Relevance of Academic/Research for Mission/Church

I was glad that I had been associated with NGO value Academic and Scientific research. At the same time, I also wonder what is the relevance now comparing the relevance decades ago.

In the past the decision of allocation and starting a translation project based on rather detail social linguistic survey and research,  I don't know how much the administrative and decision makers make their decision based on the data. The teams may also have different degree of involvement of the survey and decision making. I think it also depends on different regions, entity and their resources. I think the decision were make in a lower level knowing the context. I think Peter Drucker mentioned once, "People make their decision based on opinion rather than fact." If this is true, what value is the scientific research. The effectiveness  of an entity depends on their politics or propaganda changing people's attitude rather than science. 

Academic research are seldom been independent in the history. In early days most of the academic research with influence of religion, nowadays more by funding institute and enterprise or customer. In some case academic is strictly bounded by their political context.

Divination is prohibited in the Bible. What is the difference between fortune tellers and data scientists or scientist in general. As we have faith or trust to technology or other, technology and others should never be our idols. How do we draw the border line? We need to be aware of Technology, Bible translation and the Bible itself can be our idol. We should be aware of the leading of the Spirit in BT and lingusitic research of Christian NGO but also in the work and daily life or all Christians. One of my paradigm shifts recently is to realize that translation and Bible translation is a mean/transition and not the end. What we need is to see the focus of the commandment is to participate in God's transforming action and making other to be disciple of Christ. At the same time how can Christian learned from 16:8 "The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. "

One of the scaring fact is that the world and the ethics is shaping by the World's big data. Is democratic the answer? I think probably not. The surely answer is "Thy Kingdom come and Thy will be done."