As a child I feasted on all those books Mother had brought home—Tommy Goes to Africa, Bride on the Amazon, and Eric B. Hare's Clever Queen. The books did their work, and so one day, I announced that I would be a missionary on the Amazon river in Africa. I was nine years old. Obviously, my geography needed serious revision before my dream could-be realized. But there would be more—much more—that I'd need to learn, and unlearn, to be a missionary.
I grew up in a small American midwestern town. We regularly attended the Adventist church. It was there that I got my early sense of how one "does church." Our congregation was small compared to the others in town, but we had enough in common to nurture and reinforce in me a healthy idea of "church."
I learned to show reverence by silence, to sing the hymns of Fanny Crosby, never to chew gum in church, always to wear my best polished shoes, and to kneel or stand quietly for prayer. In addition to these general lessons, I learned how to be a "good Adventist"—what to eat and wear and think and be. By the time I was ready for college, I had pretty much mastered the whole church scene. Obviously, I was well on the road to being a good missionary.
In college I majored in education and minored in religion. It seemed like a good combination—especially for a woman want ing to be a missionary. When I graduated, I felt as if I were ready to go. All I had to do was wait for a "call," which when translated meant a job. After all, I'd been called by God when I was nine years old.)
Eventually I did go to the mission field— not to the Amazon, but to the Far East, serving for 23 years in Singapore and Thailand as a teacher, dean of girls, pastor, and school administrator. It wasn't all I'd dreamed of. It was more in many ways, less in others, and different in all. As time went by the shocker proved to be the fact that much of my early life had actually been quite ineffective in preparing me to meet some of the greatest challenges of missions.
The missionary across cultures
A cross-cultural missionary is one who leaves the comfort and familiarity of his or her culture to go to a place where the gospel needs to be presented. I was eager to go as a teacher, church planter, medical worker, or in any other position. And for this special mission a missionary must be prepared.
Obviously, the first requisite for a missionary is a commitment to follow God's leading, coupled with a deep faith and trust in His love, power, and willingness to "be with us always—even to the ends of the earth" (Matt. 28:20). Then the missionary usually needs some kind of work training—as a pastor, doc tor, accountant, whatever.
Then comes a whole host of other necessities—flexibility, a sense of adventure, flexibility, team-building skills, flexibility, a knowledge of the new place of service, flexibility—I think you get the picture.
The greatest challenge of all is adapting to culture change. Culture affects everything we do and think. It affects the kind of music we like, the food we eat, the way we raise our children, how we talk to our parents, and virtually everything in our lives. It also affects what we believe and value (what is beautiful or ugly, good or bad, polite or impolite, appropriate or inappropriate).
At the deepest level it affects our worldview— what is real (the spirits or God), what is plausible (going to the moon or having "evil eye"), and how we view time and space. Our culture is such an integral part of us, governing all we think and do, that we are unaware of its impact on us. But it's there, quietly defining what is "normal," helping us make "rational decisions," and enabling us to function in a reasonably integrated fashion from day to day. Only when we run head-on into a different culture does our own culture become fully apparent.
When we as missionaries go into another culture, we come face-to-face with a different but equally valid culture and we quickly discover that at all three levels (external behaviors, beliefs and values, and worldview) there are major differences.
Some of these differences may be dictated by climate and geography. Some foods will be available and others not, making it hard to eat corn flakes for breakfast and potatoes for lunch in many places. Other differences are the result of centuries of varying history, religion, and tradition.
In today's world, one does not have to move physically from one country or cultural group to another to face this challenge. Globalization and mass migration have created multicultural situations in every major city in the world. Most churches today have multi-cultural congregations with people from many different ethnic groups. Pastors are faced with the same questions missionaries face about worship, behavior, standards, and other cultural issues.
When a missionary or pastor encounters a new culture, their view of "normalcy" evaporates. Familiar behaviors and products, familiar "behavior cues" and accustomed values and beliefs undergo challenge. Life takes on a surreal feeling.
Cultural adaptations
Of necessity, missionaries must make huge cultural adaptations. This is not just a case of some flexibility; it's much more than that. The missionary must become as a child and begin slowly learning the outward manifestations of the new culture, as well as what is behind the behaviors, beliefs, values, and worldviews of that culture. Instead of judging everything by their own standard of what is "normal," missionaries must revise and expand that standard in almost every area.
Traditional ways people live—their foods, houses, clothing, travel modes, games and sports, singing and worship—are not intrinsically right or wrong. Ministers and missionaries must come to know, understand, and ultimately learn to appreciate new and different ways of doing almost everything.
Unfortunately, our own culture tends to get in our way at every turn. As a result, the first tendency is always to give negative attribution to everything that is different from our own ways. We tend to judge these differences as foolish, wrong, inefficient, evil, stupid, wasteful, backward, etc.
Worship is one of the most sensitive areas for religious leaders and missionaries. I had to learn that not all churches had to look like those back in my home town, and not all worship services had to follow the same patterns as the ones I attended as a child. Though pianos and Fanny Crosby hymns, organs and Bach are wonderful in some places, I had to learn that the simple chanting of a hymn or psalm is more meaningful if that is the acceptable cultural mode of expression in another culture.
Many different musical instruments can be used to bring praise to God. To insist that people wear polished shoes to church would be absurd where people wear rubber sandals and their culture requires them to leave these at the door of the church to show true reverence. Sitting cross-legged on the floor or even lying prostrate may be a more appropriate position for prayer than the standing or kneeling of my childhood.
In the areas of both life and worship, we see in the Bible a mosaic of cultures, in and through which God has worked to accomplish His purpose. He rarely changed anything in the day-to-day lives of people and almost always worked within their concept of "normal," in areas of life and worship.
During the nomadic life of Abraham and Sarah, God met with them at simple altars scattered throughout Mesopotamia. He direct ed the wandering Israelites to build Him a traveling tent so He could live as they did. Later He dwelt in a magnificent temple "fit for a king" during the period of the kingdom. The meet ings of the New Testament communities were radically different from any that might have occurred during the patriarchal period. Always we see God adapting Himself to the ways of the people to whom He was reaching out.
Jesus and Paul as missionaries
Consider the life of Christ from a missiological viewpoint. Jesus also made major adaptations in His life to fit into the culture of His "mission field." In theological terms we refer to this as the incarnational model. The missiological implications of Jesus' ministry are enormous.
Christ left behind the advanced and glorious culture of heaven, and for 33 years lived, dressed, ate, and worshiped like any other first-century Jew. Instead of worshiping to the strains of celestial anthems, He worshiped to the blast of a ram's horn trumpet and the chants of temple worship.
Paul, following Jesus' example of adaptation, stated his "methods," ending with these significant words: "I have become all things to all men, so that by all possible means I might save some" (1 Cor 9:19-22). As Ralph Winter states, "God did not require a Gentile to commit cultural suicide to become a believer."1
Both Jesus and Paul, model missionaries, adapted their lives to the culture and needs of the people they were reaching. But beyond that, they adapted the way they delivered their message. Compare Jesus' words to the Samaritan woman (John 4) to the way He spoke to the Pharisees. Consider the way He taught the common people in parables based on familiar events in their everyday lives. Examine Paul's words to Agrippa (Acts 25:25-26:23), and compare them with the way he spoke to those gathered in the synagogue in Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-3), to the "heathen" crowd in Lystra (Acts 14:15-17), or to the Greeks on Mars Hill (Acts 17:22-32) and see how Paul presented the good news, always taking into account his audience's perspective, knowledge, and cultural background.
I've learned a lot since those early days when I first decided to be a missionary. Looking back at the mission story books I read as a child, I'm convinced that good missionaries throughout history have followed the example of Jesus and Paul, "becoming all things to all [people]," so that they can save some. In the end everyone who is a minister is a missionary.
1 Perspectives (1992), 177.
