“Three men walk into a cave: An American, a Japanese man, and a Wermahi.*
The American calls out, “Hello!”
And the cave answers back, “‘elloo, ‘elloo, ‘elloo!”
The Japanese man calls out, “Konnichiwa!”
And the cave answers back, “‘ichiwaa, ‘ichiwaa, ‘ichiwaa!”
The Wermahi man calls out, “Khawneshi!”*
And the cave answers back, “Whaaaat????”
This joke was recently shared, to great effect, with a group of local men in my living room. What made it even better was that the one telling the joke was himself ethnically Wermahi*, a member of one of our minority language groups. The joke is, of course, so funny to other locals because the Wermahi language is so different and unintelligible to the other language groups around it, even though they all consider themselves members of the same regional ethnicity.
This great difference between the nearby Wermahi language and the language spoken in Poet City* and Caravan City* is simply an amusing fact of life for people here, something for members of both communities to laugh about. As it should be. God has unexpectedly brought about many good things through the original scattering of languages (and the resulting cultures) that happened at Babel. Undoubtedly, one of those good gifts is the existence of intercultural humor.
I recently reread the first book in C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, and was struck by Dr. Ransom’s observations about when the three intelligent species of the planet Malacandra got together. This kind of mixing of the species seemed especially to draw out the humor of each one. It’s as if there was something about the contrast between the different, yet equal species and their distinct kinds of humor that somehow resulted in more joy and laughter when they mixed than when each species was merely living among its own people.
This reminded me about how downright hilarious intercultural differences can be. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, pick up a copy of Daniel Nayeri’s memoir Everything Sad Is Untrue, and you’ll quickly see what I mean. Some of the funniest writers and comedians out there are third culture kids, those who have grown up in the midst of multiple cultures, and so have a particular ability to both understand and play with the differences of each. Even when the cultural differences are as slight as those between Americans and Canadians, these differences can be leveraged to hilarious effect, as when Jim Gaffigan does a standup routine about the Canadian map.
It seems that God has designed us to simply find certain kinds of differences funny. And while this can often be twisted by sin and used to laugh at others not like us, the core experience itself must be good, something that can be redeemed so that we are laughing with one another about our differences. My Wermahi friend was a good example of this, as was a Peruvian brother who preached this past week at our international church and illustrated his sermon with a story about time differences.
“I arrived at the meeting the Germans invited me to ten minutes after the start time. For my culture, I was doing great! I was early! But when I arrived, I was shocked to find out the devotional had already finished. Apparently, Germans expect you to arrive ten minutes before the meeting time so that they can start exactly on time. But my Central Asian friends? When I ask them what time I should expect them for dinner, they look at me strange! Like, ‘Why do you need to know a time?’ Because in this culture, it’s always the right time to receive a guest.”
The congregation when this brother preached was made up of attendees from about twenty-five different countries, including locals, all laughing good-naturedly at these true and genuinely funny time differences between cultures. Once again, this is as it should be.
Strange things are afoot in Western culture these days. The pendulum seems to be swinging hard away from some of the self-censoring and self-righteous political correctness and back into territory where joking about our cultural differences is not so taboo anymore, even for majority-culture White folk. I welcome the healthy parts of this, even as I know that some will take it too far, back to the kinds of jokes that communicate that differences imply inferiority. But as with food or alcohol, so with intercultural humor. “Men can go wrong with wine and women,” Luther famously said. “Shall we then prohibit and abolish women?” The potential for abuse is no reason to ban a good gift. Rather, the key is for Christians to model how that good gift can be properly enjoyed for God’s glory.
How can we be sure that our intercultural humor is healthy and helpful, an enjoyment of a good gift, rather than a sneaky dig at someone we feel we’re superior to? Well, can you tell that same joke in the presence of those from that culture and have them laughing as well? If you’re not sure, you’re probably better off not sharing it. Here, as in so many things, genuine friendship with those from other cultures makes all the difference. There are things I have learned that Central Asians find funny about themselves, such as their traditional giant parachute pants. Then there are other things they are aware of, but not yet ready to joke about, like their penchant for incessant selfie-taking. We’ve learned it’s best to follow their lead on what aspects of culture they’re ready to offer up as the butt of good jokes.
Individuals are like this, too, and as is so often the case, culture is functioning here a lot like group personality, including the same kind of foibles and inconsistencies. Why can a man laugh at a joke about his belly but get embarrassed by a joke about his hair? Why do Americans get slightly offended by a joke about how much unhealthy food we eat, but can laugh at a joke about our comparative unwillingness to learn other languages? (What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American!). These inconsistencies are a bit odd, but they are real. We do well to watch out for them.
One other warning when it comes to intercultural humor. In general, keep the jokes nice and clear. Humor is hard to translate, as a rule. But sarcasm? Not only hard to translate, but often downright unintelligible or offensive. Saying the opposite of what you mean for some kind of comedic effect is hard to pull off well in your own language and culture, let alone in someone else’s. Slapstick humor about things like fridges falling out of the sky tends to do well. Jokes dependent on wordplay or sarcasm usually end up as duds, at best. As my wife recently pointed out regarding sarcasm in texts, humor is dependent on shared context. You either need to tell translated jokes that have relatively universal content, or you need to know enough about the local context in order to play with its realities and quirkiness.
As with all humor, believers need to run it through the filter of Ephesians 4:29: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Is the intent of that intercultural joke to build the other person up, to share something fit for the occasion, to give the hearer grace through the good gift of laughter? If so, then fire away. But still pay attention because the effect of the joke may still end up an intercultural dumpster fire even if the intent of it was good and Christian at the start.
As with the fictional alien species of Malacandra, so with the different peoples of the real world. There is something about when we mix that does and should lead to lots of good shared laughter. It seems that Babel not only gave us thousands of languages with which to eternally praise God, but also thousands of humorous differences from one another as well. And if these make great fodder for jokes now, just imagine what we’ll get to do with them in eternity.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Praise God, one of the international churches in our region got a pastor! But there’s still another church looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
This week, I witnessed a part of the local culture I had never seen before. A poetry battle.
About twelve of us were sitting around a campfire on a mountainside that overlooked the distant lights of Caravan City. It was coming toward the end of the evening. We had grilled and eaten skewered pieces of chicken, munched on sunflower seeds, and drunk our chai and Nescafé. Already, some of the men, thinking of work in the morning, were asking if it would be time to go soon.
A request by one of the men present to swap riddles and jokes had ultimately foundered upon the rocks of attempted translation from one language to another, something this particular group of guys keeps trying, even though the results are usually rather anticlimactic. Nothing like dropping what you think is a strong punchline only to be met with blank or confused looks, silence, or worse, a few polite chuckles.
I did make one successful joke in the course of the evening, when the men had started up a hearty rendition of a favorite childhood song here, which goes something like,
I’m a pig; you’re a pig; hey, all of us are pigs!
I told them to hold on and start over because I wanted to record the song for the sake of ‘the future generations.’ This caused a surprising outburst of laughter among all the men.
“For the sake of future generations! That’s a good one! Hahahaha!’
Alas, my funniest joke of the evening wasn’t even one I was really attempting to make. But when the proverbial blind squirrel finds a nut, he is proud of himself nevertheless.
Shortly after this, one man, a young journalist, told us he’d like to read us a poem he’d written.
He pulled it up on his phone as the rest of the circle of men quieted down and leaned in. Unlike much of Western culture, our Central Asian locals are still very awake to the beauty and power of poetry, especially the men. But what I was about to witness highlighted this for me in a whole new way.
Still seated, our cookout poet sat up as straight as he could in his camping chair and puffed out his chest. With one hand holding his phone out so he could read it and the other hand partially lifted in front of him, he began dropping rhythmic lines about his people’s history and long struggle for freedom. His raised hand moved up and down to emphasize the rhyming end of each line, a gesture that was followed by growing affirmations from the circle of men, a sort of ‘amening’ of each statement made.
The intensity, emotion, and volume of the poem and the affirmations grew as the poem progressed, finishing with a climactic final rhyme and chorus of applause. Even though I had only gotten half of the meaning of the poem, it was easy to feel the powerful effect of this kind of poetic oratory.
But it wasn’t over. Another man on the other side of the circle cleared his throat and shifted in his camping chair,
“Friends,” he announced, “I have an answer to that!”
What proceeded from those present was the sort of noises men in all cultures make when a challenger is announced, plus more applause.
Apparently, the first poem had not only been patriotic, but also colored with loyalty to one of the two dominant political parties/families of our region. This other man was loyal to the other party/family and was about to drop some partisan lines of his own.
His poem progressed much the way the first one had. Similar authoritative body language. Similar expressions of approval after particularly good rhythms and rhymes, and a climactic crash of louder verse and applause at the end.
The two of them went back and forth like this four or five times. Like a rap battle, the volume of the crowd’s response to each poem seemed to be the gauge of which one was winning. In the end, to me, it looked like a draw.
The atmosphere of our little campfire was now more alive than it had been all evening, and the rest of us now had the opportunity to share any favorite lines of verse that we had either written or memorized. I was thankful that one of the local believers bravely shared some lines of Christian poetry he’d recently written, since many of those present were not believers. I shared the one verse of local poetry I’ve ever memorized, one I’d once learned back in Poet City from a taxi driver.
A wish for the days of homemade naan
In a thousand homes, a pilgrim only one
Now for all, "pilgrimmy pilgrim" is claimed
But pilgrims they're not, nor their bread e'en homemade
Once again, the applause I received for this very small segment of a poem against Islamic pharasaism was very warm, and probably much more than my lackluster delivery deserved.
As we drove home, I asked one of the local believers with us about the poetry exchange we had witnessed that night. I told him that was the first time I’d seen it.
“Oh yes,” he said, “We have that in our culture, though we don’t do it as much anymore. Poetry battles. We also have proverb battles. And song battles too.”
I had once seen some YouTube videos of some local song battles, but I found it curious that, after almost a decade living in this culture, I had never seen a poetry battle like this before. I asked the other foreigner who was with us that night, and he hadn’t either. It seemed to be yet another gap in our knowledge of the local culture.
Over the last number of months, I’ve continued to chew on how most missionaries here think that preaching, monologues by leaders, and skillful, authoritative oratory are foreign, Western things. As I’ve written before, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Our local culture has great respect for and takes great pleasure in skillful public oratory of all kinds. Yet this great disconnect persists, somehow, and the majority of missionaries remain convinced that informal group discussions are the thing that is truly local and contextual, and preaching and an old-fashioned and ineffective Western form.
I mused on this as we drove down the mountain at midnight. As it turns out, locals recite even their poems as if they’re preaching. No, recite is the wrong verb. What I saw during the poetry battle was not recitation, it was proclamation. Each poet was aiming to persuade the minds and hearts of his hearers of the truth and beauty of his message. The tone and posture of these poets were that of crafted conviction. Or, as Martin Lloyd Jones once said of preaching – logic on fire.
Through local eyes, it makes the way we Westerners casually lead our Bible discussions look limp, spineless, like we don’t really believe what we’re saying. Why do we missionaries persist in presenting the word of God like we do when locals present even their private poems with so much more authority and conviction?
So much for preaching being a foreign thing. No, once again, I must conclude that, here in Central Asia, preaching is everywhere. After all, even their poets are preachers.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
[Mesopotamia] contains the site of the earliest known writing, in the lower reaches of the Euphrates valley. But in its western zone, in the coastal cities of Syria, it was also the first to make the radical simplification from hieroglyphs that denoted words and syllables to a short alphabet that represented simple sounds. The political effects of this were massive. For the first time, literacy could spread beyond the aristocratic scribal class, the people who had leisure in childhood to learn the old, complicated, system; positions of power and influence throughout the Assyrian empire were then opened to a wider social range.
The area also contains the first known museums and libraries, often centralised, multilingual institutions of the state. But by an irony of fate which has favoured the memory of this clay-based society, its documents were best preserved by firing, most simply through conflagrations in the buildings in which they were held, a circumstance that was not uncommon in its tempestuous history. These catastrophes were miracles of conservation, archiving whole libraries in situ, on occasion with even their classification intact, and have materially helped the rapid reading of much unknown history in our era.
-Ostler, Empires of the Word, p.34
Countless written sources from ancient history have been lost because the libraries where they were stored went up in flames. The tragic losses of the libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad come to mind as a couple of such catastrophes. What might we have known that is now lost had these libraries survived to pass on their priceless knowledge?
It’s interesting, then, to realize that it’s because even older libraries burnt down that many of their records were preserved. When clay, not papyrus, vellum, or paper, was the medium of preserving written records, ancient fires actually had the effect of helping to preserve some of these records for future discovery. Twice-baked clay buried in the dry climate of the Middle East tends to last a very long time.
This is especially relevant to Christians because so many of these ancient cuneiform records have gone on to confirm the accuracy and trustworthiness of the Bible. Just today, I read about a newly discovered cuneiform fragment in Jerusalem. This ancient record from the late First Temple period refers to a payment the king of Jerusalem owed to the Assyrian king. This discovery aligns very well with the Old Testament’s claims that later Judean kings came under Assyrian vassalage.
There are many parts of the world where the climate does not allow for the same sort of preservation of undiscovered artifacts over thousands of years. Perhaps part of God’s plan in centering his revelation in the broader Middle East was because of these unique possibilities for conservation – even conservation via catastrophe.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
“Guests are like fish. After three days, they begin to stink.”
I’m not sure when I first heard this saying, but it sheds light on an experience that seems to take place in every society. Sometimes guests come to stay. And then end up overstaying. Every culture has these sorts of guests who stay, and stay, and stay. And every culture, at some point, develops strategies to try and get rid of them. I’ve heard that some villages in our corner of Central Asia would secretly put a little bit of salt in the shoes of overstaying guests. Allegedly, the salt would somehow trigger a desire in the visitors to depart back to where they had come from. I didn’t know about this practice back when we had a local friend unexpectedly move in with us for nine days. But had I known of it, I just may have tried it.
Jonathan* was a quirky believer who lived several hours to the south of Poet City*. He had come to faith while a university student in Poet City, and I had gotten to know him during my gap year on the field back when I was a single 20-year-old. To his great credit, Jonathan persevered in his faith when he moved back to his conservative desert city, even though there wasn’t even so much as a secret house gathering there for believers. To this day, there still isn’t. Instead, for his encouragement, Jonathan would travel up to Poet City every few months to worship with believers, to hang out with friends from his college days, and to ask around about jobs that might allow him to move. Understandably, Jonathan hoped to one day live in the more progressive Poet City and to escape the stifling heat and even more stifling Islamic culture of his hometown.
So, during our first year on the field, when Jonathan contacted me, told me he was coming to town, and asked if he could spend the night at our house, I quickly agreed. Locals in our area are traditionally expected to extend honorable hospitality at the drop of a hat. We weren’t set up super well for hosting overnight guests in our open-concept two-bedroom flat, but we could figure something out for a night or two. After all, we thought, this would be a good cultural experience for us as a new family on the field.
What I didn’t think to ask myself was why Jonathan was asking for help from us, of all people, brand new foreigners, when he had a decent network of college friends and believers that he already knew in the city. Was there some reason others were not willing to host this seemingly kind and respectable man? No, we didn’t think to ask these questions that more experienced missionaries might bring up. My wife and I simply wanted to try to do what we thought was the honorable contextual thing and host a friend who asked to stay with us.
On the first evening, I picked Jonathan up from where he was hanging out at a popular row of teahouses and brought him back to our place for supper. Our meal together went well. Jonathan was peculiar in personality, oddly swinging between being very polite and being somewhat blunt. Yet overall, he was a kind and enjoyable dinner guest.
After supper, Jonathan asked me if I could take him out to buy some peanut butter. At the time, this Western grocery item was only present in the bigger cities, and not where Jonathan lived. But apparently, Jonathan really loved him some peanut butter. So, we went peanut butter hunting and then went out to drink some tea with some of his college friends.
Jonathan had come to town during the peak of the summer heat. We only had one air conditioner that could work at night on our 10 amps of neighborhood generator electricity. This was the unit in our master bedroom. Because of this, we made the summer nights more manageable for our little family by setting up a fan to blow the cooler air from our room into the kids’ room that was directly next to ours, the air-conditioned air being pushed from room to room through the open doors that met at a corner.
That first night, we set Jonathan up in our living room as best we could, apologizing that all we could offer him for the night heat in that more private part of the house was a fan. However, since Jonathan was from a city far to the south of us that is much hotter than Poet City, we thought he should pass the night comfortably. We said goodnight and all turned in for the night. So far, so good. We went to bed feeling like decent hosts.
However, it wasn’t long before we heard some loud noises that sounded like porcelain being knocked around. My wife and I sat up in bed and looked questioningly at one another. What was that sound? I crept out of our room to find Jonathan, one leg stretched high, pant legs rolled up, washing his socks and a foot in the porcelain sink outside our little toilet and shower rooms – the same sink where we washed our hands and brushed our teeth. He was doing this so aggressively that the little sink was rocking back and forth on its porcelain stand. This, of course, was what was causing all the midnight racket.
I thought this was odd. My wife thought it was downright gross.
“Tell him he can wash his feet in the shower room!” She whispered to me urgently when I told her what was happening.
“Tomorrow. I’ll tell him tomorrow,” I assured her, still trying to make sense of the odd midnight scene I had just witnessed.
We settled back in to try to get to sleep when we were again woken up by the loud clanging of our roof door opening. It appeared that Jonathan had gone up to the flat roof to smoke a late-night cigarette. Smoking is still very common in this part of the world, even among believers, so we didn’t think too much of it. But as the hours passed, we noticed that he seemed to go up to the roof many times for many more late-night cigarettes. He also made what seemed like dozens of trips to the bathroom, which was right next to our bedroom. Eventually, sometime in the early hours of the morning, he at last settled down.
The next the morning, we asked Jonathan how he had slept.
“I slept very poorly, due to the heat.”
Huh, I thought to myself, that’sa little more blunt than I was expecting. And strange that it affected him so much, given how locals are more comfortable in the heat than we are.
“Sorry about that, brother. We heard you up in the night a lot and wondered if it might be because of the heat.”
“I was also feeling some indigestion, however, from the dinner you served me last night.”
Wow, I thought to myself again, blunt again. Even in the non-hospitality-oriented West, most guests would at least state this indirectly and let the hosts put the pieces together.
“Sorry again, our food is maybe a little different from what your stomach is used to.”
I shot a glance at my wife, who was doing her best to wrangle our toddlers and their breakfast demands while also laying out a generous spread of breakfast foods for our guest. Jonathan didn’t seem upset necessarily, just direct and a little condescending. Not unlike a teacher who felt it his duty to correct his students when they gave an incorrect answer. He was a teacher, in fact, newly hired at a private language institute in his hometown.
“Jonathan, would you like yogurt, or eggs, maybe an omelet?” My wife graciously offered.
“No thanks, just peanut butter, thank you.”
I saw my wife’s shoulders droop just a little as she realized her generous breakfast spread was all for naught.
After his quick breakfast of peanut butter and a little bit of local bread, Jonathan went outside for another smoke.
“Well… that was a little rougher than I was expecting,” I said to my wife.
“It’s okay,” my wife said. “Glad we could host him. Do you know what time he’s heading back to his city today?”
“No idea, but I’ll try to find out indirectly when I drop him off in the bazaar.”
To ask Jonathan directly, of course, would imply that we were not happy to host him as long as necessary, and would be very shameful.
So, when Jonathan and I were close to the market, I tried to get the relevant info out of him.
“So, what are your plans for today?”
“Well, I have some shopping to do in the bazaar, then I’ll be meeting up with some friends. Could you pick me up for dinner tonight?
“Um, yes… yes I can. So, will you be staying longer in Poet City?”
“Oh yes, yes, of course, I don’t want to go back home yet. I am looking for a job. Is it alright if I stay with you again tonight?”
“Of course it is!” I answered, trying my best to play the honorable and generous host. But something in my stomach told me that we might have gotten a bit more than we’d bargained for in agreeing to host Jonathan in the first place.
We went out to eat that night and paid for Jonathan’s meal. Strangely, he didn’t argue with me to pay for the bill, as would be customary when friends go out to eat together. I took note, but mostly wrote this off as some dynamic of hosting that we hadn’t learned about yet.
When we got back to our place, we offered to set Jonathan up in our kids’ room so that he could have the cold air from the one AC unit blown in via our fan setup. Our two-year-old and four-year-old would sleep on floor mattresses in our room. This would mean closer quarters all around, but our family and Jonathan would still have at least a little bit of privacy since we were in different rooms. I was also sure to point out the shower room foot washing options for Jonathan.
However, just after we had gone to bed, Jonathan soon began his same sink foot washing, rooftop smoking, and bathroom routine. After what seemed like hours of this, we finally drifted off, praying for God’s help to be gracious hosts.
At some point in the middle of the night, my wife shook me awake and pointed. There, on the floor and poking into our bedroom door, was Jonathan’s head, fast asleep and snoring. It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. Even though the kids’ room was almost as cool as ours, Jonathan must have decided that he needed to be as close as possible to the coolest air, so he moved his sleeping pallet so that he was sleeping with the bottom half of his body in the kids’ room, his upper half just outside the doorframes, and his head stuck just inside our room. He was definitely asleep, but it was a bit unnerving nonetheless to have his head, well, just there, poking into our bedroom.
The next morning, however, Jonathan seemed downright chipper. We, on the other hand, were starting to feel the toll of hosting. Still, we managed to have a pleasant (simple this time) breakfast together and to get some helpful advice from Jonathan about the local language.
Second day, same routine. My wife asked me to find out Jonathan’s plans. I tried to do so indirectly. Jonathan ended up asking to stay with us another night. He continued his peculiar nighttime habits, including sleeping with his head just inside our door. My wife and I slept fitfully and woke feeling worse than the day before.
This went on for nine nights.
Nine. Long. Nights.
My wife and I soldiered on, but soon began to feel not unlike like Gandalf after his deadly battle with the Balrog.
“Darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time…”
Eventually, even Jonathan began to pick up on the fact that we were struggling to remain energetic and joyful hosts.
On day eight, at breakfast, he went into teacher mode again.
“You know, in my culture, it’s very important that you reassure a guest over and over that they are not causing any trouble to you. Otherwise, they may begin to feel insecure about the warmth of their welcome.”
My wife, fearing her emotions might be displayed a little too obviously on her face, made a quick about-turn for the kitchen.
I took a deep breath and tried to answer in some way that was still kind, but which perhaps hinted at the fact that Jonathan’s welcome was indeed no longer as warm as it once was.
“Yes… um… thank you for the advice. That’s good to know… Will you be needing a ride to the bazaar today?”
By this point, we were getting desperate. We needed to find an honorable way out of this situation – and fast. Our little family was at the end of our rope. Our kids were exhausted from sleeping on the floor of our room. My wife and I were exhausted from having them in our room every night – not to mention the nightly presence of Jonathan’s head. We were burning through our meager finances with all of the extra food costs we were incurring. And Jonathan continued to not offer to help with any of these costs, despite regularly asking to eat out together.
Our guest also showed no indication that he was planning on going back home anytime soon. He kept saying that he was hoping to find a job, but he was not doing any actual job searching. It slowly became clear that he was, in fact, waiting for me to find him a job and a place to rent. Until that happened, it seemed his plan was to just extend his stay with us.
Clearly, whatever Jonathan’s assumptions were about this whole arrangement, they were wildly different from ours. We just thought we were hosting a believer for a couple of nights. But somehow, we had unwittingly become some kind of patrons now responsible for finding work and housing for our peculiar house guest. We were all for helping a brother out in reasonable ways, but we were in no position to find him long-term work and housing.
Jonathan didn’t seem to be picking up on the many ways we were trying to indirectly and honorably communicate that even though we were hypothetically ready to host him as long as needed, we were not actually able to host him any longer. Even when our indirect communication started becoming more and more direct, he still wasn’t getting it. No, we realized, we’d need to find some way to kick our guest out and still save some face for all parties involved.
The answer came through a teammate. They were shocked to learn that a local had actually stayed with us for over a week. This was not normal, even for locals hosting other locals. Something was off. This teammate suggested that our family take a trip out of town, and thereby force our guest to figure out different lodging. Thankfully, we did have a trip we had been needing to take to a different city for some government business. By bumping it up a little, we had found a way out. In our local culture, having guests is the kind of thing you can use to get out of almost anything. But if you need to get out of having guests, apparently, having a trip is the magic escape key.
Jonathan did not take the news of our departure very well, seeming at last to understand that we really weren’t holding out on him and we really couldn’t help him in the way he had hoped. He told me that he didn’t have enough money to afford more than a couple of nights at a cheap bazaar hotel and that none of his friends were willing to host him. So, we helped him pay for a night or two at a little hole-in-the-wall hotel.
As I dropped him off late at night, I felt bad for Jonathan. He seemed pretty down. Things were still respectful between us overall, which I was thankful for. Jonathan still vacillated in his speech between a strange bluntness and an odd propriety. But he did, in the end, say the things he was supposed to say as a guest. We also did our best to tell him how honored we were to host him – even if we were by that point on the verge of tears of utter exhaustion.
That night, in the absence of feet in the sink, 3 am smoke breaks, and snoring heads poking in the door, my family slept like the dead.
Looking back, I’m still not exactly sure what to make of Jonathan’s stay with us that summer. Perhaps he was simply wired to miss the normal social cues governing most local hospitality? Perhaps we were sending the wrong signals? It was hard to say, but the fact that he couldn’t find any local friends to host him was an indicator that it wasn’t just us. It seems that Jonathan had overstayed his welcome with others before as well. That meant that he was either of the type who had learned to abuse the local culture of hospitality, or that perhaps something else was going on that meant that, even though he was a local, he didn’t really know (or sense) the rules.
Believe it or not, we did have Jonathan stay with us a couple more times after all of this. But I had learned my lesson and was clear to tell him a certain number of nights we could host, one or two, and to set expectations accordingly. This sort of approach seemed to go much better.
And I think we would still host him if he ever came to Caravan City, albeit with some fear and trepidation. And boundaries. Very clear boundaries.
In all this, we learned that in a culture that extends lavish offers of (often unsustainable) hospitality, there will always be people who, wittingly or unwittingly, take advantage of this. Finding kind and honorable ways out of this is therefore a top priority for all who attempt to extend these offers that most take hypothetically. Because some will take you literally.
When that happens, you just might have to put some salt in their shoes. Or, in case that doesn’t work (and it probably won’t), you can always do as we did – and make an honorable run for it.
*Names changed for security
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
I once stumbled upon a commentary on the book of Revelation that provided a helpful framework regarding the three foes of the Church in all ages*. This was some years ago now, and, regrettably, I no longer have the details of the commentary in order to source it fully here. But here is the gist of the author’s argument.
In the visions of Revelation 12-19, Satan is shown attacking the people of Christ by means of three main enemies. The first enemy is a beast that emerges from the sea, which seems to symbolize physical persecution. The second enemy is a second beast, a false prophet, representing spiritual deception. The third is the great prostitute of Babylon, who represents worldly seduction. The Church faithfully resists these enemies and their attacks, and ultimately, each enemy is destroyed forever.
This framework came up again this week as we met with a friend whose work focuses on aiding and advising persecuted believers in our region. We were discussing the very common objection we tend to receive when seeking to counsel local believers in these situations.
“You don’t understand. You have a Western passport and can flee whenever you need to, back to a country where you are safe and not under attack for your faith like we are here.”
How is a Western missionary supposed to respond to an objection like this? At first glance, it seems true. I can use my blue passport to easily flee if I experience death threats. Most of my local friends do not have this option.
One good response is to point out that Jesus’ commands for faithfully facing persecution (such as the incredibly helpful Matthew chapter 10) are true regardless of circumstantial differences between believers. It’s not from my personal authority that I encourage my local friend to be faithful unto death, if necessary, and to never deny Jesus. These are the eternal commands of God himself. And even if I never face the same kind of threats, I still have the spiritual authority to humbly call my believing friends who do to obey God’s word.
To shirk back from this is to fall into the same kind of trap as men who feel they can’t speak against abortion because they aren’t female. Don’t fall for it.
But along with this, we should also not be afraid to point out that there is no church that is not under some form of attack. In all ages, in all cultures, in all locales, the dragon is attacking the bride of Christ. He is coming after her by means of the violent beast, the deceptive prophet, or the seductive prostitute. His chosen combinations of these enemies will tend to vary. But take any faithful church anywhere in the world and apply this framework, and you will see it waging spiritual warfare against either persecution, or false teaching, or worldliness, or all three at once.
I remember once visiting a believing couple who had fled Afghanistan and been resettled in the US. During our visit, we watched a short video made to mobilize prayer among Western churches for the persecuted Afghan church. This short video said something like, “Satan’s power is very strong in Afghanistan.”
I’ll never forget how the Afghan brother with me that evening responded. He scoffed.
“That’s not right,” he said, “Satan is much stronger here in America than in Afghanistan.”
This brother responded this way because he was reeling from having transferred from a context where the beast was the primary enemy to one where the great prostitute was the greatest threat. He had learned how to faithfully stay and faithfully flee violent persecution, but he had not yet learned how to live under the drip-drip-drip daily attacks of worldly seduction. It seemed far easier to him to defend against the one attack than the other.
In reality, each of the church’s three perennial enemies is equally deadly. The church militant may experience seasons of sweet relief from one or two of these enemies, but she must always be on guard. It’s often the case that even as one seems to have retreated that the others are quietly growing strong and beginning their nighttime raids.
Friends, we are not calling believers under persecution to do anything unique or different. They must defend the church against the enemies of Christ, just as all Christians everywhere must do. They must faithfully endure to the end, just as we must. Their churches must defend against the beast, the false prophet, and the great prostitute, just as our churches back home must also do.
To become a Christian is to join the front lines of spiritual warfare and to be handed spiritual weapons and armor.
“Welcome, brother, we’re so glad you’re here. Now plug that gap.”
Do our local friends feel like they are fighting spiritual warfare, and we are not? This may have to do with what we are modeling. Perhaps we have ourselves grown lazy and tired on the battlefield and are acting more like the wealthy Roman nobles feasting in Pompey’s camp at Pharsalus than the focused and battle-hardened centurions in Caesar’s that would soon overrun them.
But it may also have to do with how we are framing things. Perhaps we have forgotten that, until Christ returns, this is the age of the church militant, when the task of every believer and every church is to “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Eph 6:11). This is just as true of the old churches in the West as it is of the baby churches on the frontiers of Central Asia.
The three perpetual enemies of the church will continue their attacks until Christ returns. But they are fighting a losing battle, a long defeat. Every day, Christ and his Church are gaining ground. And in the end, the beast, the false prophet, and the great prostitute will be utterly destroyed, and we will enter into the sweet rest of victory.
Until then, we fight. All of us.
*Not to the exclusion of the classic formulation of Satan, sin, and death as the three main enemies of the church, but a different and complementary way to frame it
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Long ago, when I first started this blog, I posted the following quote from GK Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
Last year, singer-songwriter Dave Whitkroft reached out to me to let me know that he had written a song inspired by this same quote. When I looked it up, I was intrigued by the premise of the song, which asks if God ever, like us, tires of the weekly repetition of normal local church worship gatherings. This was not a question I’d ever considered before.
I’ve really enjoyed listening to this song in recent months and being reminded of God’s childlike “Do it again” delight, his ability to exult in the monotony of our simple weekly worship. The lyrics of the song artfully contrast our struggles to desire attending church, given things like “that family in the middle row” that’s “had it in for me for years,” (ha!) with God, who doesn’t grow old or weary and who continually shouts “Encore!” for even the most average service proclaiming his truth.
Whatever aspect of weekly church rhythms it might be that tempts us to occasionally skip out, may this song encourage us, like the singer, to grab our keys and go gather with God’s people anyway. After all, our Father is strong enough and ‘young’ enough to delight in every single church service, just as he delights in every single sunrise.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Early on in my 11th-grade year, an older TCK in his twenties, an alumnus of our school, came back to visit. In the years since he had graduated and left Melanesia, he had joined the US military and become a member of Marine Recon. These are specialized Marines who carry out reconnaissance and combat missions similar to those of the US special forces.
During his visit to our missionary base, he met with me and several others who were getting close to graduating, telling us stories from his different missions and sharing how growing up as a missionary kid had been such an advantage for him in his overseas deployments. He told us how he had specifically thrived in the missions where they had been tasked to work alongside militia units from other countries like Yemen and Afghanistan, as well as how hungry many of his fellow soldiers were for spiritual truth. Because of this, he advised us to seriously consider whether or not God might want us to try to join elite units such as the Army Rangers, where we could maximize our cross-cultural skills, serve our country, and, after proving ourselves good soldiers, powerfully share the gospel with our brothers in arms.
One of the high school seniors and I, in particular, were seriously drawn to this idea. After this older TCK left, we continued to discuss it and to pray about it for several months. While the enthusiasm of this other student eventually cooled, I began to feel a deep conviction that this was exactly what the Lord wanted me to do. I had a natural love for adventure and a desire to overcome difficult challenges. I thrived in cross-cultural settings. I wanted to be in some kind of setting where I could be an evangelist. And my dad had been a Marine. In fact, this is where he had come to faith. The discipline, camaraderie, and mission focus he had learned in the military had deeply shaped his Christian faith and ministry. Looking back, I’m sure a large part of my motivation was also that I simply wanted to be like my dad, who had passed away when I was still very young.
But there was one problem. I had, and still have, exercise-induced asthma. The older TCK veteran had told me that this can sometimes be a disqualifying problem, but that he also knew soldiers who carried inhalers with them. So that I could be sure of the official line, I reached out to a recruiter via email. To my relief, the recruiter reassured me that my asthma would not be an issue at all.
This, I would later find out, was a lie. I didn’t yet know that US military recruiters have a reputation for saying all kinds of things in order to meet their quotas of new recruits, even things that are completely untrue (a friend who later joined the Navy also found out after he was in that a bunch of the promises he had been made were completely bogus). Not knowing this, however, I settled in my conviction that this was the path I was supposed to pursue, instead of going to university or Bible college like almost all of my classmates would. One practical upside of this, I claimed, was that I’d be able to use the GI Bill to pay for my college degree afterward.
The next year was spent going on long runs through the surrounding banana and coffee gardens, doing pyramid-style workouts, reading up on CS Lewis’ support for Christians joining the military, and arguing with many of my classmates, and even some of the adult missionaries, who disagreed with this vision for my future.
“My last job before I left the army was driving around the countryside in a jeep picking up kids like you who broke their legs after jumping out of planes in Airborne training,” one missionary uncle said, pointedly.
Even some of my closest TCK friends were deeply opposed to me pursuing this path. As was my older brother, who was a college student back in the US. He had serious questions about the morality of the US conflicts at the time that I would be called to participate in. But I was unshaken. God, whom I believed was leading me, was sovereign. And CS Lewis, after all, was on my side (although Jim Eliot was not), as were my Melanesian friends. I also had a sense that this path powerfully combined many aspects of my story and how God had wired me.
This being the case, I pursued this plan single-mindedly until it was the final semester of my senior year, and all the deadlines for college scholarships had passed. It was at this point that, for some reason, I emailed a different recruiter. This man was the one who told me the truth. Asthma was absolutely a deal breaker. No one who openly admitted to having asthma, even mild asthma, would be accepted into the US military. I had two options, he said. I could lie about it on my application. Or, I recall him writing, “If you still really want to serve your country, you can always join the State Department.”
The State Department? I had no interest whatsoever in joining that boring-sounding entity, whatever it was. And I definitely wasn’t going to lie. How could I claim to be going into the military to be a faithful Christian witness, yet willingly sin to get into the military in the first place? No, I had been utterly misled, and the path I had been wholeheartedly pursuing for over a year had suddenly come to a dead end. Perhaps I had been naive and full of youthful idealism. Perhaps I should have figured out the lie sooner. Whatever the case, I felt a growing numbness in my head and a sinking in my stomach as all my plans suddenly went up in a plume of smoke and darkness. I had been so sure. And now? I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do.
For the next several days, I walked around in a fog of disappointment and disorientation. My friends and teachers were kind about it, but many also, understandably, seemed relieved. One of the hardest parts of it all was wrestling with what had seemed so clearly to be God’s leading. If it had been God, why had the door he seemingly pointed to been abruptly slammed in my face? Had I completely misread what I’d thought had been God’s will? What if it had been simply my desires masquerading as God’s leading the whole time? Had God tricked me?
One afternoon, I sat at our dining room table, sifting through a pile of the promotional college material I had received. It was all too expensive, and all too late. I threw one glossy brochure after another into a pile, when I suddenly came across a simple paper flyer I had completely forgotten about. It described a new freshman year program being started at Bethlehem Baptist, John Piper’s church. It was called INSIGHT, which stood for “Intensive Study of Integrated Global History and Theology.” Basically, it was a Christian worldview program that would emphasize history, theology, and missions.
As I sat there looking at this piece of paper, I recalled when my Government class teacher had passed out these flyers. I had turned to my close friend, Calvin, with whom I would exchange CDs of Piper sermons, and said, “If I weren’t going into the military, this is exactly the kind of thing I might like to join.”
That moment and that conversation had been filed away in my brain for eventual deletion. But it came back to me as I wondered if Bethlehem might still be receiving applications. We inquired, and sure enough, they were still taking students for their inaugural year. It was remarkably affordable, always a plus for a missionary family like ours. It was connected to a ministry I was beginning to be deeply shaped by. And while Minneapolis might not be quite as exciting as jumping out of airplanes, I did find a year of intensive reading and discussion about history, theology, and missions to be an exciting prospect of another sort.
It wasn’t long before I was Minneapolis-bound, still reeling a bit from all my plans having gone up in smoke, but genuinely excited about what my freshman year would have in store. Little did I know that year in Minneapolis would be one of the most formative of my life. There, my long combat with the doctrines of grace would finally be settled. It was there that I would make my first Muslim friends and receive a calling to work among unreached Muslims. And it was in Minneapolis where I first heard about a particular corner of Central Asia, and how they needed young people to go spend six months to a year there, doing development work, making friends, and telling people about Jesus.
Truth be told, I still wondered sometimes about that military road not taken, and what would have happened had I been able to join the Army Rangers after all.
One day, early on in Poet City, I had the chance to talk to some members of the US military who were deployed in the region. Somehow, we found out that a couple of them were believers, and they found out that we were not just relief workers, but missionaries. I’ll never forget when one of them told me how badly he wished he could be in my place – free to mingle, to make friends, and to share the gospel. It struck me because there was still a large part of my heart that wished I could be in his place.
The Lord knew exactly the roles that soldier and I needed to be in. And my role, apparently, was not to share the gospel while jumping out of airplanes. Rather, it was to live in one of those very same regions where I might have served as a soldier, but sharing the gospel with a chai cup, rather than a rifle, in my hand, jumping in and out of cigarette smoke-filled taxis rather than C-130s.
As the proverb says, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” To this day, I still maintain that my initial plans had been good. But clearly, God’s plans had been better.
Friends, if all your good plans have similarly gone up in smoke, take heart. It really is a blow when this happens. But in it, God is painfully revealing to you his better plans. One day, you will wake up to suddenly find your steps mysteriously and wonderfully established – and then you’ll marvel at the goodness of God in blowing it all up.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Sometimes the missionary community is very concerned about something that, in the end, is simply not that big of a deal. I’m becoming more and more convinced that the foreigners-to-locals ratio in church plants and ministry groups on the mission field is one of these things being given undue weight.
The logic of this concern initially makes a lot of sense. The idea is that if locals are outnumbered by foreigners, then locals will sense that this gathering does not really belong to them, and they will not take the ownership needed for true long-term indigeneity. If too many foreigners are there, the thinking goes, it will somehow contaminate or undermine even the spiritual power of a particular gathering.
Hence, missionaries (at least in our corner of Central Asia) bring up this ratio quite often when discussing whether or not they or others should be a part of a particular church service or Bible study. Just this week, I had a friend tell me he’d like to come to an evangelistic discussion we’ve started hosting at our home, but only if there weren’t already too many foreigners.
But here’s the issue with this assumption about ratios. Too many foreigners only seems to be a problem if those foreigners present keep on using English and letting Western culture dictate the rules of the gathering. Yes, of course, if that is happening, then many locals will intuit that this gathering is a foreign thing, and it will likely only serve the minority of locals who already want to put on Western culture and use English. This may be a fine start for an international, English-speaking church. But this sort of gathering will, in all likelihood, fail to be very effective with the majority of locals and fail to ever transition to a truly indigenous group.
But what happens when the foreigners in a gathering like this are committed to using the local language and following the local culture as much as possible? And if they constantly vision cast for a day when that church or gathering will be majority-local and local-led? In that case, a large ratio of foreigners doesn’t seem to negatively affect a long-term trajectory toward indigeneity. In fact, it may even be a help toward this end.
Our church plant in Poet City had a foreign majority at most of its gatherings for the first five years or so of its existence. This was true even though, from the very beginning, we were all committed to learning the local language and culture and seeking to model faithfulness to Jesus within these local expressions. For years, we were somewhat disheartened and concerned about the fact that so many church meetings had more Americans in the room than Central Asians.
What we didn’t realize was that we were simply providing the needed core around which local believers would eventually be able to stabilize and mature. Then, a couple of years ago, some kind of threshold was passed, perhaps related to a large enough contingent of mature local members and our first local elder. Now, the locals in every service easily outnumber the foreigners by a large majority.
Because of the serious spiritual instability of our locals who come to faith out of a Muslim background, as well as their deep need to see faithfulness concretely modeled over the long term, I might even go as far as to say it was an advantage to have our previous church plant be majority-foreigner for so long. This seemingly less-likely path toward indigeneity has, in the end, gotten closer to its goal than other attempts that tried to protect indigeneity by not allowing other foreigners to take part.
Many missionaries would have looked at that church five or six years ago and doubted that it was really on its way toward becoming an indigenous church. There were simply too many foreigners present. But visit one of their services today, and it becomes clear that this body has matured to the point where it will keep faithfully humming along, even if no foreigners are present anymore. In fact, this summer, that very thing took place.
Is this merely anecdotal evidence? Well, I find it curious that instead of focusing on ethnic ratios, the Bible seems more concerned about the use of a common language (and translation when needed) when it comes to church plant order and health (1 Cor 14). Nowhere are we commanded to make sure that Jews remain a small minority, for example, in the churches in Gentile regions, or vice versa. Instead, believers are pointed to Paul’s example of becoming all things to all men (1 Cor 9:19-23), instructed to love one another in similar ways (1 Cor 13), and told to make sure everyone in the service can understand what is going on (1 Cor 14). Our assumption that the ethnic optics of the room are what really matter seems to be out of touch with the New Testament here. We should ask ourselves where these beliefs about the visuals are coming from.
Who cares if the room looks majority White Westerner for a while? Are locals being edified in their mother tongue? Are they coming to faith and growing in spiritual maturity? Are the foreigners seeking to model and mentor how to navigate the local culture as Christians, and pursuing genuine spiritual friendships with the local believers? These are the kinds of factors that make the difference, not policing some kind of optics ratio.
Is there wisdom in gauging whether a majority of foreign Christians is undermining future indigeneity? Yes, of course. But I would contend that the real issue is not the mere presence of foreigners, but rather what kind of posture those missionaries are taking. Our locals say, “You can’t block out the sun with a sieve.” Faithful spiritual work will, in time, bear good fruit, even if that work is done by those who are visually different from the locals. The superficial optics of a room where there are more foreigners than locals might feel quite significant, but in the end, it’s more like a thin sieve. The light will get through.
Friends, let’s stop worrying so much about the percentage of foreigners in local church plants and ministries on the mission field. This is a concern that is given far too much weight in our missionary conversations about strategy and tactics. Instead, let’s focus on all foreigners involved serving the locals by putting on the local language and culture. Let’s strive to model biblical faithfulness, authority, and friendship, and see, in the end, what might grow from this.
It may look odd, or even awkward, for a while. “Why are we all operating in the local language and culture when only two locals came today?” However, let’s not forget that all of us mature adults were once awkward and gangly teenagers. We know that looking or feeling odd for a season is no indicator that maturity isn’t coming.
In fact, it’s a sign that maturity is on its way.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
There was no one to say to me, “How much is that donkey?”
–Local oral tradition
How might your culture and language paint a picture of utter loneliness and isolation? In Central Asia, apparently, being utterly alone means there’s not even anyone making inquiries about donkeys. Talk about being left out in the cold.
We were on a trip back to Poet City this week when we heard this proverb used for the first time, when a young preacher was describing how lonely middle school had been for him. Most of us have been there. Middle school can be a very rough time. The Bible has its own imagery describing these anguished depths of isolation, the strongest of which is probably Psalm 88:18, “Darkness is my only friend.”
Darkness makes sense, but why donkeys? Well, on the one hand, our Central Asians find donkeys so ludicrous, so hilarious, that they seem eager to fit them into their proverbs whenever they can. Another working theory is that because donkeys are viewed as very base, dumb, and dirty, it may be that ‘donkey business’ functions as a kind of shorthand for the lowest and most menial of human interactions. In this sense, it means sometimes you’re so alone that no one even bothers to interact with you even on these most base and even embarrassing fronts.
Though sometimes unavoidable, and even temporarily beneficial, the Bible consistently teaches that it’s not good for us to be alone. In fact, this is the first thing in the created world described as “not good,” such a bad situation, in fact, that it led to the glorious creation of woman. The preacher in Ecclesiastes elaborates further, stating that being with others means a better return for your labor, help back up after a fall, staying warm at night, and self defense (Ecc 4:9-12).
That’s a lot of benefits that come from not being on your own. Our Central Asian friends would add one more. Turns out it’s also better for donkey business.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
When it comes to today’s Western missionaries, we are very aware of the handicaps of our forbears. That is, we know all too well what the weaknesses and blind spots were for Western missionaries in past eras. They often conflated Western culture with Christianity, they built massive missionary compounds, they held onto church power too long, they didn’t contextualize, etc. You can go and read Roland Allen if you want a deep dive into the problems of the Western missions movement in the early 1900s. The problem is that we’re often unaware of our current handicaps, how contemporary Western missionaries bring their own unique weaknesses and blind spots to the field, and then proceed to do missions work that is, well, handicapped by these postures.
The following is a list of handicaps that, in our experience, most Western missionaries bring with them to the mission field. Yes, there are exceptions to these trends out there. Yes, most of these weaknesses also correspond to a particular strength of Western culture. And yes, this list is in some places shaped by our particular context in Central Asia. But I think many of these handicaps continue to show up globally as Westerners are sent out to fulfill the Great Commission. It’s because I care so deeply about that holy calling that I want other Western missionaries to have a greater self-awareness of these handicaps – and to pivot accordingly. If we remain unaware of these forces acting upon us from our own cultural background, these default postures, as it were, we will be unable to effect the kind of change we so hope for.
This is a longer post, so buckle up. Or, if helpful, you can scan the headings below and read the points that stick out to you.
We come to the field and leave as radical individualists. A typical prospective missionary will announce to his pastors that he has been called to the mission field and then expect their blessing. Then, when leaving the field, he will likewise announce to his colleagues and the local believers that God has called him elsewhere. Often, these decisions are made in private, with the hard-to-refute claim that God has spoken, and without the counsel of the broader believing community. Instead, we should be carefully involving faithful pastors and our church community in these momentous and costly decisions.
We treat locals as projects rather than genuine friends. Westerners are very goal and task-oriented. Often, this means we treat locals on the mission field more like projects than as actual spiritual peers and friends. They can’t help but sense this, and, long-term, it impedes our work’s effectiveness. We need to embrace a posture of spiritual equality and genuine friendship with locals. Yes, we are called to make disciples, but those disciples should also be becoming some of our very best friends.
We trust in our expertise instead of in the power of the Word and the Spirit. We Westerners are good at planning, preparing, studying, and strategizing. The problem is we often put our trust in these efforts, rather than pursuing them with our trust rooted in the power of God’s Word and God’s Spirit. This might seem like a subtle thing, but it makes all the difference. At the end of the day, do we work hard and trust in our expertise or trust in God’s power? The secret is that trusting in God’s power often means we’ll work even harder.
We are terrified of contaminating the local believers with our Western culture. We are desperate to not repeat the mistakes of the old colonial missionaries, which means deep down we are very afraid that we will ruin the indigenization or local ownership of our work with our own cultural imports or upfront presence. This fear is so strong that it will often keep Western missionaries from obeying clear biblical commands, such as the commands to do ministry by example, to teach, preach, baptize, and form churches. The better posture is to recognize that some cultural mixing is inevitable, so we should simply be aware and proactive in it, putting it always under the microscope of what is loving and faithful to scripture.
We prioritize culture over the Bible. Again, because we are so afraid of changing local culture, we will often shrink back when local culture clashes with the Bible. This is especially tempting in areas of costly obedience, such as church discipline, bold witness, churches that mix members of enemy people groups, etc. But every culture is fallen. And that means that when any aspect of culture goes against the Bible, we go with the Bible, come what may. This is vitally important for modeling for local believers how they can transform their own culture over the long haul.
We prioritize the shallow areas of culture while remaining ignorant of the deeper areas of culture. The ironic thing is that, for how much we Westerners talk about the importance of contextualization, we’re not very good at it. Instead, many missionaries fixate on the external, shallow aspects of culture while failing to recognize the deeper aspects of the culture where contextualization is truly needed. In our context, way too many missionaries are worried about locals sitting in chairs rather than on the floor when they should be worried about what to do about things like the deep patron-client and honor-shame commitments and assumptions that our locals have. While still prioritizing the Bible over culture, we Westerners also need to push much deeper into understanding local cultures and worldviews, and learning the local language well.
We dismiss certain practices or methodologies simply because they feel old-fashioned, traditional, or foreign. Good contextualization has nothing to do with how a certain form feels to us and whether it reminds us or not of uncomfortable things from our history or upbringing. Good contextualization is about making biblical principles and practices clear and compelling in a local language and culture. We Westerners have our own cultural and religious baggage, but we need to do our best to put that aside so that we don’t dismiss certain forms out of hand when they are both biblically permissible and locally effective. I may not like pews or cross necklaces. But that has everything to do with my background, and is, in fact, irrelevant when it comes to good local contextualization.
We don’t understand how forms carry meaning. Not every word, cultural ritual, or religious practice can be redeemed. First, the Bible outright prohibits certain forms, such as idols. In addition, some forms in a local culture simply carry too much anti-biblical meaning, such that locals will not be able to embrace a new meaning given to them, no matter how compelling a case we foreigners make. Other forms can be contested, and perhaps redeemed over time. Some are ripe for redemption. In our context, the term Muslim cannot be redeemed, even though its original meaning in Arabic is simply one who submits to God. However, the old Central Asian New Year holiday (Nawroz) is currently being contested by local believers and filled with Christian meaning. And the local word for the all-powerful creator God has already been redeemed and redefined biblically by the local believers.
We are drawn to silver bullet methodologies rather than the slow and steady path of healthy growth. Western culture programs us to be drawn to the new, the big, and the fast. This means that Western missionaries are vulnerable to methodologies that promise unprecedented results in record time. I believe much of the popularity of insider movement and movement methodologies like DMM is playing into this handicap of Western culture. But similar to how monetary investments grow, the healthiest long-term growth is in the slow, steady investment that brings in exponential returns after decades, not in a matter of a few short months or years. By way of analogy, we should want our work to be like forests of oak that cover the mountainsides, not grass on the rooftops. This is the kind of healthy work that we see in the New Testament, as well as in church history, punctuated though it is with occasional periods of miraculous growth.
We are dogmatic about our methodology and casual about our dogma. Human beings will be dogmatic about something. It’s inescapable. Western missionaries, reacting to the past again, tend to hold their dogma with a loose hand, while holding their methodologies with a dogmatic fervor. This belies a common mistake where we confuse principles with strategy, and go on to treat locally-specific strategy and tactics (methodology) as fixed and universally applicable, while forgetting about universally applicable principles undergirding the methodologies. A wiser way forward is to hold our methodologies with a looser hand, while holding to our Biblical principles and dogma with more conviction. The art of theological triage is especially helpful here.
We are anti-institutional. Popular Western culture is jaded when it comes to institutions and is experiencing an era of post-institutional ferment. That means Western missionaries are not naturally drawn to things like organizing, building, and institutionalizing. In fact, many methodologies tell us that it’s these specific things that will kill movements of the Spirit. We need to realize that much of the pull of organic, casual, low-hierarchy, house church-style Christianity for us is because of our own cultural moment, and not necessarily because it is effective locally or even biblical. Yes, house church is a good biblical option, but the way many Western missionaries go about it often leads to contextual ineffectiveness and spiritual compromise.
We have problems with authority. Many Westerners have been raised with this as one of our primary maxims: “Question Authority.” As a culture, we have lots of baggage with the concept of authority, and, because of this, we tend to not think very clearly about it. But one thing we do know about authority, we distrust it. However, whether we like it or not, we live in a world where authority exists. God created the universe to be a hierarchical one; healthy societies are those that honor just and proper authority, and even in the most natural of friendships, someone will always take the lead. Authority itself is fundamentally good, not bad, even though it is fallen. But Western culture tends to reverse this, or to pretend that authority isn’t really needed. Not only has this infiltrated much of our thinking about society, and men’s and women’s roles in the home and the church, but it’s also seeped into our missiology and our bearing on the mission field. Practically, this is a major factor in why we are drawn to certain methodologies and why we fumble so badly in societies that view authority more positively.
We cannot easily define a biblical church. Many Western missionaries on the field practice a missiology of reaction. We don’t know exactly what kind of churches we are trying to plant, but we know that we don’t want them to be like the churches back home. Often, this is a sign that we haven’t had the chance to truly develop a biblical ecclesiology. We also come from a culture that has, because of its radical individualism, lost most of its good instincts when it comes to church. Because of this, we can’t easily define what a biblical church is. In truth, every missionary should be able to easily describe a healthy biblical church, even in their sleep. Somehow, something so central to the work of missions has become one of the most common handicaps of Western workers on the field. We desperately need to learn frameworks that summarize the Bible’s teaching on this subject, such as 9 Marks or 12 characteristics of a healthy church.
We make the mission field a laboratory for our church fantasies. Because most of us don’t have a biblical ecclesiology, we can fall into making the mission field a laboratory for our personal fantasies about church. If we’ve had bad experiences with authority, we might try to plant churches that have no official leaders or teachers. If we feel like church membership or preaching are really Western accretions, then we might try to plant churches without them. If we have ideas about what authentic, pure, New Testament Christianity was really like, we can turn local believers into our guinea pigs. No, churches on the mission field shouldn’t look exactly like the churches back home do, but they are not our personal laboratories. The underlying elements should be the same, even if they are clothed in a different language and culture.
We think we are above the local church on the mission field. Many Western missionaries do not become accountable members of churches on the mission field. Instead, we prefer to keep our membership in our sending churches, even after faithful churches are planted in their context. This is often because joining a local or international church feels like it will be such a time commitment, and missionaries know their time is precious. The problem is that, because of this, many of us missionaries inevitably move out beyond any real spiritual accountability, which, long-term, must be local accountability. Zoom calls and a visit every few years will not cut it. We might live like this for decades, assuming that we are a special category of Christian who exists for the local church but not under the local church. But such spiritual free agents fail to model for local believers what faithful membership looks like, as well as dangerously expose themselves to great spiritual risk.
We use truisms to avoid exercising our legitimate spiritual authority. “I don’t want to build my own kingdom.” “I want to stay out of the way.” “Let’s trust the Holy Spirit.” “Locals are really the ones who need to take charge, after all.” We Western missionaries will commonly use phrases like these to excuse ourselves from taking spiritual leadership in missions contexts. The thing about all of these statements is that they seem so humble. But often they serve to cloak the fact that, because of our post-colonial angst, or our methodological commitments, or our simple insecurity, we don’t want to exercise the legitimate spiritual authority that we have as ambassadors of Christ. These statements often cloak a false humility and keep us from modeling spiritual leadership for local believers, leaving them to depend on the fallen leadership models they have from their own cultural background. We Westerners need to understand that our current issue is not that we love leading or being upfront. It’s that we are terrified of it.
We hold up our personal church size preference as the ideal. Everyone has a personal church size preference, whether we recognize it or not. And each church size has its own size culture that comes with its own positives and negatives. The problem is that we missionaries often latch on to our favorite size church and start thinking that this size is the biblically faithful way to do church. I once fell into this kind of thinking, back when I was a house-church-only advocate. As with methodology, so with church sizes. The underlying characteristics of a healthy church are universal and scalable. They can be implemented in a Philippian house or in a Jerusalem congregation of 3,000.
We have arbitrary definitions of reproducibility. Reproducibility is all the rage in popular Western missiology. And for what it’s worth, reproducibility is a biblical concept. But Westerners often throw this term around without defining it and without recognizing that their own understanding of what is reproducible is very arbitrary. 2 Timothy 2:2 speaks of four generations of believers, but it does not give us a timeline in which this multiplication is supposed to take place. We like to stick our own preferred timelines onto the text, but that not only leaves us importing our own ideas into the Bible, but also poorly prepares us to discern what sort of timelines are truly needed in our local context. Again, what are we going for? Oak forests or grass on the rooftops? And should that affect how we think about reproducibility?
We rely on salaried positions for raising up leaders rather than waiting for the slow and steady work of character growth. The quickest way to see ministry results and see leaders emerge in Central Asia is to hand out salaried positions. Unfortunately, most of these results will prove to be short-lived. The hard truth is that believers are not ready to handle salaried leadership positions in any culture until they have a proven track record of leading regardless of the money. But we Westerners are so eager to show results in our work that we are often tempted to skip the long, slow path of character development by means of salaried positions. This is made all the easier by the fact that the Western church has such a culture of generosity, where funds for this kind of thing are so easily come by.
We are hyper-focused on our people group to the exclusion of others God brings into our circle. Many Western missionaries have intentionally set their sights on an unreached people group. This is admirable, for without this kind of specific focus, many of these populations will continue to be without gospel access. The question is whether or not this kind of focus should be an inclusive or an exclusive one. Many of us will neglect to care for other believers or seekers around us, even if God puts them right in our path, because they are not from our people group. God forbid, they might even be other foreigners who require some of our time. Instead of this, we would be wise to maintain a determined focus on our main people group, while also trusting that if God brings us believers from other groups, he has a good reason for that. This past year, we befriended a believing family from Zimbabwe who had moved to Caravan City for a job opportunity. One year on, they had to unexpectedly move to Poet City, where they are now attending our previous church plant and encouraging our dear friends there. We had no idea when we invested time in them that they would later go on to invest in local friends like Darius and his church. We should not let a specific people group focus prevent us from caring for the broader body of Christ as well.
We are afraid to own the strengths of Western culture. Even though this is a post largely about the current weaknesses of Western culture, I would be remiss to not mention that one of those weaknesses is refusing to admit the strengths of Western culture. Western culture, like all cultures, truly if imperfectly reflects the image of God. It has also been deeply shaped by the Bible and by Christianity. This means Western culture has both real natural strengths and real Christian strengths. We missionaries from the West need to realize that we can be honest and thankful for these strengths without getting anywhere near sinful ethnocentrism or racism. I love how Western culture is so full of hopeful optimism, how it emphasizes hard work and honesty, how it dignifies the individual, and how it advocates for freedom of religion. I hope that Central Asian culture becomes more Western in these ways, without losing its distinctive strengths. We Western missionaries don’t serve our local friends by pretending our culture is all bad. Rather, we should model for them a humble and honest posture towards our native cultures.
We over-prioritize physical safety. Westerners are safer than ever, yet we continue to be more and more fixated on physical safety. This means we are often the first to bolt in case of security crises and the first to recommend our local friends flee in the face of serious persecution. There is often wisdom in fleeing danger, but we Western missionaries need to be aware of what we are modeling for local believers. Are we teaching them how to be afraid, or how to trust God in the face of danger? These are difficult calls and require much wisdom. But part of that wisdom is knowing that we come from a culture positively obsessed with physical safety.
We give up if something doesn’t seem to work quickly. We Westerners tend to start strong and optimistic. But if our work doesn’t prove fruitful relatively quickly, we tend to lose heart and move on to greener pastures. What this means in difficult contexts like Central Asia is that Westerners give up after the first or second implosion of their church plant, feeling that this must mean they have been doing something wrong. This is often accompanied by a dramatic conversion toward a different kind of methodology as well, usually one where the Westerner is insulated from the same kind of disappointment. Often, if the missionary had simply kept pushing and plodding a little longer, their church plant would have stabilised. The key here is to understand that Western culture, with its expectations of quick formulaic success, doesn’t often set us missionaries up for the kind of stubborn faithfulness truly needed on the field.
We trust others naïvely. When it comes to other people, we Westerners tend to view everyone as trustworthy until proven otherwise. But in cultures saturated with deception, betrayal, and hypocrisy, many people are simply not naturally trustworthy. Just as we have been trained by our culture with a bent toward authenticity and trust, others have been trained with a bent toward duplicity and distrust. And while this can make for lots of cross-cultural misunderstandings in normal relationships, it can spell disaster when a divisive person, abuser, or wolf comes to prey on the church. These predator types will run circles around us Westerners if we do not learn to be more shrewd and discerning in how we extend trust and responsibility to others. A good way to compensate for this weakness is to extend trust in small ways until someone’s trustworthiness can be proven over time – and to be ready to move quickly and with unity when a predator is revealed.
We confuse niceness for love. It’s been said that the first ‘commandment’ for Western evangelicals is “Thou shalt be nice.” But often, biblical faithfulness requires doing and saying things that do not feel nice, at least not on the surface. Pointing out sin and the need for repentance doesn’t feel nice. Neither does church discipline, nor standing up for women not preaching in church, nor telling someone they shouldn’t take the Lord’s supper because they’re not a believer. But each of these things is, in fact, loving. Something in Western culture has primed us to confuse niceness with love. We would do well to define love biblically and to know that that is true kindness.
We try to pretend we’re not rich. We Western missionaries are often much wealthier than our local friends. Sometimes this is true across the board. Sometimes, it may not be true in material wealth, but it is true in terms of connections, opportunities for upward mobility, or even things like books. Western culture emphasizes how we are all equal, so we are uncomfortable acknowledging these differences in wealth. We try to ignore them, but this doesn’t fool our local friends. A better way forward is to follow the Bible’s specific encouragements for the rich. We who are rich in this age are to glory in how the gospel humbles us, and makes us beggars just like it does every other sinner. We are to be rich in good works, generous, and eager to help others with the wealth we’ve been entrusted with. It’s not sinful to be rich, which is good, because in some of these ways, we are stuck with our wealth. But it is sinful to not seek to be faithful stewards of what we’ve been given.
We prioritize a vague Christian ‘unity’ over defined partnership. Most of us Western Christians have drunk deeply of the Kool-Aid that says ‘doctrine divides, Jesus unites.’ We care deeply about unity in the body of Christ, but the way we pursue that unity is by downplaying or sidestepping our very real differences and convictions. This is not the kind of unity that can really hold together when things get hard. Instead, it’s far better to define our unity, acknowledging where we have common ground, where we have serious differences, and what kinds of partnerships that frees us up for. This kind of posture not only equips me to partner in some way with (almost) anyone, but it also keeps me from the mistaken position that I should only partner with those who think exactly as I do. Again, the practice of theological triage here makes all the difference.
We don’t understand the importance of infrastructure for long-term impact. If previous generations of Western missionaries got sidetracked by having to maintain massive missionary infrastructure, recent generations have swung to the opposite extreme. The reality is that missionary families and local believers, after local churches have been established, need things like schools, employment, Christian marriages and burials, theological education, and decent healthcare in order to stay and establish a solid long-term presence. Even owning property instead of renting can mean a greater ability to withstand persecution. With church planting remaining as the vital core of missions, we need to recognize the importance of infrastructure for more effective long-term Christian presence and witness in a given context.
We try to erase those we’ve fallen out with. When Western missionaries part ways because of conflict, as we so often do, we try to memory-hole our former colleagues. We fail to mention the key part they played on our team or in our ministry, instead preferring to avoid mentioning them altogether. Instead, we should honor them as Luke honors Barnabas in the book of Acts. We can be honest about the fact that we parted ways because of conflict. But we should also be honest and grateful for how God used these brothers and sisters in our work.
We make saving people from hell our central motivation. I’m thankful that so many Western missionaries on the mission field still believe in hell. This is a courageous posture that shows real theological spine. However, some very bad things happen when we make saving people from hell our central motivation in missions. First, we come under immense pressure because of the crushing weight of the multitudes around us every day, headed to a Christless eternity. I’ve heard missionaries say that they can’t sleep at night because of this pressure. Second, this pressure leads to the development of unhealthy, rapid methodologies that try to do the math to see how many people need to hear the gospel in X amount of time, given things such as the current population growth rate and death rate. Turns out a hell-centered motivation is still a man-centered motivation. Instead, the glory of God and his future words of approval, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” should be our primary motivation.
We get offended when others disagree with our methods. We Westerners really struggle with the concept that someone can truly be for us, or love us, while deeply disagreeing with our lifestyle or methods. Christians understand how this is possible when we consider that homosexual friend or relative we have. But when it comes to our practices on the mission field, we missionaries feel that other missionaries or pastors back home should not be critiquing our work if they are truly for us. Rather, we need to realize that others being concerned that our work isn’t healthy or biblical is, in fact, one very important way they can show us Christian love.
We are not aware of why we respond to conflict or suffering the way we do. Many Western missionaries arrive on the field without going through the kind of counseling that helps them understand how they respond to conflict and suffering, and why. Without this sort of wisdom, when conflict or suffering comes, we often fall into old, sinful patterns or blow up all over our colleagues. The fact is that there are deeply personal patterns of sin and unbelief and aspects of suffering in our stories that shape how we respond when things get hard. We need to carefully bring the word of God to bear on our stories so that we can recognize wrong responses to conflict and suffering, remember where those things come from in our story, and choose to now walk in the light.
We signal to our spouses and kids that our work is more important than they are. Countless missionary kids grow up with the sense that their parents’ work is more important than they are. Their parents never tell them this, but in so many ways, that is the signal that is sent. We need to be aware of this message that goes hand-in-hand with our Western approach to work and ministry, and to directly combat it, both in word and deed. May the next generation of Western MKs grow up knowing deep down that while their parents often had to sacrifice family time for ministry, they were always more important to mom and dad than the ministry was.
I’m sure this long list is not conclusive, but these are some of the common and major handicaps that we have seen Western missionaries bring with them to the mission field. For the sake of the nations, we need to be aware of these default ways that we have been shaped by our culture and to seek to reform our approach accordingly. The weaknesses of Western missionaries a hundred years ago are mostly very different from our weaknesses today, and in some cases, on the opposite end of the pendulum.
What then should we Western missionaries do to compensate for these handicaps? Here again, in summary, is what I recommend:
Come to the field and leave the field with the careful counsel of the believing community.
Build deep and rich friendships of spiritual equality with local believers.
Trust ultimately in the power of God’s Word and Spirit rather than your expertise.
Don’t let fear of contaminating culture paralyze you, but be intentional in the culture mixing that will inevitably take place.
Prioritize the Bible over culture, especially when it seems costly.
Go as deep in language and culture as possible.
For good contextualization, be open to all of your biblical options, even the ones that feel old-fashioned or foreign.
Carefully assess cultural forms and their meanings to see if they should be redeemed, contested, or rejected.
Remember that healthy work is often slow, small, and time-tested, and don’t be pulled in by the silver bullet methodologies.
Hold firmly and graciously to your convictions and beliefs, but hold your methodologies loosely.
Organize effectively and build institutions.
Embrace the goodness of authority and seek to exercise it and submit to it biblically.
Learn how to easily define and explain what a biblical church is.
Instead of making the mission field the lab for your church fantasies, reproduce sound churches that have the same core ingredients as all healthy churches everywhere.
Whenever possible, become an accountable member of a church on the mission field.
Exercise your legitimate spiritual authority as an ambassador of Christ by leading, teaching, baptizing, and in general modeling Christian faithfulness by example.
Embrace all the Bible’s options for church sizes and enjoy each season of church that God gives you.
Define reproducibility as broadly as the Bible does, and be aware of any arbitrary personal timelines for this that you may be bringing with you.
Make godly character and its development the strategy for raising up leaders, not salaried positions.
Stay committed to reaching your focus people group without neglecting the other believers and seekers God brings your way while you do this.
Be open, honest, and thankful for the strengths of Western culture.
Take wise risks and beware of the West’s infatuation with physical safety.
Keep going, even if faithful work takes decades to bear fruit.
Trust others wisely and shrewdly test for trustworthiness, knowing that some are enemies of the cross
Love others faithfully, even when that means you’re accused of not being ‘nice.’
If you are a Western missionary, you are wealthy; seek to steward it well.
Pursue defined partnership and clarified unity.
Invest in infrastructure for the future of the local believers.
Honor those you’ve fallen out with.
Make God’s glory and affirmation your central motivation, rather than hell.
Be open to others’ concerns about your missionary work.
Learn how you respond to conflict and suffering and why.
Make sure your kids know they are more important than your ministry.
Embrace this kind of posture, Western missionary friends, and we will have, by God’s grace, compensated for many of our cultural handicaps. And I believe our lives and work will show the difference.
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Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
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Entrusted to the Dirt 
