson focuses on 4 special occasions that make up the core of his  6 chapters:

Preaching for Special Services
Wedding Services
Funeral Services
Baptism and Infant Presentation Sermons
Preaching at the Celebration of the Lord’s Supper
Speaking on Other Occasions

The foreword was written by Haddon W. Robinson who taught preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary for many years and is famous for “big idea” preaching.

The idea in “big idea” preaching is to identify the subject of a particular passage of scripture, usually a pericope, and its complement. The subject is what the author is talking about and the complement is what is said about the subject (19). In special occasion preaching, Gibson emphasizes the need for brevity and clarity where the preacher must be clear about the biblical text, clear about the audience, clear about the occasion, and clear in what they say (21). Tall order on occasions where the circumstances may limit the time available for preparation.

Why preach on special occasions? Outside of the obvious response—because you are asked—Gibson offers this response:

“Preaching at these times allows the preacher to speak the word of God to those gathered, to round out the worship, to bring focus to the occasion.” (17)

When I am asked, I refer to these special occasions as difficult transitions in life where God is especially present to those who call on him. Of course, preaching helps us reflect on God’s presence and his special presence.

If you are like me, this is the sort of book that gets bought and remains on the bookshelf until a special occasion arises when a good reference comes in handy. In my case, I am working on a wedding so let me review Gibson’s comments about weddings.

In each of his presentations on special occasions, he reviews the history of the church’s customs with respect the particular occasion. Gibson notes that in pre-Christian Rome and Greece, weddings were celebrated with an epithalamium, which is a poem celebrating the wedding—kind of like Song of Songs in the Old Testament. Gibson’s comments about weddings in medieval Europe are interesting:

“Preaching took place at the synagogue or at the wedding feast.  The preacher was the groom, the father of the groom, or the father of the bride.” (27)

In my case, I am both a volunteer pastor and father of the bride.

Gibson sees the wedding sermon as: “a window to understanding God’s design for marriage.” (30). In particular, the marriage is not simply a covenant, but a covenant before God, having both his oversight and blessing. Gibson furthermore sees the wedding service having both theological and practical objectives, celebrating the mystery of marriage (32). The wedding sermon should use concrete language, be brief, clear, personal, and have central idea (35-37).

Scott M. Gibson’s Preaching for Special Services is a helpful reference for pastors and aspiring pastors. Others who speak occasionally may also find it interesting. Although I had a wedding in mind in reading, other chapters helped me prepare sermon notes in advance of writing.

References

Robinson, Haddon W. 2001. Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

A periscope is a unit of scripture with one unified thought, usually a story or parable, which is often no more than 10-20 verses.

Life in Tension: Hear the words; Walk the steps; Experience the joy!

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Life in Tension: Reflections on the Beatitudes by Stephen W. Hiemstra

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T2Pneuma Sale on “Life in Tension”

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Hear the words; Walk the steps; Experience the joy!

43. Prayers of a Life in Tension by Stephen W. Hiemstra

Heavenly Father,

We praise you for your gift of salvation available to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who is our great high priest that transcends our weakness having also been tempted yet without sin (Heb 4:15) For out of Him, by means of Him, and into Him are all things created, sustained, and restored (Rom 11:36). And we are grateful. In the power of your Holy Spirit, work in us to complete our journey from isolation in ourselves to the person that we were created to be, from isolation from others to full persons able to offer hospitality to others, and from isolation from God to people of faith able in your power to cast off sin and idolatry. In the power of your Holy Spirit, enable us to follow the example of Jesus Christ who in life, in death, and in resurrection was merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Exod. 34:6). Especially in teachable moments, like persecution. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

T2Pneuma Releases “Life in Tension” in Paperback and Kindle

T2Pneuma Releases “Life in Tension” in Paperback and Kindle.

CONTACT: Stephen W. Hiemstra, author, T2Pneuma Publishers LLC (T2Pneuma.com), Centreville, VA 703-973-8898 (M), T2Pneuma@gmail.com

CENTREVILLE, VA, 8/27/2016: Life in Tension: Reflections on the Beatitudes by Stephen W. Hiemstra is now available in both paperback (978–1942199045) and Kindle (978-1942199052; ASIN: B01KW0ICY8) on Amazon.com according to T2Pneuma Publishers LLC of Centreville, Virginia. Details available at T2Pneuma.com.

DISCUSSION:

When God comes into our lives, we change.

Our new identity is in Christ comes into tension with our old identity in ourselves as the Holy Spirit works in our hearts and minds. This tension arises between who we were and who God created us to be, between us and God, and between us and those around us. The Apostle Paul calls the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives sanctification.

Hear the words; Walk the steps; Experience the joy!

Life in Tension reflects on Jesus’ Beatitudes in the context of scripture.  The Beatitudes serve as an introduction to the Sermon on the Mount and lay out Jesus’ priorities in teaching his disciples. Because the sermon serves as a kind of ordination service for the Apostles, the importance of the Beatitudes for the early church, Christian spirituality, and discipleship today cannot be overstated.

Author Stephen W. Hiemstra (MDiv, PhD) is a slave of Christ, husband, father, tentmaker, writer, and speaker. He lives with Maryam, his wife of 30+ years, in Centreville, VA and they have three grown children.

Key word for this book include: Christianity, spirituality, Beatitudes, Jesus, Bible, devotion, and theology.

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What people are saying …

 We live in a fallen world. It leads to life in tension, and sometimes a life full of stress. Stephen Hiemstra takes us on a needed tour of the kind of character it takes to face such a life.                                              –  Darrell L. Bock, Dallas Theological Seminary

We don’t often think of our life as one lived in tension, but as believers that’s exactly how we live. Stephen Hiemstra’s Life in Tension takes us through the Beatitudes and provides a blueprint for Christians to navigate this tension with ourselves, with the world, and with Christ.                                                                 – Sarah Hamaker, Author

The Christian life is filled with tension, paradox, and upside down requisites for obedience to the biblical text and the clarion call of God.

– Stephen Macchia, Pierce Center for Disciple-Building

Stephen Hiemstra’s Life in Tension reminds me of Bonhoeffer’s   Cost of Discipleship, because it is an earnest, personal effort to hear and follow the voice of Jesus here and now.                                                                                    – Jonathan Jenkins, Pastor

Please mention T2Pneuma.com on social media.

 

Trust, but Verify

“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves,

so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matt 10:16)

Trust, but Verify [1]

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

My experience as an intern in Western Europe Branch in 1979 led me to aspire to a career as a European analyst. During my graduate school years, this aspiration gave me a reason to invest more in language study than my peers because I saw an immediate application as a Western European analyst, even if it was not my primary motivation for the study. So along the way, Cornell University sent me to study both in Puerto Rico (before my federal experience) and in Germany, and Michigan State University aided me with six weeks of intensive French, courtesy of the U.S. State Department, presumably so that I could begin work also in West Africa. By the time I joined Western Europe Branch as a full-time analyst in 1985, I could read and converse at various levels of proficiency in Spanish, German, and French, which was, in part, why I was recruited to join the Western Europe Branch after about a year with World Trade Branch.

In discussions over my transfer, my focus was to be researching feed manufacturing in Spain as lead investigator for a joint research project between USDA and an experiment station in Zaragoza, Spain. The project with Spain focused on improving our understanding of the prospective entry of Spain into the European Community (EC), which occurred the following year (1986). The project also had a tricky administrative goal of converting the project budget of several hundred thousand dollars from an administrative travel fund into a fund earmarked for research, as promised in the project proposal. As lead investigator, I would have a budget greater than most managers in the building which offered research flexibility, but it also would make the project a prospective “takeover” target for jealous competitors. To prevent any such tampering with the project, I asked to report directly to the branch chief, which would cut out a layer of management, and my request was granted.

Broadly speaking, it was expected that corn import demand in Spain would decline as import levies helped French corn to compete better with U.S. imports—the reasoning was simple, the levies would prevent U.S. corn from being imported until the French corn supplies were exhausted. Domestic barley would also substitute for U.S. imports, but primarily in swine rations, not broiler rations where corn was preferred. Spanish consumers, much like their U.S. counterparts, preferred a yellow chicken—the yellow color came either from corn consumption or from introduction of marigold flower pedals into the rations; chickens fed barley, which offered similar nutrients, turned the chicken meat a sickly bluish-white color. Unfortunately, we had no studies of the Spanish broiler industry from which to assess possible impacts of EC ascension. This deficiency motivated a trip to Spain to confer with my counterpart, Luis, and to see if a broiler study might be undertaken by the Spanish team.[2]

While the Spanish project got started, I continued to publish trade papers based on my statistical work in World Trade Branch. While I was proud to publish a study of EC trade, my methods study attracted more attention, in particular, because the chief economist of a large rice corporation enjoyed the case study of the Thai rice trade that I had used to illustrate my points.[3] That study and my outlook report on the rice trade were apparently unique in giving attention to the rice trade. While other minor crop reports could easily have been written, interest dropped off after the corn, soybean, and wheat markets were reported.

The Spanish project generated an interesting six-week trip in 1985 in which I traveled to Malaga on the Mediterranean coast to attend a conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists.[4] During this ten-day conference I spent time with many classmates from Göttingen Universität in Germany and made contacts with agricultural economists from all over the world. I mostly remember the awkwardness of seeing former professors eying the topless women on the beach and being targeted by foreign intelligence officers via other women—I never realized how political agricultural trade could be. During the rest of my time in Spain, I needed to check into the embassy—a required courtesy call which mostly annoyed the attaches who were already busy—and to spend time in Zaragoza with my counterpart.

The most productive part of the trip was visiting different feed manufacturing plants to hear first-hand about their procedures and concerns. Their procedures included sample rations, which showed substituting energy (corn, barley, tapioca, etc) and protein (soy meal, sunflower meal, etc) components and proved helpful in a later study of Spanish import demand for corn (1987). Their primary concern back then was the low quality of U.S. corn exports, a problem that was later corrected.[5]

After five weeks in Spain, I traveled to Germany for a week to visit old friends and to confer with them about what I had learned in Spain. Although Germany was also part of my responsibility as a country analyst, the interest in trade with Germany was much less than Spain, in part, because trade with northern Europe and the policy environment were well-established.

Although I expected to return to Spain for a follow up visit, it never happened. My branch chief was diagnosed with lymphoma in the winter of 1986/87 and was quickly unable to function, even though he continued to come into the office.[6] In his absence and after his death, my role as chief investigator came under fire and I suffered fairly arbitrary criticism until I gave up the project. At that point, I requested reassignment to the European situation and outlook unit, but my research responsibilities—just not the project leadership responsibilities—followed me into my new job making the whole arrangement rather stressful.

As a country analysts working in situation and outlook, I had both country (Spain, Germany, and other EC countries) and commodity (cotton and oilseeds) responsibilities. I really enjoyed the outlook work, which included making a quarterly export forecast for roughly 40 commodities, and I began developing a quantitative procedure for estimating exports. I did these estimates with a Lotus spreadsheet macro program which took 40 quarters of export, price, and export sales data and computed three estimates of exports (an elasticity estimate, a linear projection, and a percent change over the previous year) and a graph depicting the forecasts and historical data. I worked with another analyst to write a report outlining the procedure so that the procedure could be used by other country analysts.

Resistance to this export model arose from two quarters. The first point of resistance came from the other country analysts who were primarily former state department analysts with master’s level training, but no quantitative training—at the time, spreadsheets, like Lotus, were new and scary to many people. Most analysts estimated quarterly exports as simply the previous year’s number; only one other colleague routinely used the export sales figures to compute a percent change of the previous year.  Furthermore, employing this model would require that historical data be accumulated and analyzed, which would require time and effort even beyond learning to use the spreadsheets.

The second point of resistance came from policy analysts who had trouble accepting the results from back-testing which showed that the elasticity estimates were the most reliable.  EC imports were not believed to be price sensitive because of the EC variable levies. In fact, the back-testing suggested that a two-step decision process was involved. In the first step, imports were totally restricted until domestic EC production was sold. Then, in the step, imports were purchased from the lowest cost supplier. Hence, price sensitivity in the second step essentially explained the results from the elasticity estimates.

As far as I know, follow up studies of price sensitivity were never completed because later in 1987 senior agency management  announced a reorganization with the stated objective of eliminating the country analyst program. The world of trade was changing as improvements in transportation and communication reduced the need and the growth of large international trading firms reduced the desire for specialized country analysts in the public sector—why listen to a country analyst when you can pick up the telephone or hop on a plane to speak directly with your counterpart elsewhere in the world?

During the reorganization, positions throughout the Economic Research Service were opened up for competitive bidding so I applied for and was granted a transfer out of the International Economics Division and into the Rural Economy Division where I began a new career in finance in Finance and Tax Branch. Finance was entirely new for me so this was a huge move at the time—both professionally and emotionally—because I had spent years preparing for work in European affairs and had almost no training in finance.  Yet, the move into finance proved to be one of the most important career decisions that I ever made. The move led to a series of promotions which made it possible to buy a house and to afford to have my wife, Maryam, stay home to raise our kids.

References

Hiemstra, Stephen W. 1985. “U.S. Share of World Rice Market Declines,” Rice: Outlook and Situation. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Economic Research Service (ERS). March.

Hiemstra, Stephen W. 1986. “U.S. Farm Exports to EC Continue Falling,” Foreign Agricultural Trade of the United States. USDA. ERS. November/December.

Hiemstra, Stephen W. and Arthur B. Mackie. 1986. Methods of Reconciling World Trade Statistics. USDA. ERS. Foreign Agricultural Economics Report No. 217. May.

Hiemstra, Stephen W. 1987. The Effect of Spain’s Entry into the EC on the Demand for Imported Corn. USDA. ERS. Staff paper No. AGES870916. October.

Hiemstra, Stephen W., and Stephen MacDonald. 1987. Forecasting U.S. Agricultural Exports Using the Trade Estimates System. USDA. ERS. Manuscript. May.

[1] “Trust but verify” is an expression made famous by President Ronald Reagan who used it to characterize his negotiation strategy with the USSR.

[2] This proved to be an elusive goal because the researchers in Spain were dedicated livestock researchers.

[3] Over the years, the United States and Thailand have competed for the honor of being the world’s largest rice exporters, but rice exports are small compared with corn, soybean, and wheat exports here in the United States.

[4] August 26-September 4, 1985.

[5] Export corn was sold by grade. If the Spanish purchased number 2 corn, then the exporter would purchase U.S. corn (which was typically number 1 quality) and add foreign matter to lower the quality to number 2 grade. This addition of dust and water to the corn lowered the quality and rendered the corn a mess by the time it was imported in Spain. Complaints about such practices to Congress eventually forced changes to the grading standards to remove the incentive to add foreign matter.

[6] When he heard his diagnosis, he knew that he would soon die. During his career in the Air Force, he worked in a nuclear storage facility and was exposed to excessive radiation. All of his colleagues in the facility suffered the same fate. He was close to being eligible to retire and preferred to retire rather than leave government on disability, but he did not live that long.