WHEN YOU CROSS CULTURES - World Evangelical Alliance

12 WHEN YOU CROSS CULTURES
CHAPTER TWO
THE LIFE AND LIFESTYLE
OF THE MESSENGER
Contextualisation affects the life and lifestyle of the cross-cultural messenger.
This will affect his way of life and standards of living. When missionaries
go to a new culture, one of the first considerations relates to how they should
live. Most missionaries will try to identify with the culture to some degree. Not
all, however, will have the same convictions about lifestyles.
As a trainee in Vietnam, I noticed that living standards among
missionaries were varied. Some adopted a “middle class” lifestyle living in a
missionary compound with servants to help. A few Western church and mission
agencies appeared to have had a policy for missionaries to live like the upper
class in the land. Such luxurious living attracted nationals who already spoke
their language and had former exposure to Westerners.
Other missionaries lived simply. Warren Myers was one of them. He was
my mentor from the 1960s until his passing in 2001. As a missionary trainee in
Vietnam, I had the privilege of sharing a room with him in a small bedroom
attached to a small office. The size of the room was actually enough just for one
bed, a chest of drawers and one desk. Warren added a foldable wooden and
canvas “camp bed” for me, not particularly comfortable but adequate. He even
squeezed another small desk into the room.
There was little privacy. The road beside the room had continual traffic –
pedestrians, bicycles, taxis and horse carts. I remember a horse peering through
our window one morning looking as bewildered as I was! Our room was still
bigger than that of a Vietnamese co-labourer’s who slept in the same house.
This person’s self-giving life was a continual challenge to me. Our rented house
did not have an attached bathroom or running water. The toilet was a hole in
the ground outside the house. Vietnamese nationals seemed to be comfortable
coming to our “home” and bedroom for conversations. I presented the Gospel
to a medical student in our room and he later received Christ.
When some of my colleagues (both Asian and Western) ministered in
South Asia, the team initially committed themselves to living very simply in
order to identify with the people of the land who were largely poor. The group
decided to do without amenities, some of which were considered as essentials