Two Very Different Dialects of Respect

I continue to be struck by the many ways that Western culture and Central Asian culture differ in showing respect. One way to summarize these differences would be that Central Asian culture primarily respects a person by elevating them, while Western culture primarily respects a person by equalizing them.

When a Central Asian meets another Central Asian, both are trying hard to show that they feel the other person is higher than they are. They show this through the many respectful phrases and titles they drop, as well as their body language. Both are careful to formally and expressively show that they are lower, and the other is higher. This goes on for quite some time until one finally relents and, with much protest, receives the preferential treatment.

When two Americans meet, both are trying to show that they feel that the other person is their equal. They do this by doing away with titles and by acting in a relaxed, casual, relational manner. Their body language is not rigid and formal, but loose and friendly. Both are careful to demonstrate that “you know that I know that you don’t think you’re better than me,” and vice versa. This might take place with very few words spoken at all, or with something as casual as a silent chin nod.

When a Central Asian and a Westerner interact, the Westerner might come away feeling that the Central Asian was way over-the-top and uncomfortably verbose in their praise. Are they for real? Do they have an agenda? The Central Asian might come away feeling that the Westerner was strangely cold or even rude. Have I offended them? Do they think they’re that much better than me?

These differences have a lot to do with our different histories and cultural makeup. The West, especially North America, is deeply shaped by a historical reaction against the hierarchies and class system of the old world. Some of the deepest values of Western culture are tied to the dignity of the lone individual, regardless of their background or current social status. Central Asia is still very much an ancient patron-client system, where, in the absence of sound impersonal institutions, one must acquire honor and status by securing the patronage of those above you and the client services of those below you. In this kind of system, honor, respect, and reputation are central to everything – even survival.

These differences in showing respect get highlighted for us in funny ways as we navigate (sometimes daily) between Central Asian and Western cultures in Caravan City. The international church, with its global-Western hybrid culture, tells first-time guests that they don’t want to embarrass them, so they can just quickly raise their hand to receive a visitor card. They want to honor them but also to treat them as equals, and equals aren’t eager to be singled out for recognition. The Central Asian church they planted, however, asks first-time guests to stand up and introduce themselves, knowing that the chance to be visibly elevated like this in a meeting is a great honor, and one that guests will feel deeply. Both churches then clap to welcome the newcomers, and both have acted honorably according to their respective cultures.

When it comes to introducing someone speaking up front at a seminar, a Westerner will want to humanize them, to tell the audience about their personality and their hobbies, maybe a funny story. And the Western speaker will often want to connect with their audience by showing a picture of their kids or grandkids. But if a Central Asian is introducing a speaker, they’ll want to focus on their qualifications and achievements, the things that have elevated them enough to be an expert worth listening to. The Central Asian speaker will begin their talk, not by trying to humanize themselves, but by offering detailed thanks to all of the other respected figures present or not who have made it possible for them to come and speak.

Of course, Westerners do quietly enjoy being elevated. And Central Asians quietly enjoy being equalized. But neither culture can quite bring itself to lead with these things. No, they are supposed to happen indirectly, as a sort of open secret. Westerners know that the double PhD is there and is very significant, but it might embarrass the speaker if we focus on that too directly, just like it would embarrass the Central Asian speaker if we focus too much on his hobbies, spouse, or grandkids.

Having made many mistakes hopping from one culture to the other, I can say that understanding these primary dialects of respect can go a long way toward navigating such different cultures well – or at least toward navigating them functionally. You really can communicate genuine care for a Central Asian by being thoughtfully respectful and by constantly trying to elevate them. But when you’re with that Westerner, all that usually feels a bit much. Instead, be relaxed, treat them as a friend and peer, and keep the compliments select and low-key.

It is a curious thing that such different-seeming behaviors can grow from the same root virtue of honor or respect. Yet they do. And both can be a way to put on true Christian love, because both can be found in the gospel itself.

The gospel both equalizes and elevates us. In its pure and powerful light, we are all seen to be equally made in the image of God, and each also equally sinful. Those now in Christ are all equally little prophets, priests, and kings, and heirs of the resurrection. Yet each one of us is also elevated through the gospel, raised from one degree of glory to another, with differing honor and rewards bestowed in this age as well as in the age to come. Our particular tribe of Christianity will tend to focus more on one of these truths than the other, usually depending on what culture we’re in. But they’re both there in the Scriptures. “Outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom 12:10) goes hand in hand with “All are one in Christ” (Gal 3:28).

What happens when believers from both kinds of cultures mix in the same church? Well, every church must develop one primary corporate culture in order to function. There is no way around this. There’s nothing wrong if the culture your church has naturally landed on is more Western or more Central Asian, especially if this is a good reflection of your members and your community. But there’s lots of room in relationships and personal interactions to care for people by attempting to speak their dialect of respect, as it were. If you’ve got a pastor or visitor from a culture that elevates, use titles and use body language that shows you’re putting them ahead of yourself. If you’ve got a pastor or visitor from a culture that equalizes, stick to first names, and treat them like you’re old friends.

Finally, saturate it all in love and grace. There’s no world in which you learn to perfectly operate in a different culture’s dialect of respect. And others will fumble yours as well. But humble, loving, and gracious believers don’t get bent out of shape about this kind of thing. In fact, when they look carefully, they can even see that these very different words and actions stem from the very same posture of the new heart.

We’ve got 19k of our 20k goal still to raise this summer. Would you consider supporting our work and the Church in Central Asia in this way? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. 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.

Photo from Unsplash

Set a Guard over Your Lips

Ever wonder what the content that we write for local believers looks and sounds like? Below is an example of an article I wrote this past year in response to the widespread sin of gossip among the young churches of our area. You’ll notice some commonalities (like using local proverbs), but also that the style of the writing is different from what I normally post here. It’s deliberately simpler and more straightforward. This is both due to the need for translating it into our local languages but also the value of prioritizing clarity over style in content written to help new believers.

That being said, gossip is not a sin limited to the churches of Central Asia. I was challenged to grow in this area as I wrote this article, and I hope that others will be helped by it also. May we all grow in speaking the truth in love.

“Talk that has gone to a tongue has gone to a city.”

This local proverb refers to the incredible speed with which rumors or gossip about other people can spread. The idea is that if even one person shares information about someone with another person, then there is a good chance that soon the whole city will know. This proverb tells us about an aspect of local culture, that the culture is full of talk about other people, full of gossip.

However, this Central Asian culture is not alone in struggling with sins of the tongue. Humans in general have always sinfully enjoyed spreading shameful or negative information about others. The book of Proverbs bears witness to how this was the case in ancient Israel around 3,000 years ago.

Proverbs 18:8 says, “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts.”

Because of our sinful nature, humans in all cultures, even those among God’s chosen people, have been tempted by gossip. This is because gossip seems to have a sweet taste in the beginning. However, after we have listened to gossip or shared it, it does not truly result in anything good. Instead, it results in destruction and division.

Proverbs 16:28 says that, “A perverse person stirs up conflict. And a gossip separates close friends.”

This verse says that it is a perverse person who stirs up conflict by talking about others. It says that this kind of person even separates the closest of friends through the harmful power of their words. In fact, our words are so powerful that the book of James says, “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3:6).

Friends, do you want your whole body to be corrupted? Would you like the whole course of your life to be set on fire? Or to have your tongue set on fire by hell? God’s word says these results and judgments happen to those who do not control their tongues, those who gossip about others.

Beloved brothers and sisters, this is one of the most important areas where local believers will need to change their culture and their daily habits.

Many years ago, I was preaching in a house church from the Sermon on the Mount. That day, we were focusing on the section where Jesus tells his disciples not to swear by anything, but to let their yes be yes, and their no be no. After the service, a believing husband and wife said to me, “This means we need a whole new language! We don’t know how to speak our language without swearing. We swear in almost every sentence!”

Yes, when we follow Jesus, everything changes. And one of the most clear changes should be the way in which we speak. Even though we still speak our native language, the way we speak it might be so different that, in one sense, it will seem like a new language. Unbelieving friends, relatives, and neighbors might be shocked or confused when a local believer stops telling gossip about others. But this is what Jesus requires. He requires a way of speaking that is worthy of him, especially when it comes to how believers speak about one another.

Ephesians 4:29 says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

This verse describes the standard for every believer. All of our words must be helpful for building others up, bringing benefit to those who listen. If any word or kind of talk does not do this, then we should not say it. Gossip or shameful talk about other believers always fails this test. It fails the test because it is not helpful but hurtful to the body of Christ. It fails because it does not build others up; instead, it tears them down. And it fails because it does not bring any benefit; instead, it brings division and conflict.

Friends, from now on, you can use this verse, Ephesians 4:29, as a filter for everything you say. You can test every word, every sentence, according to this standard, and only say it if it is helpful for building others up.

Here, some might wonder about a situation where another believer is truly sinning or damaging the church. Should we not warn other believers about them? The short answer is no. Instead of talking about them, first, believers should go to that person and gently tell them their sin face-to-face (Galatians 6:1, Matthew 18:15-17). And when you do this, don’t tell anyone else about it. Only then, if that person doesn’t repent, should you tell one or two other believers about their sin. And this is only so that they can go with you to talk to that person about their sin. Once again, at this point, don’t tell anyone else about it except for this one or two others. If, after this second step, the believer who is sinning still doesn’t repent, then you should go and talk to the pastors in your church about that person’s sin. The pastors should then consider if it’s necessary to tell the church in an appropriate way, according to Matthew 18.

At each of these steps, limit what you say about that sinning believer to what is truly helpful and necessary. Keep your conversations about their sin short and careful, and watch out for the temptation to give in to gossiping about rumors or even true details. As Proverbs 10:19 says, “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.”

For example, you might see another believer lying to others about some area of his life. Without saying anything about this to anyone else, go to that believer yourself and gently talk to them about their lying. If they refuse to listen to you and refuse to repent, only then should you talk about their sin with one or two other believers so that you can make a plan to talk to the sinning believer together. If the sinning believer still refuses the counsel of this small group of believers, then privately share the situation with a pastor of your church so that, if needed, it can progress toward the next stage of church discipline.

Brothers and sisters, even if someone is truly sinning, it is still gossip and still sinful to talk to others about that believer unless you are carefully following the Matthew 18 process that respects believers’ honor and privacy. The Bible calls us to “speak the truth in love.” Telling others about proven sin in another believer’s life may be telling them something true, but it is disobeying this command because it is not speaking that truth in a loving way. Loving other believers means we seek to keep their sins as private as possible, even while we help them to repent. This is what it means to love them and to love them truly, according to 1^st Peter 4:8, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

Have you sinned in the way that you speak about other believers? Friends, all of us have. But praise God, we can repent of any sinful words that we have said. We can repent to God, and, if necessary, we can repent directly to those we have gossiped about. We can join the prophet Isaiah in saying, “‘Woe to me!… For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” When we repent like this, we know that the blood of Jesus is powerful to cleanse us from our sin.

Is it really possible to stop gossiping? Can someone who has gossiped about others all their life really learn a new way of speaking where they no longer do this? Yes, through the power of the Holy Spirit, every believer can have a new way of speaking that becomes a powerful witness to others that God can truly change us.

Believers can learn to rely on the power of God in this area by regularly praying Psalm 141:3, “Set a guard over my mouth, LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips.”

For many local believers who have grown up in a culture where gossip is so normal and accepted, this is a prayer they might need to pray every day. Probably multiple times every day. But God is faithful. Through his Holy Spirit, he truly can guard our mouths and keep watch over our lips.

Believers gossiping about other believers is one of the greatest dangers that is destroying friendships and churches in this region. But when believers learn to speak in this new way, their speech will become one of the most powerful witnesses to the truth of the gospel.

Yes, instead of having a tongue that spreads gossip to an entire city or sets our whole life on fire, we can have tongues that are instead like a tree of life, filling our lives with the wisdom and light of God.

This summer, we are looking to raise 20k, half for our family’s support needs and half for the cost of writing, translating, and printing solid resources for local believers. Would you consider supporting our work and the Church in Central Asia in this way? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. 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.

Photo from Unsplash

A Proverb on Substance over Appearances

His mind is in his eyes

-Local oral tradition

I recently learned the above proverb from a local friend. “You know what our people are like,” he said, “His mind in his eyes and all that.”

The sense of the proverb was mostly clear to me, since we were speaking of a situation where appearances were prioritized over substance, but it was the first time I’d heard what is evidently a very common proverb of corporate self-critique among our people.

This prioritizing of aesthetics can have upsides. Our locals make great barbers, florists, photographers, and designers. Their homes and their wardrobes tend to be neat and spotlessly clean, even among those who are not particularly well-off. But there are downsides for sure, from the merely vain, such as incessant posing for and posting photos of themselves in any kind of situation that casts them in a good light – to the long-term disastrous, such as the measure of a good woman being how she, her home, and her husband look and not whether she is raising her children well. Likewise, in school, children are told over and over again to “sit beautifully” instead of being taught to enjoy learning and to think critically.

It confronts those in ministry as well, since the pressure from day one is to have church gatherings that look impressive on social media. This often puts locals in danger of taking shortcuts with foreign money to achieve the optics that they feel look beautiful and respectable instead of taking the longer and less impressive road to true spiritual growth. It’s not uncommon to have a local believer shoot an idea down simply because “it’s not beautiful,” as if no other reason were needed. It’s not hard to imagine then how this sort of posture interacts with something good but difficult like a church discipline process.

What a grace, then, that there is a local proverb that is self-aware enough to call out this deep weakness in the culture – and one that can link so easily to biblical truths that remind us that beauty is deceptive and vain, but the fear of the Lord leads to true honor (Prov 31:30).

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. 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.

Photo from Unsplash

Baptism and Welcome Songs by Local Believers

Last night we had a baptism. The brother I mentioned last week who came to faith somewhere in the middle of the book Matthew went under the water (in the somewhat-scary metal trough we’ve been using). Despite the nerves and a potential slip in the Trinitarian proclamation on the part of the new local elder, the immersed man also came back up again – surrounded by the hugs, applause, and singing of a room full of celebrating saints.

My wife and I and two local believers led worship during the service. These two local believers, the single former guerrilla fighter gal and the divorced poet/prankster dad, are both growing in their abilities as singers and as songwriters. That being the case, I wanted to share with you the translation of a couple of the songs they’ve written that are fast becoming staples of our local language worship.

Even in English, we don’t have a lot of good songs about baptism. A year or so ago, we realized that when it came to our local language, we had none at all. So, we asked this local brother if he would consider writing one. I sent him a collection of key verses that talk about the meaning and significance of baptism. And I asked him to write a song that would feel very local and singable on a baptism picnic with no guitar and only a bunch of believers clapping by the side of a river. He got to work on it, crafting a solid song with traditional rhyming couplets. We then worked on it a little more to make the theology present in the song just a little more robust. In the end, this is the very Central Asian song that was created.

Arise O sisters and brothers, make respectful clapping
Today we have a celebration, for the sake of baptism!

Now arise and look, everyone prepare yourselves
He that is baptized, congratulate him!

Let all sing, give clapping with humility
Another person has been redeemed, by the blood of Christ!

As a sign of burial, we submerge him in the water
And a sign of new life, we bring him out again!

Through faith and water we are members of one another
Before we were estranged, now we are one in Christ!

Arise O sisters and brother, make a respectful clapping
Today we have a celebration, for the sake of baptism!

The melody of this song is quite celebratory and fun to sing either A Capella with just clapping or with guitar. Someday when we have more believing musicians here in Caravan City it will be really fun to sing it with a full band playing local instruments. I appreciate how the song is congregational, calling the church to respond rightly to this glorious act of obedience to Jesus. I also love how the song balances both the spirit of celebration while also teaching core truths about baptism. It’s a good example to me of how foreign and local believers can work together to craft something that could serve the church well for a long time to come.

More recently, the pastor of this church asked us to help create a good welcome song for the beginning of the service. The only one we had in the local language wasn’t so good, one of those odd evangelical songs that’s all about welcoming the Holy Spirit “into this place, into your gathering.” Because we’re not confident that we really should be focused on ‘welcoming the Spirit’ like this (does he not sovereignly create and indwell and fill the church?), we don’t really sing it and were more than happy to see if a better one could be written.

We followed a similar process to the one above, asking the single gal who does vocals with us most weeks if she would consider writing it. We knew that she had been writing a lot of songs on her own, but most of these were first-person devotional-style songs, not necessarily congregational “we” songs that teach and exult in truths from God’s word. It’s curious how this particular weakness of global worship music has somehow seeped into the first generation of believers here as well. Not that first-person, devotional-style songs are unhelpful in the proper context. But that context is not usually the gathering of the local church.

After sending her a number of key passages on the biblical theme of welcome, this is what she wrote.

Where Christ is there is peace
For the weary and heavy laden
His yoke is easy, his burden light
Rest for mind and soul

Chorus:
We come with open heart
We welcome one another
We come humbly and rejoicing
God has welcomed us 

Sinners are welcomed 
In the presence of God our father
The heart is calmed in our Lord's presence
Christ has become our sacrifice 

Chorus:
We come with open heart
We welcome one another
We come humbly and rejoicing
God has welcomed us 

Children and elderly, rich and poor
All are called, let them come 
The mercy of God has made the way
Let all come, the door is open 

Chorus:
We come with open heart
We welcome one another
We come humbly and rejoicing
God has welcomed us

We ended up changing very little of the content since she had done such a good job of weaving in truths from multiple passages of scripture. But a group of us did work together to come up with the melody together. In the end, what’s resulted is a joyful and rich song of welcome for the local church. The melody is more of a fusion of Central Asian and Western styles compared to baptism song, but still close enough, we hope, to get long-term traction among the believers here.

This season has involved more opportunities to invest in local worship than we had anticipated. What a joy it’s been to be a part of the creation of good songs for the local church. Long-term, our hope is to see many new songs that are robustly biblical, delightfully singable, and deeply Central Asian, songs that teach, exult, and call believers to respond in faithfulness.

Although I must say, this kind of work is a bit addictive. Once you realize you can plug needed gaps in the worship of another language, you start looking at your own language and wondering why there is such a paucity of songs on certain topics.

Speaking of these gaps, why don’t we have good baptism songs in English? Somebody needs to get on that. The next time we’re in the US and a newly believing friend goes under the water, I want to be able to exult in song about what is happening!

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.

One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. 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.

Photo from Unsplash

Jesus Was Called ‘Isa 300 Years Before Islam

A stone inscribed with ancient Safaitic Arabic (and a camel)

Possibly the earliest witness to Christianity in Arabia, the Jesus inscription from the Wadi al-Khudari is a memorial inscription, meaning that it commemorates a deceased person. It consists of three parts: It first gives the inscriber’s name (Wahb-El) and genealogy, then adds a commemoration of his deceased uncle, and finally concludes with a unique religious invocation—to Isay, which corresponds to the name given to Jesus in the Quran: “O Īsay (‘sy), help him against those who deny you.” There can be little doubt that the writer (and possibly also his uncle) was Christian.

“The present text is a typical Safaitic composition, but the old gods and prayers are replaced by a Christian invocation. Wahb-El may therefore have been a convert who modified the Safaitic writing tradition to accommodate his new faith, invoking Jesus with the same formulaic structure used to invoke the old gods.” Regarding the circumstances surrounding the inscription and the rise of Christianity in Arabia, Al-Jallad theorizes, “[Wahb-El] may have had close contacts with settled areas, such as Bostra in Syria or the cities of the Decapolis in Transjordan, which appear in other Safaitic texts. On the other hand, it is possible that his inscription reflects the efforts of missionaries to convert the nomads.”

The Earliest Evidence of Christianity in Arabia? (Biblical Archaeology Society)

One crisis that has recently been averted among the churches of our area has to do with the name of Jesus. Our people group, speaking a Persian-related language and overwhelmingly Islamic in their creed in recent centuries, call Jesus by the name he is given in the Quranic Arabic: ‘Isa al-Masih (Jesus the Messiah, localized as ‘Isa-i Mesih).

In previous decades, the Bible translators chose to keep Jesus’ name as ‘Isa in our Bible translation, rather than to defer to the Arabic evangelical preferred form of Yasu’. The reason for this was straightforward. Someone from our people group reading the new Bible in their language would have no idea who Yasu’ was. But they had inherited at least partial categories for ‘Isa the Messiah. While the Jesus of the Quran is not the same as the Jesus of the Bible, by using the same name, the translators discerned that the seekers and local believers from a Muslim background would be less confused and eventually able to redeem the name and fill it with biblical meaning.

In the years since this decision was made, this has indeed proved to be the case. Local believers have had no issues coming to understand who the true Jesus is, even though the name they use for him is close to the same form as Jesus’ name in the Qur’an.

However, the form used for Jesus’ name among Arabic speaking believers is a really big deal. For centuries, they have used Yesu’ and opposed ‘Isa as an inferior Islamic name for Christ, one that some even claim was chosen as a camel-related insult. As the theory goes, the writer of the Quran intentionally chose a different name for his demoted Jesus who was just a mighty prophet, wasn’t the Son of God, and didn’t die on the cross.

Without getting into the merits of this belief, this linguistic differentiation among Arabic-speaking Christians is one still held to very passionately, and likely why someone from that camp began telling believers among our people group that they were compromising by calling Jesus ‘Isa and not Yasu’. Divisions started to emerge among local churches and leaders. Some of those adopting this new position were the usual suspects, local leaders doing ministry for worldly gain who like to find distinctives like this for the sake of demonstrating their ‘superior’ knowledge. But at least one faithful pastor was also getting quite convictional on this issue, a brother whose church partners very closely with the church we helped to plant in Poet City.

Thankfully, a meeting was held among Bible translators and local believers last year where the matter was, at least for now, put to rest. Everyone present agreed that believers and churches in our language group should be free to use either form of Jesus’ name, according to what they think is best for clear teaching and communication. One key to convincing them of the wisdom of this position was new research that demonstrates that ‘Isa is, in fact, an ancient Christian form of Jesus’ name, one that predated Islam. Research by Rick Brown of SIL has demonstrated that ‘Isa is the Arabic form of the ancient East Syriac ‘Isho, while Yasu’ is the form descended from the ancient West Syriac dialect.

This means that ‘Isa was a Christian Arabic name for Jesus before Islam ever came along. While this doesn’t automatically settle the matter for Arabic speaking Christians, for whom their community may never be able nor want to redeem the name of ‘Isa, it is a significant point in favor of the name’s potential for Christian use in other languages. Other languages and people groups simply don’t have the same options, nor the same baggage, for a hard differentiation of Yasu’ over ‘Isa to make sense as a hard rule. In contrast to a name for the all-powerful creator God, these languages don’t tend to have an indigenous name already for Jesus. So, if one ancient borrowed form of Jesus’ name is the one that is more clear, then they should be free to use that form rather than another foreign one not otherwise present in their language. Islamic Arabic has forced other languages into its mold for long enough. The last thing we need is Christian Arabic doing the same thing.

Islam, in a very real sense, stole this particular form of Jesus’ name 1,400 years ago. And while many native Arabic speakers don’t feel right about using it after centuries of gross misuse, for other languages, stealing it back and making it their own is actually pretty easy. English speakers skeptical of this possibility should beware. Our very term for ‘God’ has its own concerning roots in pagan religious usage, more problematic than Allah with it’s El-related semitic roots, and our Germano-English ‘Jesus’ is just as far away from the Greek ‘Iesous or the Hebrew Yeshua as ‘Isa is. In fact, every time we read our Bibles and go to church in the English language we are demonstrating just how effective this sort of name redemption/adaptation process can be.

However, the ancient case for ‘Isa as a Christian name is even stronger than I had realized. As quoted above, it turns out that ancient Arabic inscriptions from the 300s in the Jordanian desert show that ‘Isay was already being used by Arab nomads to refer to Jesus in that early period. Bear in mind, this is 300 years before Islam came along. The Wadi al-Khudari inscriptions in an older form of written Arabic, called Safaitic, bear this out.

I, for one, hope that the current consensus among our local believers about Jesus’ names holds for the long term. ‘Isa or Yasu’ can both be effectively claimed by the believing community and filled with glorious biblical meaning. Both have good clear roots going back to ancient Christian usage. Of the two of them, ‘Isa is currently far more clear, bringing to mind a man called the Messiah who worked miracles and is coming back to judge the world. But local believers will need to make the ultimate call for their churches and their own newly Christianizing language. The roots of names really do matter, as does their baggage, as does their ability to effectively bring the right person to mind. All of these realities need to be taken seriously in cases like this.

For now, if you ever hear someone claiming that ‘Isa was never a proper Christian name for Jesus, you know otherwise. It was being used for Jesus long before Islam came around, and a full three centuries, at that.

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.

*Names have been changed for security

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Guests Mean God Cares for You

I’ve long wondered how our Central Asian people group fuels such energy and excitement for hospitality. Most households are genuinely excited when guests show up, even when they turn up unannounced. The household springs into action with warm machine-gun-fire blessings of welcome proclaimed and standing handshakes, hands on hearts, or kisses on cheeks all around. Quickly and energetically, guests are ushered into the hosting room, where they are given the best seats, quickly offered cold water, hot chai, snacks, and – if the hosts can succeed in their persuasion – an elaborate meal. And the hosts will then keep pushing to see just how far they can convince their guests to accept even more hospitality. They’ll offer showers, naps, follow-up meals, and even spending the night – offering their own pajamas to shut down our attempts to excuse ourselves by saying that we didn’t pack for the night.

Now, I’ve been watching our focus people group closely for many years. The overwhelming majority of these offers are genuine. Every once in a while, I’ll catch an acquaintance making an honorable but hypothetical offer, and I can tell his heart isn’t in it. But the vast majority of the time, the offers are made with what is honestly a perplexing depth of delight. Yes, all cultures know that, in the end, it is rewarding to host others well. But this level of hospitality takes a lot of work and money. It’s costly and tiring and, frankly, unsustainable unless you’ve got relatives around to help out. So, how is it possible for humans to be this motivated to show hospitality?

For a long time, it has seemed that there’s been something going on beneath the surface that could explain this incredible hosting energy. At last, I think we’ve found it.

Turns out our local friends are raised to believe that guests are concrete evidence that God cares for you. There’s a local proverb that states, “Guests are God’s guests.” This means that guests are, in fact, blessings sent to a home by God himself – and evidence that more blessings lie in store. Local culture from ancient times has taught that guests are proof that God remembers you, cares for you, and wants to bless you. By sacrificing to show lavish hospitality, a family responds to God’s gift and puts itself even more in the way of God’s blessings, as it were.

Locals believe that extravagant hospitality is a sort of spiritual investment. It is God giving them an opportunity to pour themselves out for others. And if they are found faithful to care for others as if they were more important than themselves, then God will see, remember them, and provide for their needs. This is why they light up when you tell them you’re coming to visit them. You’ve just told them that God remembers them – and wants to bless them.

What a glorious instinct to have at the center of a fallen culture. How merciful of God to allow this kind of hospitality to still burn bright, even after centuries of Islam choking out so many other areas of common grace.

This is not how Western culture has raised most of us, even those of us from hospitable families. But what has struck me is that this is how many mature believers in the West come to feel about giving sacrificially of their money. As Christians learn to give generously to the local church and to the poor, believing that God is indeed a great rewarder, we give lavishly of our finances, even beyond what others consider wise. We learn from experience and by testing God’s promises that this kind of giving is a surefire way to deeper joys and experiences of God’s provision. Opportunities to give are, in a sense, evidence that God cares for us, that he wants to fill our lives with his joy and provision – and with eternal rewards to boot. Western Christianity has its weaknesses, yes, but when it comes to generosity, it is often exemplary. If you doubt me on this, ask believers from other parts of the world.

However, the Central Asian church is, to put it mildly, anemic when it comes to giving. Believers will often give a small token amount to save face, but balk at suggestions that they should risk something as radical as ten percent or even more of their income. No, they believe, it’s the job of the Western church to fund the churches and believers here with their endless flow of funds. This unfortunate sort of entitlement mindset is often present. And it has meant that there are no self-supporting local churches that I know of in our country of service at all.

I firmly believe that until our local friends learn how to give sacrificially to the church, they will be lacking certain kinds of spiritual power and joy. Why does our people group seem so hardened, so good at killing church plants? Why do the churches that exist seem so riven with gossip and division? Perhaps because most believers refuse to risk trusting God with their money. The Christian life is full of asymmetrical causes and effects like this. Obedience in one area unlocks joy and grace for obedience in other areas, even if at first glance they seem unrelated. If we want to see this land flooded with the light of the gospel, the locals are going to have to learn how to give.

Much is at stake. So what is to be done to help local believers understand the positively stunning promises of God’s word when it comes to giving generously? Having now better understood their motivations that empower radical hospitality, I think we should start drawing on these same motivations to also empower giving. Essentially, the category for sacrificial giving already exists, and deeply so, within local culture. For believers, then, who are empowered by even deeper gospel motivations, it just needs to be expanded to include supporting the local church and missions financially. This might mean shifting how we talk about giving, such that we use more hospitality-specific vocabulary. It certainly means using the ‘guests are God’s guests’ mindset as an illustration of how God is calling believers to trust and obey when it comes to giving away their family’s funds.

Tim Keller used to call this kind of thing floating the B doctrines on the A doctrines. Locally, giving money to the church is a B doctrine, something that our Central Asians don’t naturally resonate with. In fact, some find it a bit offensive, given how hard their lives are. But sacrificial Christian hospitality is an A doctrine, something local believers can yes and amen with incredible gusto and experience. By connecting them and showing how the one empowers the other, we ‘float’ the offensive one on the one that already deeply resonates. By doing so, we can help unlock new areas of obedience or belief that were previously no-go zones because of a given culture’s particular brokenness.

While we’re at it, some of this should probably flow the other way as well. We from the Western church could use a renovation of our motivations for hospitality. As I just read this morning, God really does take care of the Shunammite woman in response to her hospitality toward Elisha (2 Kings 4, 8). This woman leaped at the chance to host God’s prophet, seemingly trusting that this guest was an opportunity to put herself in the way of God’s blessing. In response, God graciously gave her a son, and later, her land back. Even more than this, Christ assures us that if we even offer a cup of cold water to another believer, it’s like we’re offering a cup of cold water to Christ himself – an act that will not be forgotten by the great rewarder (Matt 10:42).

I had to remind myself of these things this week, as a single brother struggling with a recent breakup asked to come spend the night with us again. I was already tired, and I knew saying yes would mean a late night of listening and trying to give comfort and counsel. However, I was helped to say yes more from the heart by remembering that this was, in fact, God showing his care for me, that he was giving me an opportunity to serve, and thereby to know more of his joy and provision. It’s more blessed to give than to receive, right?

In this area, we can learn a great deal from our Central Asian friends. Guests really are evidence that God cares for us, that he will take care of us. And now in Christ, more so than we could ever imagine.

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.

*Names have been changed for security

Photo from Unsplash

In Missions, These Things Combined Mean Someone is Getting Played

Yesterday, I saw a claim made by an American pastor-missionary-trainer that he was heading to a nearby country to do some training with leaders from our region. Among other things, he said that one of the ‘streams’ this network of leaders represents has 100 churches in one of our sister unreached people groups. This is a group that shares the same ethnic name as our focus people group, but speaks a different related language.

100 churches! Amazing, right? The Spirit must really be on the move in this part of the world!

Here’s the problem. The long-term workers on the ground who have actually learned the language to an advanced level only know of one church among that language group, and that a very unhealthy one. Some of our dear friends have labored for years in this unreached language and are finally on the cusp of planting a church – the first healthy church in that language group. And it’s not like some political border means we can’t easily go and verify either. The entirety of this language group’s homeland is right here in the country where we and these other missionaries live, only a short drive from where we live in Caravan City.

So, who’s right? The international trainer with the exciting claims or the missionaries on the ground who can speak the locals’ mother tongue and are neck-deep in direct discipleship relationships?

Sadly, this is not an uncommon occurrence in global missions. While it usually takes place in other regions of the world, with South Asia in particular being notorious for its wild claims of movements to Christ, every once in a while, I’ll hear of some organization making similar claims for our people group or those related to it. I cannot say much about South Asia or the fantastical claims made about what is happening there. But when it comes to our corner of Central Asia, I can testify that these claims are almost always smoke and mirrors.

“I’m immediately skeptical of whoever this is.”

This was my response when I heard this week about this leader and his trainings and his claims of 100 churches among our sister people group. This is because the different factors in this sort of claim combine to make a particular sort of smell, the smell of someone taking advantage of the people of God. The odor of someone doing the kind of work that soon disappears into the wind like so much chaff, while they then move on to some other work with an even better ROI.

Here’s a formula of sorts that tends to hold up pretty well here in Central Asia, and likely across the broader missions world:

A foreigner, more often than not non-residential, who doesn’t learn the language

+ short-term translated “trainings,” often in third countries or online

+ reports of amazing numbers of disciples and churches planted

+ ministry done solely and indirectly through paid local partners

+ claims that simple New Testament methods are being rediscovered and used

+ assurances that “God is moving in an unprecedented way among ______ !”

+ lots of appeals for money

_______________________

= someone is getting played

There are variations of the above formula, of course, but the fact that someone is getting played tends to stay constant across the board when you have a combination of the above ingredients. And by someone, I primarily mean generous believers back in the West who give to the trainer’s organization because they genuinely care about the advance of the gospel. These believers back in the homeland are deceived both into giving and into thinking that God is working in ways he is not actually working. Both are terrible ways to deceive people. But I would argue the second is probably more evil than the first. Tricking people out of their money is bad, of course, but relatively mainstream as far as sin goes. But Jesus said some terrifying things about those who attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to Beelzebul (Matthew 12:31-32). What might that mean about those who deceive others into thinking something is a work of the Spirit when it’s actually a work of Mammon?

Not only that, but the effect on believers on either side of the world when they find they’ve been duped is awful. I have seen this effect firsthand among locals. For those who were unfortunate enough to first be exposed to Christianity in one of these evangelical missions money hustles, if they’re not successfully seduced into the hustle, there is a terrible moment when they realize that the leaders in this Jesus thing are just like those in Islam – hypocrites out for selfish gain. The light seems to fade from their face, and their whole demeanor sinks back into a guarded skepticism. After this, they are often unwilling to gather with believers again for years to come, if ever. Again, Jesus says terrifying things about those who cause little ones, such as new believers, to stumble (Luke 17:2). Some who are lauded as inspirational missionaries in this world will be wearing millstones in the next.

If you look again at the above formula, you’ll notice that each of the parts on its own, except for the end result, is not necessarily bad. In fact, each part can be done faithfully. For example, there are some countries where missionaries can’t get visas. It’s not always necessary or possible for someone to learn the local language in order to do solid training. Genuine movements of God have happened in church history, such as the first Great Awakening or the Korean Pentecost. Sometimes ministry needs to be done primarily through local partners, and sometimes those local partners should be paid. There are times to return to simpler NT methods when good extra-biblical traditions have become too cumbersome. And appeals for money are good when made by faithful workers, as even Paul himself modeled. Yet there’s something about combining all of these ingredients together in our current era of evangelical missions that tends to be evidence that something poisonous is taking place. Bleach is a good household tool. So is vinegar. Put them together, and you get a deadly chlorine gas.

There are three ways I’ve observed in which the foreign-trainer figure is complicit or not in the overall deception. First, there are situations where the foreign leader is himself fully deceived by the local partners, though the foreigner is a faithful Christian trying to do good work. I once knew of a solid Reformed pastor who would visit our region every year in order to partner with a local leader up in the mountains. Sadly, I would later learn this local brother he was partnering with was a textbook wolf. Like all wolves in sheep’s clothing, he was very good at deception, so he managed to secure lots of funding and visits from this faithful pastor through things like strategic photos, compelling stories, and crowded house church services full of mobilized ‘believers’ that would suddenly appear whenever this pastor happened to be in town. But this local man was the same one who was making sure that all of the residential missionaries got reported to the secret police and run out of town. This faithful pastor unfortunately died before we had the chance to expose how he was being deceived.

For non-residential leaders who want to avoid this first kind of situation, the best thing to do is to befriend trustworthy long-term missionaries or local pastors on the ground who can help you vet potential partners. These need to be missionaries or pastors who know the language and who can verify, in-person whenever possible, that your local partners are really who they say they are. For those living on the field, the best course of action to avoid this is to go ahead and learn the language and culture yourself, or to make sure that some on your team do. It’s shocking how much can be missed when partnership is happening through translation.

The second category is when the foreigner-trainer is aware that the reality of things is not exactly the same as what is being presented when they send out their newsletters. But because they feel that so much good is being done through this ministry or movement, or because they just don’t want conflict, they choose to turn a blind eye to the billows of black smoke filling the sky that seem to suggest that there is a fire somewhere around here. Those who choose this path are guilty of deceiving themselves, of people-pleasing, of foolishness, and maybe even of cowardice. Rather than continuing to listen to the voice of naivete or fear, leaders or trainers in this category need to get clarity on what is really happening in the ministry they are partnering with. Again, those in this category have no better allies than those long-termers on the ground. Then, they need to take courage, repent of their part, confront those doing the deception, and make a clean break. Yes, even if that means they are the Western guy telling the indigenous pastors that they are in sin.

The third category belongs to the actual hustlers. These are the missionary-trainer types who are fully complicit in the deception. They have learned how to tell stories, share stats, and manipulate well-meaning believers so that the money flows for the projects themselves, for their local partners, for their own dopamine hits, and for their own pockets. I hate that this is actually happening on the mission field, but it is. It’s happening even in our own corner of Central Asia. These hustler types tend to be great communicators, amazing fundraisers, skillful project managers – and wickedly good at all kinds of gaslighting and deception. Their amazing level of travel, projects, and output shields them from criticism. As does the radical-seeming nature of their work, usually being connected to some country or region that is known as militantly anti-Christian. Who wants to question the work of someone who claims to be facilitating church-planting movements in regions that have been devastated by ISIS, for example?

Those in this category are playing a very dangerous game. At best, if they are believers, then they risk making it into the kingdom by the skin of their teeth, while all their work is exposed as chaff and burned up (1 Cor 3:13-15). At worst, they are false believers whose entire lives and ministries are built around using the Great Commission for the sake of personal gain. Based on God’s wrath against those like Simon the sorcerer, Ananias and Sapphira, and Judas, I’m confident there is a special part of hell for people like this.

No particular kind of methodology is fully immune to these sorts of predatory missionaries. But some methodologies are, by their very philosophy and structure, much more compatible with deception. I’ve not often come out in my writing directly against DMM (disciple making movements) and movement methodology practitioners. I know that there are some out there who are careful believers who are trying to use these methodologies in ways that are faithful to scripture. I respect these workers’ motives, even as I disagree with them about their work. But after a couple of decades now, the evidence is mounting that the results of these methodologies are often highly questionable and concerning. At the very least, a DMM-type approach provides the perfect cover for someone who wants deceive God’s people for the sake of financial gain, whether that be a local who is deceiving his foreign partner, or locals and foreigners who are in on it together.

Every part of the above formula for someone getting played is compatible with the way DMM is often carried out on the field. Missionary ‘facilitators’ or ‘trainers’ are encouraged to be non-residential, or to not invest costly years in direct language and culture learning, but instead to increase their ROI by leaning fully on locals, who are, as is often pointed out, much cheaper to fund. Instead of long decades of direct evangelism, discipleship, and modeling by example, DMM tends to advocate short trainings where the trainees are then responsible to go out and implement what they’ve learned without any direct involvement of the missionary. DMM practitioners make all kinds of claims about astounding numbers of disciples made and churches planted, often in the parts of the world that are most resistant to the gospel. And these claims go hand in hand with claims of recovering New Testament methodology where ‘everyone is a disciple maker’ and where there are ‘no experts,’ emphases that tend to gut any real spiritual authority for the good guys, while creating all kinds of space for little tyrants to take over.

And then there’s money. Perhaps DMM practitioners in other parts of the world don’t do it this way. But here in our corner of Central Asia, DMM and lots of money changing hands absolutely go together. Of course they do. Amazing reports of gospel breakthrough in hard places inspire God’s people to give generously. And money, at least temporarily, is a wonderful lubricant to make sure a large network of locals falls in line with your particular silver-bullet methods.

Tangentially, many DMM emphases, such as its ‘no experts’ approach and dislike of formal organization and preaching, are terrible contextualization for our Central Asian culture. This means that locals will, temporarily, do what they need to in order to secure their monthly funding – or at least take enough pictures and videos to make it appear so. But once the money dries up, the locals don’t continue with their ‘disciple making.’ After all, these methods have been cooked up among Western missiologists who are stuck in their own post-institutional, egalitarian, results-driven cultural moment. Even if we don’t talk about their biblical merits or lack thereof, these approaches don’t make any sense to our Central Asian neighbors. Once the money is gone, one of my favorite old adages comes out again,

“Welcome to Central Asia, where all the methodologies come to die.”

Friends, watch out for the above formula. It is often the case that these ingredients together are a recipe for deception in missions, or at least for poor work that won’t stand the test of time. The advocates of this sort of work often sound so good. But just like grandma said, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And as is the case when I heard about these 100 churches in our area (that don’t exist), when these ingredients are combined, someone is getting played.

Note: I followed up and did some research on the leader making these claims. Sadly, all indications are that he’s a category 3 hustler type. “Borderline criminal” is how one faithful long-time worker among that people group put it. Lord, have mercy. May God grow his church here and protect the local believers as well as those back in the West from those who would use them for selfish gain.

One of the international churches in our region is 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.

Photo from Unsplash

The Good Gift of Intercultural Humor

“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.

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.

*Names have been changed for security

Photo from Unsplash

Even Their Poets Are Preachers

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.

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.

Photo from Unsplash

Stop Worrying About the Percentage of Foreigners

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.

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.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons