"To be known as someone who simply wants to live with them."

Well, off I go. Saturday we leave on our trip to the other side of the world with much expectation that God is going to show Himself in some life-changing and surprising way.

I've agonized over my presentation on culture learning, trying to chose what content is appropriate for a one-hour presentation to this particular audience, wondering what might result... dismissal? disinterest? engagement? input? invitations to travel the world and teach? or just a "we'll take it from here"? I really don't know what to expect or what to hope for. And I have been quite anxious about this and other aspects of our journey.

If you are a person who prays, think of me at 4pm Jan 14. Or 12-15 hours before that, if you live in the US, to account for the time difference.  I could use your prayers for this presentation / discussion.

Here's a video I hope to use to open it up. Of course I can't be sure technology will cooperate. This video can't be downloaded, evidently, and I hate to rely too much on internet access in a conference setting, in a different country, and on someone else's laptop. So I may just read the quote.

Still, I can share it with you here:

“More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence.

"Still, it is not as simple as it seems. My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress.

"But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them.”  

Retail Holidays and a Story of Stuff, Revised and Expanded

Although it may have begun as an undercover Christian catechism (Snopes say no), the 12 Days of Christmas came to paint a picture of gift-giving excess that has entertained (or maddened) many generations.

Today, though 12 days of holiday shopping seems like nothing.

A few years ago I wrote about America's New Commercial Holidays, the proliferation of special shopping days that took off around 2012 and expanded as far as what one source dubbed the 16 days of holiday retail.

I like "Balance Your Checkbook Sunday," though it could use a new name, too, since few of us write checks to any degree anymore. Balance Your... Spreadsheet?

I haven't heard references to Grey Thursday or Sofa Sunday lately. Instead, retailers seem to be focusing on Black Friday and stretching the oh-so-limiting idea of a day having just 24 hours. (After all, as St. Peter tells us, with the Lord a day is like a thousand years?) I saw my first ad urging Black Friday shopping in late October. Better get started!

Lest you think America unique in excessively commercializing holidays, consider China. November 11 was dubbed "Singles Day" in 2009 (you know.. 11/11, single digits). It's became not only that nation's "premier national shopping festival," but the largest online shopping event in the history of the world. This year, in one day (an old fashioned 24 hours this time), sources say the people spent upwards of US$38 billion dollars (with some disturbing results for the environment).

That's a lot of spending.

In the spirit of an old fashioned Christmas, may I point out: You still can't take it with you.

*          *          *

In my 2014 post on this topic, I mentioned that Chris and I were making plans to divest ourselves of a lot of stuff, leave some in storage, and move across country (though maybe just for a year) with what we could fit in our two cars. Though Christmas was drawing nigh, we hoped friends and relations would be cautious about giving us more stuff in the months before we were to leave.

We're still on the East Coast. With the turns our careers have taken, we think we'll be here for some years. Now it's time to go back and get the 50 boxes (including all my books!) from the in-laws' attic along with the bit of furniture they've held onto for us. Summer would be better than winter, I know, but we have more freedom now and plan to spend the days between Christmas and New Year's (and a bit more) driving a small moving truck cross-country. (Shipping our stuff would have cost considerably more.) I'm trying to look at our long drive from Eugene to LA, then across I-40 as a potential adventure, but it's a little daunting.

It has been nice to have a relatively uncluttered apartment, although we have certainly acquired more stuff since our 2015 move. Interested to see how we manage with 50 boxes more.

Global Glimpse

"You don't have to know me very well to know that I am terrified of spiders," writes a Pioneers worker in South America. Can you relate? The difference is that this woman lives among spiders, in this case, the jungles of Peru. That's part of cross-cultural life; living with things you would never choose.

While culture stress is one of my least-favorite experiences, I do sometimes miss the way it pushes or even forces a reliance on God and others, a living by faith that seems so optional when your location, culture, and relationships let you rest on your own understanding and competence.

Anyway, back to the tarantulas. "Peru is trying to help me get over that fear by strategically placing them in the most shocking of places," says my correspondent. "I thought I would take a minute to share the three most disturbing encounters."

1. In my shower (this is never convenient)
2. Cooked into my rice at a local restaurant (Didn't finish that meal!)
3. In my laundry (I apparently rudely interrupted a tarantula mid-nap while picking up my laundry)

"I have no pictures of these encounters because they are normally followed by shortness of breath, strange noises and often running and yelling for Daniel."

American History, the Great Migration, and Grandma Burnie

From the first pages of Laura Ingall's Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods, I was hooked on pioneer stories. I loved to read about old-time frontier families crossing the country in a covered wagon, homesteaders, Indians, and girls in calico and sunbonnets. Since I grew up in Washington state, social studies class and school field trips reinforced those themes. They featuring tales of Lewis and Clark and the Oregon Trail.

Either missing altogether or mentioned without emphasis were stories of a migration that began a few decades after the covered wagon days came to a close. The Great Migration did just as much to shape our country, probably more. But I'm learning about it now.

You see, here in South Carolina, those Lewis and Clark stories don't do so much to capture the imagination. Not like tales of the day in 1865 when General Sherman and his troops burned down two-thirds of our town... and other important events from the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (sometimes called by other names), Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights movement.

And probably everybody knows something about the Great Migration. It was a series of several waves between 1910 and 1970 during which more than six million African Americans moved from their rural lives in the South to in the cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and West to take up industrial jobs (starting with WWI war factories). They were driven away by crop failures and Jim Crow laws, and drawn by job offers and the hope of a great new life in places that seemed to be Promised Lands: Chicago. Philadelphia. Detroit.

"Around 1916, when the Great Migration began, a factory wage in the urban North was typically three times more than what blacks could expect to make working the land in the rural South." (History.com)

They may have escaped sharecropping, segregation, and the Ku Klux Klan, but they still faced prejudice and discrimination. There were culture clashes, housing shortages, and race riots. But there were also things like the Harlem Renaissance and the rise of black civic culture. The early waves created thriving black communities in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis, with later settlements growing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Phoenix, Seattle, and Portland. No longer was the African American experience a rural one, but now, much more, an urban one. The migration far exceeded the number of Irish, Italians, or other immigrant communities whose stories are part of our national narrative.

"By 1970, when the Great Migration ended, its demographic impact was unmistakable: Whereas in 1900, nine out of every 10 black Americans lived in the South, and three out of every four lived on farms, by 1970 the South was home to less than half of the country’s African-Americans, with only 25 percent living in the region’s rural areas." (Learn more from History.com.)

My interest in the Great Migration was piqued in learning about a local, 110-year-old African-American lady who recently passed away. She lived through all that, as explained by an SC House Resolution offering her birthday congratulations. Burnie, a sharecropper's daughter, dropped out of school in the fourth grade when her mom died; she had to help take care of her siblings and work on the farm. Married, widowed, twice. Raised children and buried some. When the land could no longer support them, Burnie and her family moved north in 1955 to seek a better life. She worked as a housekeeper in a few DC hotels. Didn't return to the South until she was an old woman. Never stopped praying, says a brief video on our local news.

An obituary states that Burnie Montgomery was survived by four of her children, 21 grandchildren, 46 great grandchildren, and 50 great-great-grandchildren, among others.

Added to my reading list the best-seller The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson.

Equipping New Cross-cultural Workers

Last week I submitted my 152-page Master’s thesis exploring how a dozen different U.S. missionary sending agencies approach training new workers, especially in the area of cultural study, along with an analysis of the pressures, priorities, and trends affecting the training landscape in general.

In any field or profession, new employees require some kind of orientation and “on-boarding” process. In some occupations, one can expect to find a wide pool of applicants who are already basically trained and qualified for the positions they will fill. In missionary service, however, this is not frequently the case. Few enter fully trained and equipped for the ministries they will perform. Applicants may have previous cross-cultural experience and ministry training or experience in their own culture, but the gap between what they know and what they need to know (or be able to learn and do) may be a large one.

How do the sending organizations respond to this reality? What do they do? What do they see as feasible for their agencies and their workers? What factors limit, challenge, or put pressure on their ability to provide training to new missionaries? It seems clear that any resources or recommendations for training approaches will need to take these factors into account, so even if we don't discover some great models of training in this area, we can learn about what it might take to create them by looking at other areas of training.

Working on this project reminded me of my early days as a church mission committee member when I so enjoyed learning about and/or meeting each of our church’s global partners and their diverse ministries. At that point I’d recently been burned by a large ministry with a single-solution response to the world’s problems and was delighted by the diversity I encountered.

The ministries I contacted for this study were not as diverse as the slate of ministries supported by my church back then, but every ministry does certain things a bit differently, and each one shared thoughtful and creative responses to the challenges of equipping new missionaries for cross-cultural work. Part of the agreement I made with contributors was that they would get a copy of the thesis so they could see the results. I hope each participant has at least one “aha!” moment and finds a new idea that could work in their context. Here are a couple that intrigue me.

Enlisting the Senders in the Orientation Process

The small US office of an international organization outsources much of their pre-field training and makes good use of prerequisites and assessments to make sure that those they send are well equipped and have the skills they need, despite limited training resources. Yet they still have to do some in-house training, and like most organizations that includes a candidate orientation event. In recent years they have cut the length of this event in half (from two weeks to one) by creating what they call a “Local Candidate Orientation” which candidates complete at home before coming to the US office. It’s sort of like an orientation in a box, and candidates gather like-minded family members, close friends, and home church leadership to work through it together.

“This change has been very positive and provided a much earlier start to the important relationships with a candidate’s sending church and leaders, as well as meeting and helping the family and friends understand who we are, how we work and care for our workers, as well as much more.”

Several other ministries reported strategies that reduce the time given to topics previously covered during an orientation event by covering this material through an (often more effective) distance-learning strategy. One has developed its own online course that trains new members in all they need to raise their financial support; several others use online classes developed by other ministries to provide training in fundraising or security.

Many also make use of mission mentors or coaches for candidates and appointees before and/or after the orientation event while they are preparing to go to the field. Such changes may not only reduce the cost of providing training or make it possible to provide training despite scarce resources, but often have additional significant benefits of their own. And they take pressure off of other programs and systems, allowing those to be more effective in accomplishing their primary purposes.

Helping Americans Become Self-aware and God-reliant

Another organization, also the US office of an international group, used to lean heavily on the Europe-based training which until recently had been the primary training new workers received before joining their teams on the field. But then they surveyed international leaders and asked what problems or issues seemed common to Americans and developed a US-based training with those needs in mind.

It begins with a two-month online program through a secret Facebook group which is designed to build community within a "cohort" of new candidates. They have weekly assignments and respond with videos and sometimes written responses. They also complete a spiritual gifts survey and work through a checklist of items with a church leader.

Next, candidates participate in a week-long orientation event, working in small groups led  by coaches who lead them through experiential training designed to help them become more self-aware and God-reliant. The event includes a “global village” simulation, an evangelism outreach in a local park, and a visit to the largest mosque in their part of the US where a Muslim explains his faith and hosts a question and answer session. Each of these experiences comes with thorough debriefing to help candidates process what they are thinking, feeling, and learning about themselves and the experience and discuss how it applies to the task ahead.

After the week-long orientation event, new workers continue to prepare together in their Facebook cohorts by working through a book on spiritual equipping for missions, and most go through the Europe-based training and orientation event two or three months later before joining their teams on the field.

The jury's still out on how much the new US-based training system will help, but so far all signs are positive.

Another organization, working primarily in Africa, came up with a similar solution to the weaknesses of their training program, creating a three-step orientation process that includes US training, an "Africa-Based Orientation," and a personalized "induction" process through which each new worker is paired with someone more experienced when they arrive in their new location.

Are Agencies Doing Enough?

I began my research with an assumption that (most) mission agencies weren't doing enough to train or require training for the new workers they send out, and that they ought to do more (especially in the area I wanted to focus on, equipping workers to do cultural research). I ended up with greater sympathy for the agencies given both the challenges they face and the "demand" from candidates and supporters to reduce the amount and cost of the training process.

Many agencies are also keenly aware that there is no substitute for training that is experiential, personal, learner-driven, and happens as close to the context where it is needed as possible. The conventional wisdom, these days, is that more training isn't necessarily better training, especially when we're talking about pre-field training. As a result, many agencies seem to be focusing on doing what they can to assess the needs of the individual and key in on things like character, emotional health, self awareness, etc. "Our assumption is that if these foundational items are in place, the new missionary will be in a good place to learn," said one leader: "We have always felt that much of what people need will be best learned on the field under the direction of our outstanding field leadership structure." 

“There is a limit to how much we can front load their preparation," emphasized another training leader. "I think we can encourage and make good resources available... I would add [that] for Americans it is also very important that they understand their own culture and how it is perceived by others, and how to work well cross culturally by adapting ‘our’ ways.”

Teaching in a Time of Terror

#Egypt lights the pyramids to show solidarity
with the people of #Lebanon, #France and #Russia
(Seen in The Guardian)

Just wrapped up my last round of 2015 public speaking, admittedly with some trepidation in light of the events unfolding in Paris as my travels began Friday evening.

A major terrorist attack. Another one!

But this one struck a stronger chord than usual with the American media and the public. It set off eddies of Americans talking about how they felt about the media coverage and media coverage about how Americans felt about the media coverage, and so on, until many news sources seem full of conspiracy theories and hawkish reactions. Mine were full of denouncements of those conspiracy theories and somewhat ridiculous statements about pursuing peace and unity (many, ironically, by calling for people to be more upset about more things, though others seemed mostly upset that people were upset and wanted everyone to just calm down). Seemed everybody was commenting on everything else until I dare not say or support anything at all, not with so many people so touchy.

Next on my plate is editing and publishing a set of Missions Catalyst News Briefs, and that will be delicate too, but there at least there's some time to pick and choose words and carefully frame them. Whereas getting up in front of these three Michigan Perspectives classes and talking about Muslims, immigrants and refugees, and understanding people from different cultures and religions, well, that seemed a bit fraught with peril. I didn't want to make things worse or add to what seems, to be, a growing cacophony of emotion and opinion.

One thing I folded in which I hope people found helpful was a discussion of essentialism and nominalism. Picked this up from the class I took a few years ago on contemporary issues in Islam.

Author Matthew Stone asks: what do we think of as being "really real," Islam, the Arab culture, and "the Muslim mind," and similar theories, ideals, and abstractions? Or are such things merely labels and models, simplified maps that may or may not accurately reflect the nuances of the religion, culture, or mindset of the specific community or individual in front of us, and guide us where we want to go? "Essentialism" focuses on the abstraction, while "nominalism" is more concerned with the specific or individual, what people have to say for themselves, not what they are "supposed to" believe or do according to a book or religious leader. Stone warns against what he calls cultural determinism, the idea that people come out of culture and religion factories and can be understood and evaluated according to what we think that factory is supposed to produce.

I think it's an esssentialist argument, for example, that the Qu'ran says (in places) that Christians are the enemy and Islam will triumph in the end, therefore "real" Muslims believe that, therefore "the Muslims" hate Christians and are trying to take over the world. So anyone who says otherwise, e.g., Christians like me or Muslims you actually meet who protest that kind of conclusion vehemently, are lying to you or deceiving themselves. A nominalist point of view can accept that there are Islamists who are trying to take over the world as well as lots of moderates who see things quite differently. Neither one is the "real Muslim," because what's a "real Muslim," anyway?

The making of maps and models gives us tools for communicating and understanding one another, but such tools can only take us so far. We soon find that people are much more diverse and complex. 

See also Models for Ministry (and their limitations).

South Carolina through the Storm

When our new community was hit by a natural disaster, I couldn't help but watch the local response through the eyes of sociologist (and in particular, a sociologist of religion). How would a Bible-belt state weather this storm differently than the pagans back where I come from—bless their hearts? TV was providing nearly 24-hour coverage of the storm during its height, the governor gave press conferences twice a day, and social media feeds were buzzing. All that gave me a chance to find out.

Saturday's rain was steady but the flooding of which we'd been warned had not hit by the time everyone went to bed that night. By morning, things were getting serious. Chris had barely made it home from a hospital call at 3am and knew, first hand, that the roads were no longer safe. Others had yet to reach that conclusion.

1. Going to church.

Churches seemed on the fence about what to do that first Sunday. The multi-site church we'd been attending closed some of their campuses and published statements that if you couldn't get out, it was fine to stay home. Other churches seemed to be taking the same line. But as the morning went on, more and more announced closures. Before long the news anchors were telling everyone "assume your church is closed!" (Not a question of public importance back in the Northwest.) In fact, they cited our local mayors who let it be known that they were asking ALL churches to cancel their services. "This is not a day for going to church. It's a day for Bedside Baptist and Pastor Pillow!" quipped one reporter.

Another new anchor shared how if she hadn't been called in to work, she had expected to be teaching Sunday school this morning down at her church, Shandon Baptist Church. Ironically the lesson was on Noah and the flood! That's not a story that would be told on broadcast TV back in Eugene, even though allusions to Noah or building an ark might be made.

Later we would learn that an older man from our part of town was drowned in his car that morning and had been believed to be on his way to church, First Baptist of Columbia.

Going to church. It's what you do here.

In comparison with some other parts of the country, church-going seems normative. Any time we've run Sunday errands we've noticed a lot of people in their "Sunday best," the existence of many "come as you are" congregations notwithstanding. (A note about "dressing up": What constitutes casual dress is a bit differently here. It might not be overstating the case to say that "dressing down" here is about like "dressing up" in the Northwest.)

Although people in Columbia seem pretty "churchy" to me, some of the older folks Chris is meeting at the hospital express concerns about the younger generation not going to church. They point out that churches that used to be big now are small. Chris has had a number of African Americans, in particular, speak of today's youth as lost or ruined. They blame the situation on people today getting too many government handouts and not having to work for things (as well as not being in church). Not sure how much the input he is getting is flavored by his religious identity (as a member of the "spiritual care" department). He's getting used to being referred to, at least occasionally, as a "pastor." He's had the opportunity to pray with many people.

2. Being the church.

Many, many of the churches are taking an active role in flood response, so much so that by the time our own isolation ended and Chris could get out, we weren't jumping up to volunteer. It didn't seem as if there was any lack of volunteers from among the Christians, from across the state, and beyond. Many churches took people in, collected supplies, distributed water, etc. and I'm sure that fundraisers and flood relief efforts will continue to characterize much of the local outreach for months go come. Well done, South Carolina.

I'm sure there's a lot more that could be said about what it looks like for local Christians to "be the church," but I'll wait and write more about that as I learn more.

Christian identity notwithstanding, the city of Columbia has all the usual "structures of sin" (and then some). There's an unusually high level of violent crime. Plenty of signs of drug and gang activity, too.

3. Using religious language.

In the Pacific Northwest, it's not uncommon for people to speak of prayer in times of crisis, but you're just as likely to hear references to "sending good thoughts your way." Many prefer to sound spiritual without being religious. I'm not hearing that in South Carolina. When people talk about praying for others or asking prayer, it sounds like they really mean prayer, as in interceding and talking to a Sovereign, Creator God. I like that. So, during the storm and in the follow up, there was a lot of talk about God and about prayer, and people said things you wouldn't necessarily say in other parts of the country. They talked about "being a people of faith."

I suppose they are probably just as likely to say "I'll pray for you" without actually doing it... orthodoxy is one thing; orthopraxy is another.

Another aspect of religious speech I struggle with a bit more. That's the expectation, in religious circles, that people are supposed to respond in ways they really wouldn't in any other context. In a classroom, workplace, or with family or friends, who shouts out agreement to someone who's talking? You don't do that! Well, not beyond nods and "uh huhs" and the like. But in all the churches we've visited and most of the chapel meetings I've been to on campus, people have been scolded if they don't offer  enough "amens."

I really don't like that. I'll agree with you if I agree with you, not just because you say so, and I'm probably not going to shout it out!  And if I were going to do that, why not use ordinary English?

We had a pastor back in Eugene who always asked us to flip back and forth between different passages, and often he'd say, "when you're there, say, 'I'm there.'" (Instead of "say amen!") That made a lot more sense to me. He was actually asking for feedback, not demanding a religious response.

So, I don't want to "amen." I see that it's expected, though. Oh well. It's not like I've never run into this before. I probably need to just let go of my reasons for finding it ridiculous or manipulative and accept it as part of the culture. Not wrong, just different.

Help! I Can't Communicate with My Mandarin-Speaking Grandpa

It's not only people who travel or move to other countries that have to be very intentional if they ever want to cross-cultural barriers enough to communicate. The same challenges face our ABC (American-born Chinese) friends and other children of immigrants. Language gaps are exacerbated by cultural ones and interpersonal discomfort... coming from the feeling that you OUGHT to be able to connect and already have lots of common ground.

I enjoyed a recent story on Global Voices, originally from PRI public radio, about one young woman who made a decision to find out what her grandfather had to say.

"...in all the years of spending time with my beloved grandpa, YeYe — him driving me to tennis lessons, teaching me how to make dumplings, and taking me to meals upon meals after school at McDonalds (his go-to spread is the Big Mac with Coke, mine the dollar menu chicken sandwich) — we’ve had never had a real conversation.

"YeYe is from Taiwan and only speaks Mandarin Chinese. My parents are from Taiwan too, but I was born and raised in the US. Though I understand a tiny bit of Chinese, I pretty much only speak English. To call our conversations simple would be a gross understatement. It’s basically: hello, how are you, are you hungry, on repeat.

"I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realize all this, but I decided to finally try to have my first in-depth conversation with YeYe.."

Listen to the story about Yowei's attempts to change this. 

A Culture of Learning

It’s been said that the average person suffers from three delusions. First, that he has a good sense of humor. Second, that he’s a good driver. And third, that he’s a good listener! *

On a mission trip, a sense of humor (good or otherwise) sure makes life sweeter. If you’re smart, you’ll let someone with local experience do the driving. But what about being a good listener, a good learner? Many a missionary has discovered he or she isn’t as good at this as first assumed. When you’re in another culture and get overwhelmed, it’s easier to withdraw, stick with your own ways of doing things, and tune out what you can’t make sense of.

What are some ways to avoid that trap, and instead learn as much as we can? Here are half a dozen of my favorite cultural engagement strategies for short-term teams.

» Read the article, Sustaining a Culture of Learning: Six Strategies for Short-Term Teams. I wrote it for a newsletter from Delta Ministries. 

* Told you I was going to find a way to use this illustration somewhere!

Autumn in Japan

Thought some of you might enjoy this look at fall, coming to us from the other side of the Pacific: 

"Kyoto and its royal courts were once strictly regulated by the changing seasons - many of the ancient traditions still exist.

• Shokuyoku no aki (time of hearty appetites) so as the heat dies down, the Japanese enjoy culinary treats such as maple leaves in tempura
• Tsukimi (moon viewing) when people stand on a hill with lashings of tea to view the harvest moon which is thought to be larger and more radiant than at any other time
• Dokusho no aki (autumn reading) because the shorter days make one more reflective than during the brassier days of summer
• Supotsu no aki (autumn sport) as students enjoy the "crisp autumn air," despite the fact that typhoon season makes early autumn here anything but crisp"

Source: Why Japan's beaches are deserted - despite the sunshine (BBC News Magazine)

Contextualizing the Messenger

"Are your efforts to contextualize the gospel all about you?" asks Eric McKiddie in a recent article for The Gospel Coalition. Like many who hear about the concept, those words brought to mind the goateed, hipster urban church planter or the foreign missionary in native dress. Contextualization was, well, kind of cool. And here he was moving from a somewhat stuffy church in the heartland to a more casual, trendy church plant in the Bible belt. Score! Preaching without a tie!

But as much as Eric enjoyed adapting to his new context, he came to realize he had yet to learn some of the lessons from 1 Corinthians 9.

Though I had read this passage countless times, I noticed something I never saw before: sacrifice was the hallmark of Paul's contextualization. Verse by verse, the Spirit began to show me that my enjoyment of my next context—even if not in egregiously sinful ways—betrayed more of a concern for my preferences and pride, not the lost.

Are You Serving Others or Yourself?

"I have become all things to all people" (1 Cor. 9:22) is a theme verse for contextualizing the gospel. Paul determined to meet people where they are. If we are not willing to bring the gospel to unbelievers in the midst of their mess—just like Jesus met us—then it will be hard for unbelievers to see that Jesus can save them out of the mess they are in.

But when you scan your eyes up a couple verses, you see the way Paul becomes all things to all people: "I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them" (1 Cor. 9:19, emphasis added). Contextualization starts with service. Becoming all things begins with serving all people.

Over and over Paul shows how he set aside his preferences to see others believe the gospel.

Are You Contextualizing to All or to Some?

In every sport I've played I've been coached to stay on the balls of my feet. Back on your heels, you are unprepared to react. But if you stay on the balls of your feet, you are ready to move toward the action. For Paul, contextualization was about doing gospel ministry "on the balls of his feet." He was ready to serve anyone at any time in any way.

This is different from how I often hear people discussing contextualization. People often talk about aiming at one context: the poor, the city, the university students, and so on. But Paul was ready to contextualize the gospel to anyone at hand:

To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. (1 Cor. 9:19-22)

Wherever you live—whether city, suburb, or rural—are you willing to contextualize the gospel to all, even people you don't like so much? Or are you merely willing to become some things to some people, that by some means you might save some?

If you have an overly defined segment of the population that you are trying to reach, it is possible you are merely trying to reach people whose company you prefer.

Jesus Served Us

In Philippians 2:7, Paul describes the incarnation as Jesus "taking the form of a servant." At the outset, Jesus looked to the needs of others. Moreover, Jesus was a servant through his death, "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:42). These bookends show that Jesus' entire ministry—from birth to death—was marked by giving up his rights as the eternally begotten Son to serve sinful people like us.

How do we respond to the way Jesus served us? By giving up our rights and serving others, whomever they may be, to bring them the gospel. It will require sacrifice, to be sure. But that sacrifice does not come without a reward, as Paul says, "I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings" (1 Cor. 9:23).

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Taking your cultural "strengths" overseas

In the last two weeks I've visited seven Perspectives classes to teach lessons on mission history. Before my spring "tour" is done I will attend a mission conference in Portland, participate in a week of meetings around a forum for church leaders in Orlando, spend a few days in Southern California, and then, March 31 and April 10, teach two more Perspectives lessons. Those are a culture lesson. In pulling up my notes about crossing cultures I remember how much fun this material is to teach. It's more personal. And much less "sage on the stage." I'll step more fully into the mode of "guide on the side," raising questions and inviting the class to discuss their own experiences and concerns and come to their own conclusions.

I'm also reminded how easy it is to believe that working in a cross-cultural situation is hard because of problems with the other people's culture. But that's not a very helpful conclusion. It's no use going around expecting other people to change on our behalf. Far more effective to acknowledge and examine our expectations and look for ways to adjust them along with our thinking and behavior. Those are the only thing over which we have at least some control.

I like the way Kenyan pastor Oscar Muriu describes these tensions:

Americans have two great things going for them culturally. One is that Americans are problem-solvers. Every time I come to the U.S., I like to spend a couple hours in a Wal-Mart. I find solutions to problems that I never thought of!

The rest of the world, even Europe, isn't so intent on solving inconveniences. We tend to live with our problems… Americans don't easily live with a problem—they want to solve the problem and move on…

The second great thing for Americans is that your educational system teaches people to think and to express themselves. So a child who talks and asserts himself in conversation is actually awarded higher marks than the one who sits quietly.

Those two things that are such great gifts in the home context become a curse when you go into missions. Americans come to Africa, and they want to solve Africa. But you can't solve Africa. It's much too complex for that. And that really frustrates Americans.

And the assertiveness you are taught in school becomes a curse on the field. I often say to American missionaries, "When the American speaks, the conversation is over." The American is usually the most powerful voice at the table. And when the most powerful voice gives its opinion, the conversation is over.

I tell Americans: "We're going into this meeting. Don't say anything! Sit there and hold your tongue." When you sit around a table, the people speaking always glance at the person they believe is the most powerful figure at the table. They will do that with you when you're the only American. And at some point, they will ask you: "What do you think?"

Don't say anything. If you say anything, reflect back with something like "I have heard such wisdom at this table. I am very impressed." And leave it at that. Affirm them for the contribution they have made. Don't give your own opinion.

Americans find that almost impossible. They do not know how to hold their tongue. They sit there squirming, because they're conditioned to express their opinions. It's a strength at home, but it becomes a curse on the field.

(Source: Problem-Solving, Opinionated Americans from Leadership Journal, The African Planter: Nairobi Chapel pastor on mission trips, and working well across cultures. An interview with Oscar Muriu (quoted in Leading Across Cultures: Effective Ministry and Mission in the Global Church pgs 110-111)

A Fresh Look at Exploring the Land

Last month I spent just under two weeks in a major European city which has long been home to a large and growing immigrant population. The Europe-focused ministry that sponsored the trip brought me along to help train some of their staff in the principles and practices of ethnographic field work (as well as beginning such work in that city). Doing ethnographic surveying is one of the first 2-3 steps in their plan to try to launch rapidly reproducing church movements there among the immigrant peoples there and in dozens of other cities in the next five years. The subsequent steps involve a well-developed strategy for prayer, a structured evangelism blitz, and following up all who respond by organizing discovery Bible studies and simple, reproducible churches - ultimately encouraging those who are part of the movement to begin taking it back to their homelands.

One reason I wanted to participate in this project was to help me re-think my assumptions about culture. Specifically, I'm struggling to understand what place cultural differences and cultural learning have in ministries that are operating with pre-determined strategies and tactics. These guys knew exactly what they wanted to see happen and how they were going to go about it. Why would they want to learn about culture?  Were they prepared to change anything on the basis of what they might learn? If not, was the research really necessary? Ethnography - seeking an insider's perspective by learning about a culture from face-to-face interviews with the insiders - is something I haven't been willing or able to let go of, over the years. It's something I love, and who else will wave the flag for it? But maybe I should look for other avenues and give up my ideas that church planters should be interested in this kind of stuff.

I realized, as my questions crystallized, how much my early training in ethnography was focused on developing strategy. Our big questions were 1) who are the people groups (stratification), 2) what are they like (social structure) and 3) how can they be reached? The last question we usually explored through the lens of social dynamics and the studies of receptivity, ministry history, and church growth.

The thing is, as the years have gone by, those three big questions seem to resonate less and less with people I train. The mission community as a whole has found answers to question #1 and has relatively little felt need for people group studies. I would like to see missionaries hold their people-group lists a little more lightly; they don't tend to reflect many of the sociologically significant divisions that really exist on the ground - functional "tribes" - because language and ethnicity don't tell you everything or reveal the ways communities are affected by social dynamics like globalization, government policies, and immigration. At any rate, as the lists of sociolinguistic peoples have improved and gained acceptance, interest in stratification studies of any kind has waned.

Interest in question #3 has also declined. For one reason or another few seem interested in developing strategies highly informed by cultural research. Even the whole area of "contextualization" is often discussed in broad sweeping terms (what words should we use for God when we talk about him with Muslims?) as if it has little to do with on-the-ground contexts, the ways in which one community, city, or region differs from another. And here I thought that was the point of contextualization!

So, more than a decade ago I stopped thinking of our research reports as strategy reports, and focused more on writing them as cultural descriptions. And if I'm honest about it I have to admit that even in our earliest days of ethnography for church planting, few of those who embraced the research used it in any great degree to develop their strategies (though they did use it; see below).

One factor in our lack of influence over vision and strategy was that most of our researchers had little training in ministry models. They did not know how to use language that would show respect to their readers' training and assumption and still make a difference in how missionaries pursue church planting. Since I had learned everything I do more or less on the job, it was hard for me to see beyond the models I'd inherited. I sensed they were limited or broken or waning in relevance, but I didn't know what do do about that. That's one reason I decided to go to grad school, actually.

One thing I noticed was that even those who did not think we had anything to contribute to strategy development often ate up our prayer materials, videos, and cultural descriptions. There's still a niche market for people group profiles, National Geographic style articles, prayer guides, great photography and all that. As long as those things were part of the picture, both those who had very loose ideas about strategy - maybe considering it arrogant to go in thinking they knew what they were doing - and those who had their strategies all figured out in advance - like my colleagues on this trip to Europe - could see the value in doing ethnography. They wanted us to do it, or to do it together with us. Maybe it was time for me to let go of my high-minded ideas about why.

Here's what remains. I think it's more than enough. Even for those who don't see ethnography as a building block for their strategies can experience the following benefits:

1. Doing ethnography and/or reading the results of it still provide anyone involved in a church-planting effort with valuable help in loving and understanding the people they want to reach.

2. Ethnography also uncovers moving and significant stories to share in raising up prayer and more workers.

3. Ethnography can uncover anticipating obstacles and opportunities for ministry efforts - felt needs, hopes and fears, and patterns of relationship.

4. Ethnography can reveal  a better idea what stories and principles are likely to mean the most to people, informing evangelism, discipleship, and teaching efforts.

In my book, that’s plenty. Maybe we were just taking ourselves - and the role our work could play in strategy! too darn seriously. 

NEXT STEPS

Our ethnography training sessions in Europe were all videotaped and the ministry plans to use them in creating a curriculum to train teams in other cities. The video team also got footage for promotional materials they’ll be able to use in raising up prayer teams and evangelism teams. They’ll probably use some of the stories we heard to create a one-week prayer guide for supporters of the prayerwalking teams to use back home.

Maybe it won't all happen. Maybe it won't all work. (I'm not the only one carrying around models that may not be sufficient for their purpose!) I could turn my hands to other things, but I am no longer haunted by a fear that I must, that the model would have to be thrown out all together. I can rest easy that my investment in passing on what I do know about ways to explore another culture was worth it. I got some answers to my questions.

Church-planting movements and my questions about culture

A Wind in The House of Islam

Recently I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by David Garrison. It was a small group so I was able to corner him with some of my big questions, ones I struggle with every time another ethnography project comes along.

More than a decade ago Garrison wrote a book called Church Planting Movements. It sent a lot of ripples through frontier mission world. Although he definitely came out with a model (the basis for many of the models frontier mission agencies are using today) he built it on pretty solid phenomenological research. That's a fancy way of saying he's thinking descriptively, not prescriptively. Lots of stories, lots of case studies... then look for the patterns that emerge, after. He basically "reverse engineered" the movements he found and looked for best practices. Plenty of people responded negatively though, and some accused him of developing a formula and saying it would work anywhere. I don't think that's what he meant to do, but it came across that way, especially in the hands of folks looking for a "silver bullet."  

Now Garrison is writing another book about these movements, with similar methodology, and this time focusing on movements to Christ taking place in the Muslim world. According to Garrison, though hundreds of formerly Christian people groups turned to Islam in the first 1300 years after Muhammad, we only find one or two movements in the other direction during that time - a movement of Muslims becoming followers of Jesus. All along there have been individual conversions, but not growing, reproducing movements.

This though, has now changed. From 1980 to 2000 there were eight movements like that around the world. Since 2000 he's been able to document about 70! Continuing research suggests the number of these movements is growing. This is historically unprecedented, and a lot of people in the circles I move in are pretty excited about it.

Garrison defines a movement to Christ as being voluntary (not a matter of coercion) and involving at least 1,000 baptized believers and/or 100 churches within a ten-year period. And for this research, he's been careful to confirm that these churches were made up of people from Muslim backgrounds, not animistic or Christian elements within a Muslim culture or country.

Movements, Models, and Diversity

With my background in cultural research, my ears perked up a bit as he explained that his title, A Wind in the House of Islam, alludes to a global "house" with nine rooms, the nine major affinity blocks - I realized he wasn't talking about cookie-cutter movements that all had to look the same.

"Nine Rooms in the House of Islam"

I think this a healthy step back from what Stone described as "essentialism," (see previous post) which would lead Christians to think Muslims are all alike and that there may be some common strategic key to reaching them.

Garrison says on the book website,

"Though Muslims everywhere share many common bonds... Muslims are by no means a monolithic culture. Muslims vary widely in their culture. From West Africa to Central Asia to Indonesia, Islamic cultural practices are as diverse as the people themselves.”

"For this reason, we have chosen to examine what is happening in the Muslim world with special respect to each of those distinct cultural regions or affinity blocs. These nine regions share mutual history, languages, geography and intertwining ethnicity. By examining movements within each of these distinct cultural zones, we are better able to understand how God is uniquely at work within each one.”

After hearing Garrison's presentation, I introduced myself and told him I was trying to figure out how cultural differences, cultural understanding, and cultural training might fit into the church-planting, disciple-making movement models currently being adopted by more and more mission agencies and Christians working cross-culturally (CPM/DMM). He was aware of some of the ethnographic work I've been part of and did not seem to see a conflict at all.

But he did make this distinction:

The now traditional model for incarnational missions focused heavily on training and sending out foreign missionaries to the least reached places, where they attempted to contextualize their message and their way of life out of love for the people in their host culture and in hopes of being able to say, "follow me as I follow Christ." The end goal, though maybe seldom realized, has been to reach those who will reach others; to work oneself out of a job and gracefully exit as the church or ministry becomes self-sustaining.

The new models place much less emphasis on the role of missionary, but work to empower and encourage highly reproducible local leadership from the get-go. It doesn't work like magic, but if it works at all, the problem of missionary contextualization quickly fades away in favor of indigenization (which I am pretty sure nobody disputes is much more effective; and it's the goal of the incarnational/contextualizers, too).

Cultural training, cultural understanding, are still crucial, Garrison told me. "Keep doing it!!" he urged when I asked flat out. If an outsider is involved in the movement at all, he or she will need that cultural savvy to establish credibility. And probably to navigate the issues that arise, though they may be - perhaps always have been - out of our control. Just because we're not putting so many eggs in the incarnational basket doesn't mean we don't need to appreciate cultural dynamics, he said. They still play a significant part.

This was helpful, but I still don't "get it." I need to ponder these things more, I think. I am not entirely convinced that what I've been taught - and what I've taught - about the importance of culture meshes with the CPM models. I'm trying to figure out what we need to rethink and revise, at least in teaching culture to folks who have fully embraced CPM models and assumptions. And off I go to Germany to teach it one more time with a colleague asking the same questions. Please pray for breakthrough in our thinking on these questions.

Another thing I'm trying to keep in mind is Matthew Stone's warning in Reaching Muslims with Love and Logic against cultural determinism - itself a form of essentialism, it seems. May our research never become dogmatic and directive, assuming that people always do what their culture tells them to.

"Muslims are not products of cultural factories; Arabs are not all the same. Understanding someone's culture is tremendously helpful in understanding that individual, but I shy away from embracing cultural determinism that glosses over differences and can, in its worse form, view individuals as merely an expression of culture."