Far more than princes, states, or economies, it is language-communities who are the real players in world history, persisting through the ages, clearly and consciously perceived by their speakers as symbols of identity, but nonetheless gradually changing, and perhaps splitting or even merging as the communities react to new realities. This interplay of languages is an aspect of history that has too long been neglected.
Ostler, Empires of the Word, xix.
While we know that the true “real players” in world history are spiritual forces, it’s wise to acknowledge the massive role that language communities have and continue to play as secondary movers in world history. As is the case with languages like Greek, Arabic, or English, a language “empire” can outlast the original political one that led to its rise, and continue to exert tremendous influence while wearing multiple new sets of political or national clothing.
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“Did you have the same evangelism professor when you were in seminary?”
“No, why?”
“Brother, he used the four words! And he explained them just like we do every week in our service!”
Because of his stellar English, *Alan is our first local believer to take online classes at Southern Seminary. As we talked about how his Intro to Evangelism class went, he was beaming. He couldn’t wait to tell me how so much of what he had learned in the class fit with what he had seen modeled by the missionaries and older believers in his little Central Asian church. I laughed as Alan said things like, “Now I understand what you guys were trying to do!”
Though tempted, I did not say, “It’s about time, brother!”
Every week for the last seven years or so, our team has included a five minute portion for gospel review in our church services. To do this, we’ve leaned on the four word summary of the gospel common in reformed circles: God, Man, Christ, Response. We’d either have the person leading the service or one of the members lead this time.
After seven years, here are a few of the effects of this weekly practice:
Local believers in our church are over time able to faithfully and easily articulate the gospel, and understand how it is different from mere theological statements like “God is love,” as well as how it is different from works-based false gospels. When transferring membership to a church in another city, the pastor told us that *Frank and Patty had shared one of the clearer gospel presentations they’d ever heard in a membership interview.
The stable framework of the four words review allows the church leaders to weave in the breadth and depth of the gospel and its many facets in a slightly different way each week, while never departing from the simplicity of the message. At times when I’ve led this time in the past I’ve shared with the congregation the quote that the gospel is “shallow enough for a child to wade in and deep enough to drown a theologian.” This can equip the body with a flexible framework for evangelism rather than a rigid formula.
Unbelievers attending the service are sure to hear the gospel presented clearly by the congregation in the service, and not just by the preacher in the sermon. Unbelievers who are regular attenders can even end up sharing the gospel four words with others!
Every member of the missionary team gets weekly review and practice in presenting the gospel in the local language. This is a great step toward equipping newer teammates in local-language evangelism – and in sharpening even advanced speakers as they hear new phrases and forms.
Back-translated from the local language, this weekly gospel review sounds something like this:
[Leader] “Like every week, we want to review the message of the gospel together. This is the message that is the heart of everything we believe and teach. When those who don’t yet follow Jesus believe this message, they are saved. And we believers also need this message every day in order to be faithful. In this church, we use four words to summarize the gospel message of Jesus Christ. So, what are the four words that we use to do this?”
[Congregants] “God… Man… Jesus Christ… Response.”
[Leader] “That’s right, God, Man, Jesus Christ, Response. When we say ‘God,’ what do we mean by that?”
[Congregants] “God is the creator of everything.” “God is love.” “God is holy.” “God is spirit.”
[Leader] “Yes, God is the holy and loving creator. But what do we mean when we say ‘Man?’
[Congregants] “Man is a sinner and criminal.” “Man was created good, but we messed it up and rebelled.” “Man is lost and cannot save himself.”
[Leader] “So, what do we mean with the third word, ‘Jesus Christ?’ Who is he and what did he do?”
[Congregants] “He’s the final sacrifice for our sins!” “He’s the bridge between man and God.” “He died on the cross for our forgiveness and rose from the dead.” “He’s our rescuer who makes us right with God again.” “He is the son of God.”
[Leader then clarifies any important points of the gospel missed in the responses]
[Leader] “Because this message is true, what do we mean by the fourth word, ‘Response?’ It has two parts.”
[Congregants] “Repent and believe!”
[Leader] “Yes, everyone must repent of their sins and of trying to save themselves, and believe that Jesus is the only savior. If they do this, the promise of God is that they will be saved and become part of the family of God and have eternal life. All of us should memorize these four words, God, Man, Jesus Christ, Response, so that we can share this good news with our friends and family, and so that we can be encouraged ourselves everyday in the gospel. The order of the words is not as important as their meaning. There are many good ways to share the gospel, but when you use these four words you know you are sharing the heart of the good news.”
There are many ways to faithfully review the gospel in our weekly services, but this simple method has served us well in our cross-cultural, small church context. Do you have a way in which the gospel is made crystal-clear in each of your services? Are the congregants being equipped to better know and better share the gospel by that regular rhythm? Is it simple enough? Is it flexible enough?
To be honest, we originally started this weekly corporate gospel review time without much forethought. But seven years later, I’m so glad we did. We stumbled into something that has truly served the body well.
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Note the traditional parachute pants, they will feature in this story.
The trip had been remarkably efficient. Six months into our medical leave I had traveled back to Central Asia with one of my brothers in order to close down our house and pack, give away, or sell everything. At that point, it seemed that we would need to remain in the US for some years to come and I was determined to not leave the work of closing down our household to my teammates.
In the first four days of a five day trip, we had sorted everything, packed suitcases and a massive rug to bring back, held a sale for expats, set aside bags of stuff to donate to refugees, attended a baptism picnic, attended a funeral which led to a sleepover, preached at the church plant, and managed to spend some good time with most of the local believers. Somebody must have been praying for us because I don’t think I have ever been more efficient in my entire life.
One final step remained before we could turn over the keys of our old stone house to the landlord. My local friend, Adam, who had been mostly healed of paranoid schizophrenia, had assured me it would be a simple one. He knew a guy who bought household goods in bulk so that he could sell them secondhand in the bazaar. Once our sale was finished, Adam would bring in the reseller, we’d agree on a price, and then the reseller’s men would clear everything out. I didn’t worry about this final step because it seemed to be so simple.
However, once the resellers assessed our remaining household goods, things began to get complicated. We had estimated that a conservative value of the remaining goods was around $2,000. But because of the business model, we’d likely need to settle for half of that. The resellers, for their part, offered us $300. And wouldn’t budge.
Now, there is a kind of robust bargaining that is common in our Central Asian culture, one where the various parties haggle back and forth and mutual respect and even enjoyment stay a part of the conversation. This negotiation began that way, but it was quickly turning into a very unhappy one. Both Adam and I were shocked at the price they had given, and after pushing them as hard as we honorably could, they were only willing to come up to $350. The resellers seemed insulted that we didn’t seem to agree with their assessment that our goods were basically worthless.
We sat there in what used to be our living room as the resellers repeatedly complained about the economy and insulted the quality of the household goods we were trying to sell them. My frustration was building, making it harder to think and speak clearly in the local language. What the resellers continued to call worthless were mainly items we had bought from other missionary families and good quality stores. There were Persian rugs, kitchen appliances, solid beds, good tools, and a nice exercise bike – the kinds of things you buy when you’re thinking about items that will serve a family for a decade or more.
More than this, these were household goods that had been purchased for my family and that my family had used, enjoyed, and taken care of. Some, like an espresso maker, were Christmas gifts to one another that we couldn’t carry back. Selling them at a decent price was hard. Selling them at the price the resellers were insisting on felt like a punch to the gut. I shook my head, knowing that we did indeed need to make some money off of these items. We had moved back to the US in late 2022. Inflation made it a terrible time to try to set up a new household in America.
“I mean, look at all this junk,” the reseller started up again. “Can you point out one item to me that has any real quality or value?”
“Yes,” I insisted, “yes, I can. Look at that area rug, it’s in great condition. And that water cooler and purifier as well. And that exercise bike is solid, it’s the kind of thing you’d pay $100 for at the exercise stores in the marketplace.”
“Ha!” scoffed the reseller. “If I buy this junk for more than $350, there’s no way I’ll be able to make any kind of profit off it.”
He turned to Adam, “These foreigners don’t understand. Tell him, this is all worthless. That bike (hah), that bike is worthless.”
Adam, to his credit, just sat there looking perplexed, but clearly not agreeing with the conduct of the reseller he had earlier been so positive about.
We were at an impasse. We needed to get rid of the stuff. The next day was our last one, and we needed to turn over the keys to an empty house. Should we risk trying to find another reseller? We might run out of time.
At that moment, we heard a knock at the door. It was a mustachioed neighbor wearing the more informal traditional outfit of a collared shirt tucked into baggy parachute pants, pulled up to the belly button. He had asked earlier if he could come by to see what was still for sale, but we had completely forgotten about him.
Adam and I tried to shake ourselves out of our frustration with the resellers and stood up to give the warm and respectful greetings expected between men and neighbors in even the most informal situations. The resellers, not knowing the neighbor, stayed seated, stewing.
What followed could be called providential irony.
“Wow, look at that exercise bike!” the neighbor said. “Is it for sale? I’ve been wanting one just like it! Can I try it?”
For whatever reason, at this point Adam switched back to his British English in his reply, gesturing grandly, “Give it a try, Mr. Jamison!”
Our neighbor, not named Mr. Jamison, and not knowing English, nevertheless seemed to understand. He climbed on the exercise bike, still wearing his traditional baggy pants. He smiled widely as he pedaled in front of me, Adam, my brother, and the sullen resellers.
We all sat there watching him, the enthusiasm of this kind neighbor pedaling away on the exercise bike like some kind of pleasant song that wakes you up from a bad dream.
“This is nice! I’ll pay you forty dollars for this.”
“We’ll take it!” Adam called out, probably louder than he had been intending, and both of us shot a meaning-filled glance at the resellers.
“Can I look around some more? Is there more for sale?” asked the neighbor. Adam told him he could go explore the goods in other rooms.
“You know,” Adam leaned over and said to me in English, “I think I might be able to find another reseller. Should we risk it and send these guys off?”
“Definitely,” I said.
We told the resellers we would be getting a second opinion and they huffed and puffed their way out of the house and the courtyard, remonstrating that we’d never find a better price than they had offered.
The arrival of the neighbor had come at just the right time. It was a small thing, but it shook us out of our death spiral of a conversation with the resellers, and gave us courage for one more risk before the trip was up.
“Who’s Mr. Jamison?” my brother later asked me. “That was hilarious. Why did he call the neighbor that?”
“I have no idea. But that neighbor’s timing and what he did with the exercise bike? That was perfect. Tonight it was definitely Mr. Jamison for the win.”
Later that night, Adam somehow found some more resellers, who were happy to pay $650 to take everything else off our hands. And we were happy to oblige them.
The next day, we closed the courtyard door to the old stone house and turned in the keys to the elderly landlord, who drank chai with us and cried at our departure.
Back in America, my family used some of the money from the sale of our stuff to buy a good used Toyota Sedan from a family in our church. The license plate said “NED,” so we decided the car’s first name should be Ned.
But his last name we proclaimed Jamison. Ned Jamison.
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I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of remixes like this one. This is a celebratory take on an old American spiritual. Maybe in the new heavens and new earth I will learn to play the trumpet like this!
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“It’s like there’s a basement where there are some very dark things. We know it’s there, but we can’t find the door to it. If only we could get down there, then we could actually bring those things out into the light, and hopefully get to dealing with whatever it is.”
I remember sharing this sentiment with a veteran missionary and pastor in our region of Central Asia a couple years ago. We had been discussing the remarkable ineffectiveness of the missionary work among our people group over the last couple of decades.
Since the early nineties, a very significant number of gospel laborers and an astounding amount of funding has gone into planting churches among our people group. Most of it seems to have failed. Most of those who have professed faith are scattered or have fallen away from the faith. Most of the churches that have been started have imploded. Most of the workers have left.
Over the years, I have grown in conviction that at least two things are necessary to see this situation change. The first is the irreplaceable work of slow, steady, faithful ministry by example that is backed by prayer. Whatever else is needed, this is needed more. The locals must taste and see over the long term the beauty of a healthy local church and how faithful Christians live. Forget novel and exciting methods. As veteran missionaries once told us, “mostly they need people who can show them how to suffer well.”
Yet alongside of this, I share a conviction with some of the other veteran workers that there are some significant pieces of the culture that we are still somehow missing. It feels a little bit like what I’ve heard of black holes in space. You can’t see it, but you know something is there because of the destructive evidence being exerted on its environment.
A young local pastor told me that he believes the failure of the missionary work might be because his people are under a spiritual curse, some kind of hardening of heart because of all the times their ancestors committed genocide against the ethnic Christians of the region. I do not pretend to know very much about intergenerational spiritual realities, but perhaps this brother is right. Could there be some kind of spiritual bind that can only be broken by the Church’s Daniel-like repentance for the sins of the past?
Or is it that we foreigners simply need to press even deeper into understanding the hearts and minds and culture of those we are desperately trying to reach? On the one hand, the gospel’s effectiveness is not dependent on missionaries becoming expert anthropologists. On the other hand, stories like Peace Child and Bruchko are real, where gospel breakthrough happened when the missionary was able to wed the good news to some aspect of local culture or myth/memory that seemed to have been sovereignly planted there for that very reason. “In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness” (Acts 14:17).
However, I hesitate because in the case of our people, it feels like we are not so much in need of finding something good that has remained as much as finding something dark and twisted that needs to be torn out – less redemptive analogy and more cultural exorcism, as it were.
At the very least, alongside prayer for spiritual breakthrough, a more systematic study of the culture will not hurt. Whereas missionaries to remote tribal peoples are trained to do this very kind of exhaustive cultural study, most of us in our region have taken more of a posture that assumes that if you systematically study the language, you’ll get the culture thrown in as well. But we have found this to result in some big holes. Some, merely odd. Some, very concerning.
I’ll never forget when a leader in training in our church plant told us very matter-of-factly that there’s a special spiritual word you can use to command the soil not to decompose a body until you can rebury it elsewhere, and it will obey you. He claimed to have seen this work on a body buried for over a month. And he seemed to have no idea that this folk religious/sorcery belief was incompatible with Christian belief and practice.
How many more beliefs are just like this, unseen beneath the surface, only emerging in times of crisis, in times that expose what someone really believes about the nature of life, death, and the spiritual realm? And are any of them regularly sabotaging church plants and relationships between local believers because they continue to go unknown and thereby unaddressed?
One of the reasons I’m excited about my new role when we head back to Central Asia is that it will require regular and deep study of the culture. The plan is for this study to then lead to biblical and contextual resources that address the things that emerge – including those things that emerge from “the basement.”
Some of it is not hidden at all, but well-known. As of yet there are no Christian resources in our language that take evil things like wife-beating, female circumcision, and honor killings head on. This must change.
God willing, it will. And sooner or later, God’s people will bring some light into that basement – and get to work banishing the darkness.
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This is the email update we just sent out to our prayer list. I haven’t posted many of these here to my blog, but wanted to do so for this one because it provides a good overview of the road we’ve walked over the past year or so.
Fourteen months ago we left Central Asia for an extended medical leave, not sure if we would be coming back. After seven years laboring to see healthy churches started among our focus people group, our bodies and hearts were showing the strain – even though we had tried hard to find a posture of sustainable sacrifice. One teammate put it best, it was like we had patched most of the many holes in our boat, only to realize when we slowed down that the boat was still full of water. And it would take a long time to bail it out. Our medical personnel, counselors, and teammates told us it was time for a season bailing water, rest, and hopefully, healing.
The year that followed was a strange one. We moved back to Kentucky, put the kids in a full-time school for the first time, plugged into regular counseling, saw numerous doctors, and wrestled with our future. It’s hard to wait. Hard to wait for healing. Hard to wait for clarity. And it was hard to come to terms with the costs we’d incurred as a family. I (A.W.) for the first time found myself profoundly doubting if the costs of mission are actually worth it, if God will actually take care of those who are sent. Sure, good fruit around them comes from their ministries. But what about them? What about their hearts, their bodies, their kids?
In the midst of a season where we felt great perplexity and disorientation, when God himself seemed distant, God’s people were not. We were surrounded by steady, kind, faithful Christian friends and family. I remember realizing that God was showing his nearness to us through his people. In the midst of this community we felt like we could stay in the US, if that was what God would ask. But what if he asked us to go back overseas? Could we do that if he asked? All we knew for a long time was that we did not have enough clarity to commit to either. So we waited some more.
In the meantime, our health improved. And even though we didn’t get complete clarity on the causes of the different health challenges affecting our family, we gained much insight into more effective prevention and treatment. Slowly our hearts began to heal also. During the fall, we received an invitation to return and serve in a city we lived in four years ago. Our response to this invitation surprised us. We were actually open to it! We decided that we’d pray, get counsel, and make a decision by the new year.
On Christmas Eve, we said yes. We feel that returning is the right next step of obedience, the right next step of faith in a God who is truly trustworthy and a rewarder, even in suffering. Some things will be different upon our return. We’ll be going back with one of our partner organizations, though still in close partnership with our former org teams and churches. The role that we’ve been invited into is one of content creation. I (A.W.) will be overseeing the creation and translation of solid local language articles, books, and hopefully also audio and video resources. The aim will be to give the fledgling churches, new leaders, and new believers among our people group true, compelling, and beautiful resources that will help to establish them more deeply in their faith – resources that will help healthy churches get planted and endure, which has been our aim from the beginning. This role will allow my wife to focus more on family during this season, and allow us to find the right posture as a family to support the crucial ongoing church planting work.
We are hoping to move back to Central Asia in August of this year. This time around, we will be raising support. So that means we’ll need a solid network of individuals and churches who will commit to regular support or one-time gifts, and in this way to partner with us. Would you consider supporting us in this costly, yet practical way?
We have immediate need of one-time gifts that will help us transition onto support, and then we will building our monthly support and moving fund over the next six months.
As always, we will continue to be in desperate need of your prayers and friendship as we head back into this wonderful and difficult labor. We know that many of you have kept on praying for us, because we’ve experienced some very clear answers to prayer over this past year. Not the least of which is the recovery of our faith to trust again that the costs are indeed worth it. Worth it now, by faith. And worth it in the resurrection, by sight.
We’ll be sending out more updates soon. But for now we wanted to tell you how God has been faithful to us and how he has opened up a new door of service back overseas. We’d love prayer for the following things:
-For God to continue growing our trust in Him, no matter where we are
-For wisdom in shepherding our kids through yet another transition
-For God to raise up a solid network of supporting individuals and churches
-For our ongoing efforts to help local believers from a distance get theological education, be supported in ministry, and start businesses
-For the church plants that have been started in our region to grow in maturity and health
In Him,
A.W. Workman and family
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For the past six months I haven’t been able to blog as much. I’ve been committed full-time to some online education projects for our Central Asian people group, a season which is now coming to an end as we prepare to go back overseas. At some point I’ll write a post reflecting on this very unexpected online tentmaker-type experience that I dove into while we’ve been in the US on this long medical leave. But not now. For now, I just want to get back to writing more often. And what better way to do so than with a new Central Asian proverb? And a proverb about something delicious, no less – kebab!
But first, there is a lost-in-translation issue that needs to be cleared up. When most of the world speaks of kebab, they are speaking of ground beef or lamb hand-pressed around a long, flat metal blade of sorts, which is called a shish. The long rectangular raw meat, pressed around the blade-skewer is then placed on top of coals and roasted. This is a shish of kebab, which has come into English as shish kebab. But wait, isn’t a shish kebab chunks of meat and vegetable skewered on a long metal or wooden thing and grilled? Well, kind of. That’s still a shish because it contains a skewer, but the actual word for the chunks of meat would be another word, tikka in our region. So what we call shish kebab is actually a shishtikka (with chunks of chicken, beef, lamb, liver, fat, male animal reproductive organs, etc.)
Why is this important? Well, because when most English speakers visualize a kebab, they are visualizing something that is related, but is not actually a kebab as its original cultures would know it. Please see the above picture for what a kebab is in the regions from where it originates. And now compare that to what North Americans call a shish kebab, below.
Now, since I’m a not at all a language purist, I point this out in order to clear up any confusion, not to tut-tut about how we’ve ruined the word shish kebab or anything like that. No, the word shish kebab has come into English, has taken on a life of its own, and has been a happy part of family barbecues for decades now. May it be blessed.
And in case you were wondering, this kind of word borrowing and mutation happens all the time, in both directions. The English word blouse has been co-opted by our Central Asian language and now is used (in the form blus) for what Americans call a sweater and Brits call a jumper. This is simply the nature of words. It can get confusing, but at least it keeps us on our toes.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s get back to the actual proverb, “May the skewer not be burned, nor the kebab.” This proverb is equivalent to our English sayings, “To walk a tightrope” or “To walk a fine line.” Essentially, this proverb is used when there are two important things that need to be balanced or held in tension in a given situation. As I said above, Central Asian kebabs are cooked on a long metal blade-like skewer. This is important because the metal heating up helps to cook the kebab on the inside, while the outside is being cooked by the coals. So, being the good Central Asian chef that you are, you don’t want the outside to burn while the inside is still raw, and vice-versa. You need them to be cooking at the same rate, so you attempt to position your shish of kebab so that it’s just right.
There is wisdom is this proverb, the kind that recognizes that much of what is good and true must be held in balance and tension in order to not be distorted and become bad. Parents should listen to their children so that they feel heard and loved. But parents must not give their children authority such that they end up deciding things for the family. Christians should emphasize the sovereignty of God in all things, yet they must not stop sharing the gospel because of this truth. Solomon’s proverbs are full of the tensions inherent in the pursuit of wisdom. As we recently shared with our kids regarding restaurant food on vacation, “If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it” (Prov 25:16). We still had at least two nights of offspring vomiting up restaurant food late at night.
It’s been a very strange 14 months waiting for clarity and wisdom about the future, trying to make decisions that left the door open to both staying the US and returning overseas. I don’t know that I always got it right. There were some investments of time and treasure that may have resulted in some burned kebab.
However, I trust that the coming resurrection will account for all investments made out of a desire to be faithful, even the ones that prove to be a bit misguided when the fog clears. It’s good to be here, feeling like the path before us is somewhat visible again. And by the grace of God, that path will involve some good kebab again, and not just the proverbial kind.
To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.
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Pride is such a slippery sin, one that often masquerades as wisdom, sound strategy, or simply holding to the “correct” position. For so much of the contemporary missions world, the right position, the strategic thing, is to avoid transmitting our own culture to those we are leading at all costs – even if that means not leading, not preaching, and not modeling crucial aspects of the Christian life for indigenous believers. This kind of posture often feels like humility, but its assumptions about local believers prove to be anything but humble.
For example, missionaries who long to see exponential growth and even movements among their focus people group will often refuse to preach sermons directly to locals. They believe that this is a Western Christian form that will be foreign to the locals and bad for church multiplication. Many will persist in this posture even when local believers repeatedly request that they preach to them and even when the local culture is one steeped in Islam, where a mullah or imam (checks notes) preaches a sermon in the local mosque every Friday. No, the missionary persists in what he maintains is the humble thing to do, refusing all opportunities to preach the Bible to local believers. He might tell himself that by doing this, he is humbly refusing to build his own kingdom, and he is saving the indigenous church from the pollution of Western forms. In reality, he is pridefully elevating his own opinion or training over the good desires of local believers and the clear commands of scripture.
In previous posts, we’ve noted how the Bible’s emphases and cross-cultural common sense help to guard the missionary from this powerful fear of cultural contamination, from the specter of their culture being passed on to their disciples and thereby wrecking indigeneity. This current post adds personal humility to the list of guardrails that keep us from being frozen or misled by inflated fears of cultural transmission.
The first point of personal humility that missionaries must embrace is that local believers are not inferior to us (Col 11:3). Everyone is equal at the foot of the cross, both in our sinfulness as well as in our new nature as believers (1 Pet 2:9). Local believers are our equals in Christ, even as we seek to mentor them in the faith. This spiritual equality means that local believers are indeed increasingly able to sift their own culture and borrow from other cultures as a means of reforming their own. Should they be trained in discernment so that they don’t believe that everything Western is also Christian? Absolutely. We don’t need a hands-off posture that gives local believers no guidance at all. But neither do we need a posture that desperately tries to shut the door to any possible cultural transmission. As we have previously noted, this is not a real-world option.
I remember the first time I realized that “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” had been translated into our Central Asian language and was a regular part of house church services. I was so disappointed. My personal feelings about this song were connected with Bible camp altar calls that felt manipulative, with a fundamentalist Christianity that was decisionistic and fixated on secondary issues. Yet here it was, being sung from the heart by persecuted local believers.
My bubble of indignation burst when a fellow missionary who had grown up in India told me that the song wasn’t actually American, but originally from a first-generation Christian of tribal north India. This information served as a very helpful rebuke. As it turns out, my culture had also borrowed this song from another, and the Lord had used it in the testimony of countless thousands. Even though I felt that the song’s value was largely gone for my generation, I knew enough about its history to know that it had been used mightily in American generations past. Yet here I was, upset that some unthinking missionary had translated this song into the local language. Even if that had been the case, who was I to say that the local believers shouldn’t even be exposed to a Christian song that had been mightily used of the Spirit elsewhere? Did I really believe them to be my equal when it came to discerning what would and would not edify the church? Proper biblical humility moves us away from this kind of “cultural appraisal for me, not for thee” posture.
Second, embracing humility can remind us that culture is often a deeply entrenched, stubborn thing and that we should not over-inflate our own ability to change it. The locals in Papua New Guinea may now wear T-shirts, jeans, and flip-flops, but they still take their children to the witch doctor if they fall seriously ill. The culture has only been Westernized at a surface level, but not where it counts. Similarly, Western missionaries might lament that Central Asian Christians now sit in chairs instead of on the floor in their services. However, they should be lamenting that local believers still believe that a lone, strongman pastor is the only kind of leadership that is “real.” Proper humility recognizes that it takes the work of God to change these deeper core levels of culture; thus, it’s not something we have the power to do accidentally. Remember, Jesus says that we do not have the power to even make one hair of our heads black or white (Matt 5:36).
Local believers are our equals in Christ, who become increasingly wise to appraise aspects of foreign Christian cultures as they grow in their faith. It is not our job to work so hard to shelter them from our Western culture that we refuse to do direct, lead-by-example ministry. Furthermore, we are, apart from the Spirit, impotent to change the deeper layers of culture. We need to stop assuming that we are so influential and so popular that we might turn everyone into Westerners without ever meaning to.
Rather than postures that reflect hidden pride, we need to embrace a biblical humility, one that focuses primarily on doing the Lord’s work. A posture of true humility will, in the end, be the most effective for preventing the wrong kind of cultural transmission, and bringing about healthy indigenous churches.
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Want to know one of the deepest fears of contemporary missionaries? Being labeled a colonialist. Missions books and pre-field trainings are full of examples of how previous generations of missionaries got it wrong, exported their culture along with the gospel, and thereby hamstrung the growth or even existence of the indigenous church. The average well-educated Westerner will go to great lengths to avoid the shame of being labeled a racist or a –phobe of any sort. The average Western missionary will go just as far – perhaps even further – to make sure the dreaded colonialist label never sticks.
This deeply-imbedded cultural fear often works its way out in a missiology of reaction. What ends up crystal-clear for the average missionary going to the field is what he should not be like – those old-school colonial missionary types. So, when missions methods are proposed that keep the missionary always in the background, never leading from the front, the missionary becomes an easy convert. In these methodologies (also chock full of promises of exponential success), the missionary has found a compelling philosophy that keeps him from leading groups in Bible study, from preaching, from baptizing locals, and even from calling out the darkness of local culture when necessary. In his zeal to not be a colonialist missionary, the gospel worker focuses overtime on preventing any of his culture from being transmitted through his ministry.
In a previous post, we’ve seen how the Bible’s strong emphases on direct gospel ministry and protection against false gospels provide a helpful response to this kind of missions thinking. How might the experience of seasoned cross-cultural missionaries also inform this fear of being a cultural colonialist, a cultural contaminator?
Thankfully, cross-cultural wisdom and common sense also bring some needed correction to the missionary mortified at the thought of passing on some of his culture to his local friends. To start with, those with long-standing cross-cultural relationships will tell you that cultural transmission is, in fact, inevitable.
When we love someone, we are shaped by them.
Spouses’ personalities and body language become more like one another as they age. Likewise, friends from different cultures slowly absorb traits from one another’s lives. This is simply how human relationships work. When cross-cultural relationships exist, culture will be transmitted whether we want it to or not. This is because group as well as personal cultures are porous and dynamic, constantly flowing back and forth and naturally interacting with the other cultures around them. Naivete says we can stop cultural transmission entirely. Wisdom and experience say it will happen, so let’s seek to notice it and be intentional about it.
Similarly, culture can never be transmitted without being changed in some way, localized as it were. No one can emulate another in one hundred percent the same way. No, even the sincerest emulation still gets colored by the unique traits and personality of the individual or group that has been influenced. Once again, experience shows us that cultures never receive anything without putting their own spin on it. Yes, the Melanesian church of my adolescent years sang “Rock of Ages” in English in their services. But the timing, the pitch, and the fact that every single verse of the song was sung was most definitely not Western, but more akin in style to the tribal dirges of their ancestors. When this kind of exchange occurs, does it represent a coercive act of culture invasion or a consensual act of culture adoption? Must we insist that the former category is the only possibility? Or can we admit that indigenous cultures – not just our own – possess enough agency to adopt and transform foreign forms willingly?
One more point of cross-cultural common sense is that cultural transmission can be either good or bad. This much should be plain to the Christian, even if it’s not to the secular academy. Strangely, even among Christians, it is assumed to be bad when a Western missionary’s culture influences local believers. But why is this the default assumption when an unreached culture is influenced by a missionary who is 1) steeped in and shaped by God’s word, and 2) who comes from a culture that has had widespread exposure to God’s word for hundreds of years? In most cases, the cultures of the unreached have either been cut off from God’s word for hundreds or thousands of years or have never had access at all. This isolation from God’s truth always means the presence of areas of horrendous darkness in these cultures – strongholds of evil such as female circumcision, cannibalism, honor killings, or witchcraft. Regarding areas such as these, Western missionaries should be actively trying to change the culture. Yes, some cultural transmission can be good, even godly.
For a global missions culture dominated by the fear of being called colonialist, cross-cultural common sense and wisdom bring a welcome correction. Cultural transmission is inevitable inhuman relationships, and therefore calls for intentionality. Culture transmitted is always localized in some way. And some forms of cultural transmission are necessary in order to combat the works of the enemy. When considered alongside the Bible’s ministry emphases, personal humility, and a deep trust in the sovereignty of God, this common sense wisdom can help free the missionary from a fear-based missiology – and lead to one built on a better foundation.
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Among the many forces that shape contemporary missions, fear of cultural contamination looms large. Missionaries, and Western missionaries in particular, often feel and express a deep aversion to passing on aspects of their own culture to those that they reach through their ministry. Suppose Western missionaries of the past falsely equated Western culture with Christianity. In that case, the pendulum has now swung to the far extreme, where cultural transmission, “contamination,” is now felt to be one of the worst things a missionary could ever do.
This fear is not without warrant. Some churches around the world, planted in previous eras of missions, have failed to take root as truly indigenous because of their Western trappings. The country of Japan comes to mind as one example where the indigenous population has not accepted Christianity as genuinely belonging to the Japanese – at least not in the modern era. In societies like this, Christianity is held at arms’ length, viewed as belonging to the foreigner, and not truly an option for those who identify with their own people group.
Yet an overcorrection to this danger in modern missions has led to an even worse situation. Missionaries are refusing to obey clear commands and examples in scripture out of a professed desire not to export Western culture. Following popular methodologies -themselves driven partly by this fear of cultural contamination – they shrink back from biblical ministry, necessary roles, and spiritual authority. These missionaries convince themselves that by not preaching, not baptizing, not modeling, and not leading church plants, western culture will not influence the locals, the locals will take ownership of the faith, and the Church will be set free to reproduce. All kinds of concerning methods emerge out of this sort of posture. One egregious example would be a mission leader recently forbidding his team members from reading the Bible in indigenous homes due to a commitment to orality and a fear of “Western” literate methods making inroads.
Yes, a desire to keep the Gospel – and not culture – as the only stumbling block is biblically warranted (1 Cor 9:22). The Jew/Gentile divide among the Romans was rife with issues of conscience and culture, such as which days were to be considered holy, and what foods should or should not be eaten (Rom 15). Church history also shows us that these concerns can have real historical validity. In an era where China was repeatedly humiliated by foreign powers, Hudson Taylor rightly understood that many of his Chinese hearers were stumbling not only over his message, but also over his explicitly foreign appearance. However, in the centuries since Taylor became the first missionary to wear the Chinese hair queue, the pendulum has swung far indeed – into territory that Taylor, a committed cross-cultural preacher, would hardly recognize.
What is to be done to course-correct? Our obsession with avoiding cultural transmission must be corrected by the clear commands and warnings of scripture. A survey of scripture’s commands regarding the missionary task shows that the overwhelming emphasis of these passages is not on the need for the minister to check himself in order to protect his cross-cultural disciples from adopting his culture (Matt 28:18-20, Matt 24:14, Rom 10:14-17, Rom 15:20, 2 Tim4:11-16). Rather, the emphasis falls on the importance of direct gospel ministry – the kind of ministry that can be seen, caught, and followed. In other words, the Bible emphasizes ministry by direct example. Consider the weight that Paul – a self-professed Hebrew of Hebrews – gives to emulating his own manner of life when writing to the Gentile Macedonians in Philippi. “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. (Phil 3:17 ESV).” Apparently, Paul did not seem to think that if Macedonian believers imitated the life of a Jewish Cilician, they would no longer be able to reach their pagan neighbors effectively.
What of scripture’s warnings? Far from emphasizing the evils of cultural contamination, scripture instead highlights the dangers of false-gospel contamination (Gal1:6-8, 2 Cor 11:4, 1 Tim 1:3). This danger comes through things like false teaching, wolves in sheep’s clothing, a lack of holy living, or even a loss of love (Rev 2). Once again, the weight of biblical emphasis indicates that these dangers are far more of a threat to the spread of the Church than missionary cultural transmission.
In future posts, we will consider how a good dose of cross-cultural common sense, personal humility, and a deep trust in God’s sovereignty all help to guard the Church and its missionaries from falling into this pitfall of modern missions. Nevertheless, it is appropriate that any missionary who finds himself frozen by the fear of contaminating the indigenous Church first wrestle with the Word of God and its dominant emphases: Do direct ministry by example and watch out for false-gospels. With these emphases in place, the guard rails are set, and the missionary is now free and ready to keep a wise eye out for where cultural preference might indeed be causing barriers to the gospel.
Any return to a more biblical missiology must be shaped primarily by the Bible’s emphases, and not dominated by our modern fear of cultural contamination.
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Entrusted to the Dirt 