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245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 96 96 How Culture Affects Mission in its ministry area. Thus, the Ivorian Christians in Abidjan need to see the Vietnamese immigrants in their country as people for whom Christ died. Churches in Portland, Maine, must recognize that the people of more than 70 nationalities living in their city are their evangelistic responsibility. A Cross-Cultural Experience It was a bumpy, rock-strewn trail, and we were traveling in fourwheel drive. Missionaries Bob and Lori Bracy were taking us to their rural house at Nondugl in the western highlands of Papua New Guinea. Down the dirt road, Nondugl eventually came into view. Brilliant red and white poinsettias splashed color around. Every part of the house where we were going to stay was constructed of bamboo—including the bed that we were to sleep on. Pastor Yambe Sike and his wife, Marta, came out to welcome us. With evening shadows beginning their journey across the Highlands landscape, the Sikes invited us to have dinner with them. Their cookhouse was a large thatched structure with a friendly fire in the middle of the floor supplying warmth as well as light. Marta cooked our evening meal over the open fire. As we were eating, an early evening rainstorm blew up and soon sheets of water were lashing the bamboo cookhouse. But we were dry and cozy inside. The children of both families ventured out and returned decorated with mud. Finally, Pastor Yambe picked up his Bible and announced that we would end the day with devotions. As we gathered around the fire, our host said he had selected Galatians 3 for the reading. In the flickering light of the cookhouse fire, Pastor Yambe read, “You are all children of God through faith . . . There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26, 28). I looked across the fading embers of the fire at the two families, one from Papua New Guinea and one from the United States. Some of the children were nearly asleep. This is the truth: we are all one in Jesus Christ, I thought. Jesus spans cultural and ethnic boundaries, binding us together in Him. 7 —Charles Gailey In the 1950s anthropologists began using the idea of cultural relativity to try to move people away from ethnocentrism and to abandon the cultural evolution paradigm of evaluating other cultures. That older cultural evolution model put cultures on a “progress” scale where some were categorized as backward and childlike and others were seen as enlightened and the standard toward which all other cultures should be moving. Cultural relativity insists that all cultures be judged on their own merits. Cultural relativity can, of course, be carried to an extreme with sinful prejudice, abuse, and injustice being glossed
245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 97 How Culture Affects Mission 97 over because they are “part of that culture.” Insights from cultural anthropology can help church leaders as they seek to discern where the Kingdom ethic should challenge, confront, and call for change. If that does not happen, an uncritical embracing of cultural practices can lead to syncretistic forms of faith with non-Christian beliefs and practices becoming intermingled with Christian ones. Ignoring a culture’s deep elements can also result in a type of syncretism where Christianity becomes simply a thin coating of biblical material on top of other value systems. 2. Effectiveness and Emotional Well-being of Cross-cultural Missionaries Cultural understanding is vital for ministry effectiveness and for the emotional health of cross-cultural workers. About 75 years ago missionary Lula Schmelzenbach wrote a biography of her husband who had died while they were serving in Africa. In telling Harmon’s story, Lula revealed some of her own missionary philosophy and strategy, including how best to learn culture, “A missionary must live among the [local people] every day in the week and every week in the year if he would gain a knowledge of their language and customs, which one must have to win them for Christ.” 8 Missionaries will most effectively fulfill their call if they become ardent students of culture. Sometimes the burning desire to spread the Good News tempts new missionaries to spring into action before they have absorbed much of a culture or have had time to earn credibility within it. Too shallow of an understanding of culture is what led to the failure of Bruce Wilkerson’s muchballyhooed and well-financed Dream for Africa project. Julie Woolery, volunteer missionary to Guam, has said that she discovered being incarnational in mission meant “living with people, entering life together, building relationships.” 9 As the Gospels make clear, Jesus lived as a first-century Jew for 30 years before beginning His ministry. Donald Larson, professor of anthropology and linguistics at Bethel College, wrote that an ideal entry model for the new missionary is that of being a learner and trader as opposed to trying immediately to be a teacher and seller. 10 Implied in all this is the thought that a missionary should have an insatiable curiosity. Anthropologist Miriam Adeney, who teaches at Seattle Pacific <strong>University</strong>, wrote that Mary Slessor’s ministry as a Presbyterian missionary in Calabar in the late 1800s and early 1900s was effective because she was “awake, aware, curious, asking questions, categorizing information, applying it.” 11 Since missionary drop-out is often due in part to culture stress, proper acculturation may foster missionary longevity on the field. Tom and Elizabeth Brewster, specialists in language learning, wrote that early bonding with a cul-
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discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

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