But we can expect the language history of the world to be revealing in another way. A language community is not just a group marked out by its use of a particular language: it is an evolving communion in its own right, whose particular view of the world is informed by a common language tradition. A language brings with it a mass of perceptions, clichés, judgements, and inspirations. In some sense, then, when one language replaces another, a people’s view of the world must also be changing.
– Ostler, Empires of the Word, p.13
The languages we speak greatly affect our worldviews. This is humbling because we often cannot even see the ways our languages have influenced the way we think until we learn another language, another ‘lens’ for interpreting life with its own unique take on things.
I never knew that English was limiting me to one word for ‘uncle’ until I learned our Central Asian language, which uses different terms for an uncle on the mother’s side vs. an uncle on the father’s side. This distinction led to my friend Adam* recently asking my kids, who call him Uncle Adam in English, whether he was an uncle on my side or on my wife’s side. The unanimous vote among the offspring was that he was an uncle on my wife’s side, which my kids probably chose for reasons of their own. However, if they were from our Central Asian people group, they would know that this means that Adam would be less important when it came to legal and identity matters, yet because of that viewed as the more affectionate, relational type of uncle. Dad’s side is for the official stuff. Mom’s side for the relational.
Here, the local language reinforces the local worldview that there are major distinctions to be made between the father’s side of the family vs. the mother’s side. Were our locals to get so good at English that they eventually stop using their own language, this distinction in the culture may also eventually fade away.
Ostler is right. You can never change languages without also experiencing worldview change. This interplay is something worth keeping an eye out for.
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This week I came across an old note from the end of our first term recording lessons we had learned and were learning when it came to church planting among our Central Asian people group. It’s been six years since I wrote this note, but these takeaways hold up pretty well. For context, see where I’ve written elsewhere about lessons learned from a wolf attack and why it took 7.5 years to raise up our first local elder.
1. Leaders MUST present a united front when dealing with a divisive man, guard against him dividing them.
2. Some believers feel entitled to rent money if meeting is in their house and church salaries. We need to address this upfront.
3. Dig much much deeper before committing to a believer with a really bad reputation.
4. Speak openly about how giving money is and is not used, reinforce regularly that we do not believe in Jesus in order to get money.
5. Be much slower with traditional locals to brainstorm about starting businesses, etc., due to patron/client entitlement issues.
6. Local believers will go to their leaders first when they see a problem with another believer rather than address it directly. This is what they know to do. How to navigate this?
7. Men are tested both by how they use money and what they do when they are not given money. Same thing with power.
8. Meeting in someone’s house gives them a certain measure of power. It is then very hard to discipline them because of that power.
9. Believers bitter about money can very easily twist the truth about our financial situation as missionaries and use it effectively to destroy trust.
10. We should look for trustworthy locals who can interpret indirect communication that is happening around us.
11. Locals will gather semi-publicly if they see a vibrant body of believers, will invite others.
12. Locals will grow in a simple meeting with worship, prayer, and biblical teaching – even if led by foreigners.
13. Some local believers are too quick to do the sinner’s prayer and pronounce someone a believer.
14. House church meetings could use a clear, visible, executive leader to call the shots publicly, but we should guard against the cultural strong man inclinations.
15. We may be somehow able to ask for proof to back up believers stories about persecution, theft, etc. But not yet clear how.
16. It is very tricky to navigate more than two cultures at a time. Multicultural teams have their pluses as well as their minuses.
17. Beware of the Facebook Christian industrial complex that can be predatory. We are not working in a vacuum. Prep believers for when they are approached by outsiders with promises of money, cooperation, or traditions that we have not introduced.
18. Watch out for believers who are super judgmental of small things and other believers. They might be in hidden sin.
19. Mutual clarity on next steps every single week is crucial to avoid misunderstandings as a team.
20. The level of duplicity practiced by some locals is far beyond what we have experienced elsewhere. Pray for supernatural discernment.
21. Locals are not passive regarding leadership. Some will seize it if they see an opportunity. Firm biblical plural leadership is needed, without giving up the temporary apostolic leadership model.
22. Locals tend to idolize then demonize their leaders.
23. Locals in meetings are helped by a clear program and clear boundaries. They are drawn to structure, plans, organization, and institution while we are heading in the opposite direction because of our own Western culture. Our orientations toward institutions are very different. We are skeptical while they are enamored. Seeing a certain amount of organization and program may be part of the threshold which makes locals feel free to gather with others.
24. Our joy must not be rooted in our friends’ performance or in the status of the work!
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“But do we have any precedent in the Bible for incorporating diverse styles of worship?”
The question was an unexpected one. One reason plural leadership is so good is because invariably one elder will come up with a question no one else is thinking of. The rest of us were just assuming that it was right and good to expand our church’s styles of musical worship to better reflect our diverse congregation. It seemed to fit with the Revelation 7:9 vision and with the fact that the New Testament advocates generally for Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Col 3:16), but otherwise seems to leave the details of musical worship up to the wisdom of the local churches – assemblies which were no longer just Jewish, but were fast becoming also Greek, Roman, Scythian, Persian, etc.
The question got me thinking. How much of a case is there in the Bible for the practice of incorporating diverse styles of music in the regular worship of our churches? After percolating on this for a number of years, I’ve become more and more convinced that a quiet but convincing biblical case can be built that God delights in receiving worship in the many musical styles of the world, just as he delights in receiving worship in the many languages and cultures of the world. And that this case can be built from the hymnal of Israel and the early church – the Psalms. This case is built on the history and context of the Psalms, as well as on the nature of music itself.
When it comes to its nature, music is much like language or culture; namely, like a cloud. Music does not sit still. It cannot. It’s always slowly changing and moving, shifting and developing in ways that clearly reflect where it’s been yet defy even the most skillful predictions of where it’s going next. With music, just add time and you will inevitably get substantive changes in method and style. Seeking to ‘freeze’ a musical tradition as that which truly represents a people is just as futile as trying to ‘freeze’ a language. You can protest all you like, but they will go on changing. They are clouds, after all, not mountains. Their nature is a moving one.
This is where the history and the context of the Psalms come in. We are told that Moses is the author of Psalm 90, which would make it the earliest psalm that we have. Moses was likely living and writing around 1400 BC. Of course, the most famous psalmist is King David, writing 400 years after Moses, around 1000 BC. Yet other psalms are attributed to Hezekiah (Ps 46-48), who was living around 700 BC, 300 years after David. The latest psalm seems to be Psalm 137, “By the rivers of Babylon,” which clearly speaks of the Judean exile to Babylon which took place in the 500s. That means there’s a span of roughly 900 years between the writing of the earliest and the latest Psalm.
That’s a lot of time for a given musical tradition to undergo all kinds of natural internal development. Were you to time travel, you’d likely recognize some elements of the music of the Judean exiles all the way back in the music of Moses. But Moses – were he to travel with you to Babylon – would probably be a little offended at what had become of his beloved Hebrew musical tradition. This is because the changes would have been considerable, perhaps as great as if he were encountering the music of a foreign nation.
Add to this the fact that musical style, again, like language and culture, does not exist in a vacuum. Musical styles borrow from one another, just as languages borrow vocab from their neighbors. Instruments and melodies get adopted from one culture to another at perhaps an even faster rate than words since music itself has a quality that seems able to transcend other natural differences. This is why it’s sometimes been labeled “the universal language.” This means that whatever musical traditions Abraham’s household brought with them from Ur probably picked up Canaanite/Hittite influences in the several generations that passed until Joseph’s time. After this, 400 years of Egyptian sojourn and slavery would have made its own significant imprint on the musical style of the Hebrews by the time Moses got to writing the first psalm. Once back in the promised land, another 400 years of musical mingling in Canaan brings us to the time of David. And the centuries of monarchy would have had their own cross-pollination. Finally, it’s not far-fetched to assume that Jewish music would have been influenced dramatically during the exile. Just remember what happened to the Hebrew language.
So, when the Psalter is finally finished in its current form, post-exile, the Psalms represent roughly 1,000 years of the natural diversity that emerges within one musical tradition – as well as the added diversity of external influence from at least Mesopotamian, Canaanite, and Egyptian musical styles. The finalized Psalter, before its melodies were lost, would not have been a ‘pure’ representation of the Jewish ethnic musical style. Instead, it would have been a collection of songs that represented a Jewish synthesis, one representing a long absorption of melodies and styles from many centuries, geographies, and cultures.
Perhaps a Jew in exile singing the Psalms of David would feel similar to how we feel when singing O Come O Come Emmanuel, one of the oldest melodies that we still sing in Evangelical churches. The song’s lyrics are in fact much older, but the earliest record of its current melody comes from France, about 600 years ago. Hum the melody of this song to yourself and notice how it seems to be from a different world. That’s because it is from a different world. It may be a familiar part of our Western European Christian tradition, but every time we sing it we are singing a song from a very different time and culture. For an even older tune, listen to a song from 1700 years ago, Phos Hilaron. Then compare these old melodies with the music of today. Even if you cut out the warp-speed mutations that happened to music in the 20th century, it’s stunning how diverse music can be in one religious tradition.
What’s my point? Essentially, the Psalms are evidence that the songbook of the people of God was one that originally contained a rich diversity of musical styles. We can know this because of the nature of music and because of the history and context of the Psalms themselves. Apparently, God ordained that his people, for centuries, sing diverse melodies, some of which would not have felt like the stirring tunes of their particular generation, but rather the music of other peoples and other centuries. In this, we have a quiet case for using diverse musical styles in our churches.
This really matters, though we don’t typically feel how much it matters until we are ourselves a minority worshipping in the melodies of other cultures and lands. One of our African American pastors recently stood up and shared, in tears, how much it ministered to his soul that our church choir had sung a song from the black gospel tradition when the Anglo-Irish melodies of our reformed circles are our more standard fare. Back in Central Asia, we once took the melody from one of the most requested local worship songs and wrote new English lyrics to it so that it could be sung in the international church where we were members. Since then it has become a favorite song of the church’s many members who are from a Muslim background. We should want to serve the diverse members of our churches with melodies that help the words reach their souls – and those are often melodies from the musical traditions that they grew up with.
This is why it can be so hard for the majority culture of a given church to incorporate diverse musical styles in its worship. Because the melodies the church typically sings are from their culture and tradition, the majority already feel the sweet union of the words and the melodies down in their bones. It can take a while for them to realize that for those from other musical traditions, that double encouragement is not necessarily taking place. But in the Psalms there seems to be precedent for both – singing the melodies that feel like the songs of your people and singing the melodies that feel like you are being transported to a foreign land.
Here it must be said that it is indeed possible to be edified by singing the songs of another people, another culture, another century. It takes time and growth, yes, but it can happen, and it is healthy to learn how to be fed with melodies from the distant past as well as with others that just don’t hit your heart in thatway (yet). Keep singing them and meditating on the truth they contain. You may be surprised at what happens to you as those foreign-seeming melodies slowly inch closer and closer to your heart. Just as a deep view of church history and a broad view of the global church serve to strengthen the believer’s head, so equivalent Christian music may serve to expand his heart.
Do we have any precedent in the Bible for incorporating diverse styles of worship in our services? I say yes, and not just in the New Testament. Even in the Old, we see that one style and culture of music is not sufficient for the worship and delight of God. Instead, he quietly included 1,000 years of musical diversity in his Psalter long before he sent the New Testament Church out to write and sing new hymns and spiritual songs to the ends of the earth. The New Testament posture toward musical worship that we’ll see in full bloom in heaven (and even now is flourishing) had its first budding in the Psalter. In it we can see the shoots of both freedom and tradition, service to others as well as room for our own souls to drink deep.
So then, sing to the lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth (Ps 96)! Sing an old song too. And while you’re at it, for the sake of that refugee in your service, sing a foreign one as well.
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When an outsider unexpectedly knows the culture and language, Central Asian locals tend to respond with astonishment. But not only astonishment. There’s also delight. The kind of delight that comes from being truly seen by someone when you least expect it. In fact, most people can’t help but respond in this shocked and happy way. After all, God delights to be known. And as those made in his image, some part of our core simply lights up when we are unexpectedly recognized, surprisingly understood, really known by another. And when that other is an outsider, a foreigner, then this can create quite the opening.
I’ve not always known what to make of this dynamic, but I’ve experienced it countless times. In fact, I’ve relied on the power of this kind of encounter over and over again in order to enter into relationships or spiritual conversations with others. I love this approach because the other person tends to feel so honored when I can drop one of their people’s proverbs, when I have heard of their people’s story, when I actually know something, anything, about the things they hold dear. Often, this builds such goodwill (especially with marginalized peoples) that an openness to friendship is soon to follow after. But is there anywhere in the Bible where we see this kind of missionary dynamic taking place? Do we have any precedent for “honor-shocking” others through knowledge of them that we are not supposed to naturally have?
This week I was reminded of Jesus’ calling of Nathaniel in John 1. Philip brings a skeptical Nathanael to Jesus, and their unusual interaction goes like this:
[47] Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” [48] Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” [49] Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” [50] Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” [51] And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:47-51, ESV)
Jesus is able to miraculously know Nathanael, that he is “an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit.” Nathaniel is taken aback by this, as we can see from his response, “How do you know me?” This Jesus knew Nathanael’s character when he shouldn’t have naturally been able to do so. He somehow knows that Nathanael is a true Israelite, one who has no time for pretend Messiahs, one who is genuinely seeking the kingdom of God. A proud man might get puffed up by being complimented like this in the presence of others. But Nathanael seems to be a grounded believer, a man who is humble and therefore simply honest about what he is and what he is not. When Jesus pegs him accurately like this, he has not puffed him up with pride, he has caught his attention.
But there’s more. Jesus drops another bomb. “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” This is all the proof that formerly skeptical Nathanael needs. He’s suddenly undone. Jesus – impossibly – saw him when he was sitting under the fig tree, even before Philip came to recruit him. We are not given any information about what was happening under that fig tree. Perhaps he was praying, pouring out his heart to God. Perhaps he was discouraged, watching some preening Pharisees or a troop of Roman soldiers harassing his countrymen. We simply don’t know. But when he is not only known by Jesus but also seen by him from afar, that is enough for Nathanael. He knows that he has found the true Messiah.
I love Jesus’ response. Essentially, “If you believed with a little sign like that, then just wait, it’s going to get way more convincing.”
Now, in terms of takeaways, our primary response to this text should be to join Nathanael in amazement and faith. Jesus knows and sees his people in a miraculous way that proves that he is the true Messiah, the Son of God we have all been waiting for. What amazing good news. Everyone in this life may fail to know and see us as we desire to be known and seen. But our savior satisfies this deep craving of our souls.
This is primarily a Christological text, not a missionary one. However, that does not mean it has no application for missional Christians today. Jesus is our example. And just as a Christian doctor can employ natural medicine to point the lost to Jesus the Great Physician, so a missionary can employ natural curiosity and study of a people in order to point the lost to the one who knows them infinitely better than they know themselves. Our ability to know and see the lost may not be miraculous, it may be far downstream from that of Jesus, but that doesn’t mean it is not spiritual. If it is motivated by the gospel and by love, then it is still a sign – albeit a small one – that those employing it have found the true Messiah.
Another way to think of the power of deeply knowing and seeing a people is to compare it to the New Testament gift of prophecy. Paul’s logic in 1st Corinthians 14 is that if prophecy was functioning accurately in Corinth, then unbelievers would enter, have the secrets of their hearts disclosed, and fall down proclaiming that God was truly among them. As with Jesus and Nathanael in John 1, knowledge of a person that is more than naturalleads to a heart undone, to the recognition that God is truly involved here.
Great. So Jesus and Early Church Christians can miraculously know the secrets of others’ hearts. How does that help normal Christians and missionaries like us 2,000 years later? Well, as it turns out, even Christians and missionaries who do not have (or even believe in) the gift of prophecy can still achieve a certain kind of supernatural sight and knowledge – and thereby witness the power of honor-shocking the lost by knowing them more than you should. This ability is not supernatural in the means by which it is carried out – curiosity, questions, study, testing. No, these are the same tools also used by pagan students of culture and anthropologists. But it is supernatural because of its source – the love and faith that drive this kind of hunger to truly see and know a people that others might not even know exist.
I remember being a college freshman in Minneapolis, involved in some English conversation practice with Somali refugees. As one of my students, Uncle Abdi, shuffled in from the downtown winter wasteland and into the warm lobby, I decided to try to say good morning to him in Somali – “Subakh wanaagsaan!” It’s hard to describe the qualitative change that came over that older refugee’s face. His eyes lit up, he broke out in a huge grin, and he came over to give me one of the warmest handshakes I’ve ever received. All because this scrawny white kid made a bungled attempt to learn a greeting of his people. Even in that tiny gesture, Uncle Abdi felt seen and known. And if he’d had enough English for me to get into spiritual conversation with him, I’m confident he would have let me share more than he would have otherwise.
Sometimes we reformed types get confused and think that a passion to study culture and contextualize well is somehow opposed to bold proclamation of the gospel. “We don’t contextualize, we preach the gospel!” as I once heard it put. After many years now of observing the reactions of friends like Uncle Abdi, I’ve come to believe that going deep in language and culture is one of the boldest moves we can make in preaching the gospel. When you start the relationship by demonstrating sight and knowledge of a people or person that you should not naturally have, you are doing something that is downright powerful in the spiritual realm. Like an artillery bombardment that precedes an infantry charge, truly knowing and seeing someone can clear a path for you to bring in the message that will then overrun the defenses.
Faithful evangelism and the deep study of language and culture need not be enemies. Instead, we can commit ourselves to a lovingly deep study of our people, knowing that this sight and knowledge is often the means the Spirit uses to grab their attention. “How do you know that about me/us? Nobody knows that. Nobody takes the time to see us like that. No foreigner knows that insider idiom. What has made you invest so much to learn about us like this?” The answer, of course, can take the conversation right to Jesus.
Yes, sometimes this can backfire. There is the occasional person who simply freaks out, believing that you work for the CIA because you are way too informed. Others get alarmed because they want to keep you in the dark about certain things and now they know that’s not going to be as easy as they had hoped. Some dominant people groups or those heavily influenced by ‘woke’ ideologies have arrived at the point where they feel like you’re being condescending if you too eagerly seek to learn all about them. Wisdom is needed to know when and how to do this well. But for most peoples of the world, and especially for those who have been oppressed or marginalized, they are going to feel nothing but honored by these kinds of efforts.
As with Jesus, truly knowing and seeing someone is often just the beginning when it comes to powerfully commending the gospel. Just wait until they encounter the community of the local church! That being said, it can be a very powerful way to start.
“How Do You Know Me?”
When the friends and neighbors of Christians and missionaries start asking this question of Nathanael’s more often, we’ll know that we are on the right track. Our king truly sees and knows those he seeks. When we seek to know and see others as he does, even if all we have are natural tools empowered by love, then we are bound to find more out there who are like Nathaniel – Israelites indeed.
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Have your church’s discipleship classes ever focused on what it means to be a faithful Christian patron? Or on how to restore a household’s honor when a daughter has brought shame on the family through sexual impropriety? Or on how to shape the future destiny of your child, including whether buried umbilical cords have any influence on this?
For most, if not all of my readers, the answer would be no. But I’ll bet your church has had classes or studies on the Bible’s view of gender and sexuality, how Christians should engage in politics, and how Christians should think about retirement.
It’s no surprise that the first topics I listed haven’t featured in the classes your church has offered or in the Christian books you’ve read. They’re simply not pressing issues for the Church in the West – if they are even on the radar at all. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s merely a reflection of the particular slice of history and culture where Western Christians find themselves. But Western Christians are living in a time and culture where there’s widespread gender confusion, Christian participation and influence in elections, and individualistic retirement planning. Accordingly, our Christian resources reflect these issues.
When we move back to Central Asia this summer, my new role will be focused on creating and translating solid resources in our people group’s languages. The aim is for these resources to be both robustly biblical and deeply contextual, and in this way to serve local believers, their leaders, and the missionaries who are working among them. We now have a full or partial Bible in several of our languages, and there also are a good number of evangelistic resources both in print and online. What is lacking is content that focuses on building up the church.
In general, I’ve been chewing on two broad categories of resources: global vs. local. There are resources that every Christian in every age and culture needs. These would be universal or global resources. For example, resources in systematic or biblical theology that help Christians to understand what the Bible teaches about God, about the gospel, about the Church, and about God’s plan of redemption throughout the ages. There are also the universally-relevant areas of practical theology that help Christians apply the Bible to things like parenting, marriage, and work. These resources are, to a large extent, timeless, even if the examples and applications used might be more culture-specific.
Think of how impactful the Westminster catechism has been on global Christianity. Or, the broad appeal a book like Pilgrim’s Progress has had over the centuries and around the world. It’s been easy for Christians for four centuries to identify with Christian and his journey toward the Celestial City and the many common struggles that he faces, such as sin, doubt, complacency, despair, and death.
Every people group needs these kinds of global resources. But every people also needs local resources, resources that take aim at the unique strengths, weaknesses, and questions of a given culture. These resources greatly serve believers because their applications are so specific to the world of their target audience.
Our focus people group is very strong in hospitality. But their hospitality is done from the wrong motives – and only extended to those who are existing or possible patrons or clients. This means that local believers need resources that will explicitly point out how biblical hospitality should be done from a gospel motivation and extended toward even those who cannot repay the hospitality through some kind of future loyalty or other service. We have some great resources in the West that lay out a practical theology of hospitality. But how many of them will engage this activity through the lens of a society that relies on hospitality to build its patronage network and social safety net?
Our focus people group also oppresses women in some very dark ways. The oppression of women may be a global issue, but our local believers need resources that will argue directly against its local forms, such as female circumcision of babies, wife-beating on the marriage night to establish a husband’s authority, and honor killings as a response to sexual misconduct. Translated Western resources on biblical manhood and womanhood will cover the principles that oppose practices like these but will not address the practices themselves directly.
The need is to pursue both kinds of resources at the same time. All local churches need universal resources that teach them timeless doctrine and universal principles of Christian conduct. But all local churches also need local resources that will help them wrestle with the particular spirit of their age.
Sometimes these resources end up doing both very well. Augustine’s City of God, for example, was written to argue that it was not Christianity’s fault that Rome had been sacked by the barbarians. This was a particular question hotly debated in the late Roman world. But in doing this, Augustine went on to write about the theology of the City of God and the City of Man and how they are entangled and in conflict in all societies in this age. Augustine’s understanding of the spiritual city of God and its peculiar relationship with the City of Man still serves me very well in early 21st-century America, even though I am so far removed from Augustine’s culture and world.
I think this should be the goal of all serious Christian resources. We cannot escape culture-specific applications in the resources we create. In fact, we must get specific for the sake of our audience. But we can try to write, record, or film in such a way that the biblical exposition and reasoning we employ might also apply to audiences on the other side of the world – or in some future century. You never know how a faithful book written in past centuries might be the key to unlocking the future church’s way forward in some seemingly unrelated controversy.
God’s truth is universal, there’s nothing new under the sun, and yet every generation of believers is also unique. So, we will aim for both – universal and local. And trust that if a resource serves the church well for a decade, then that is good. And if it serves it well for 1,500 years, then that is good as well.
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Our home church in Kentucky is quite diverse. Over the years, there has been in-service translation in a number of different languages. Currently, we have a crew of Afghan believers who sit up in the balcony. One of them with good English translates the sermon for his friends sitting around him. Occasionally, a brother preaching will use a particularly confusing idiom and I will glance up at their section, wondering if the translator will even make an attempt at that one or just let it go. There are times where he doesn’t seem to know what to do with a given phrase, and even from far away I can see the struggle. Should he try to translate it, and risk communicating the wrong meaning, or just let it go and hope it wasn’t too important of a point?
The same thing that makes idioms so useful (and even fun) is what also makes them so dangerous. Idioms are phrases that vividly communicate a package of meaning in their local language context, but a meaning that can’t be understand from the direct sense of the words themselves. Because they are missing the cultural and historical context, an outsider listening isn’t able to understand that the meaning of the whole is completely different from the meaning of the parts. Consider English idioms such as “break a leg” or “shoot the breeze.” If you were an English learner, how would you ever guess that these phrases mean “good luck” and “casual conversation,” respectively?
This can be true even in the same language, as I have I sometimes learned the hard way. “Shotgun wedding” did not mean what I thought it did. And yes, I learned this by using it in the wrong way around my future in-laws. Growing up as an American in Melanesia with missionaries from other English-speaking countries, we also found out that there were certain phrases of everyday American English that had very problematic meanings in other dialects of English. “Say I had a nose-bleed, not what you would say in America,” is one of these early lessons that I remember receiving from an Australian auntie.
But if idioms can be problematic even from one dialect of a language to another, they are exponentially more problematic when it comes to translation from one language to another. I’ve written before about the hazards of second-language sermons, where you think that saying “we trust in the person and work of Christ” means, simply, trusting in who Jesus is and what he did. But your trusty local-believer-sermon-checker just laughs and tells you that you just said we trust in the relatives of Jesus, since “person and work of” is a local idiom for someone’s kinfolk. Never mind when you offhandedly say things like “on fire for Jesus.”
When preaching in another language, one learns quickly to purge your English manuscript from as many idioms as possible, since the idioms of your language almost never translate directly – and even seemingly-direct phrases can prove to be local idioms. But if you are not preaching in another language, and instead preaching in your own tongue, it’s all too easy to forget about your idioms. If any of your congregation are non-native English speakers, or if there is any translation going on in your service, then for the sake of clarity, you’ve got to watch your idioms.
If you want to pay more attention to clarity in this area, here are some practical ways to do this:
Know your audience. Watching your idioms is very helpful if your audience is linguistically diverse. But if you are speaking (or writing, as I am here) primarily to native English speakers or those with very high levels of English, this is not as much of a concern.
Make sure your main points are not expressed in idiomatic language. This ensures that everyone present is at least able to understand the main outline of your teaching. Instead of “Christian, Jesus calls the shots,” say, “Christian, Jesus is our leader.”
Scan your manuscript beforehand for any idioms that could be replaced with simpler, more direct language. Then, replace as many of them as possible.
If you really like a given idiom, you can still use it, just be sure to define it when you use it. A simple half-sentence definition following the idiom means you can (ahem) have your cake and eat it too.
Regularly ask your translators or non-native English speaking attendees if there are phrases you use that are hard to understand. If you have a regular rhythm of sermon review, this could fit well into that time. If you have not learned another language, you might be unaware of what is idiomatic speech versus literal. In this case, believers from other language groups can help you learn how to “see” the idioms your language is full of.
Americans, watch your sports idioms. This is a very common area where American preachers, preachers, and writers assume common understanding when it’s often not there.
Pray for interpreters and translators. Their job is not easy and they often have limited time to weigh the pros and cons of a more meaning-based translation vs. word for word. Strive to make their job easier, not harder.
Preachers, our goal is clarity. Paul asks for prayer that he might make his proclamation of Christ clear, which is how he knows he ought to speak (Col 4:3-4). If Paul needed help with this, then so do we. Paying attention to our idioms can be one part of how we strive for greater clarity.
I’ll leave you with a classic video that highlights what can happen if you are preaching through translation. While it’s rarely ever this bad, many a missionary can indeed resonate with what is parodied here.
To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
One of the greatest surprises we experienced during our first term on the field was discovering that most of our locals did not want to meet in homes for Bible study or church. All our training, all the books, and all our expectations said that house church methodology was going to be the most effective form of church planting. We bristled at locals’ suggestions that we meet somewhere “real” for spiritual activities, like a church building. We cringed at how excited they seemed by all the trappings of Western church – sound systems, worship teams, pastors wearing collars, church budgets, even church buildings.
What took us quite a while to realize was that for our particular people group, this attraction to “official” Christianity was simply the result of where God had sovereignly brought their culture. As a newly post-tribal culture full of corruption and nepotism, and one exposed to the ravages of terrorism, they longed for order and healthy organization. They hungered for institutions that would balance strongmen, and the kind of solid, public Christianity that did not feel like a secretive ISIS Qur’an study. Our locals, the ones we were commissioned to reach, were deeply drawn to what to us felt like traditional, Western Christianity. And they found our ideas about house church movements unconvincing, even dumb. Even worse, none of their desires were technically unbiblical.
We were faced with an unexpected choice. Either we ignore the overwhelming feedback of the local believers, or we shift to a church planting strategy that risked looking very traditional and very Western, which missiology said was doomed to fail in an Islamic context. By God’s grace, our team eventually came around to the idea that the wiser thing was to contextualize to our actual people group, rather than what the books had told us was supposed to happen. We surrendered to the mysterious providence of God that had ordained that, for our people group, the most contextual and effective methods would feel, to us, like the most traditional and the least effective. This was the right call. When we let go of our fear of cultural contamination and started doing more traditional church planting ministry, the work finally began to get traction.
The missionary who believes his Bible knows that God is utterly sovereign over the trajectories of the world’s people groups and nations (Acts 17:26, Deut 32:8). There is no development which God has not ordained – and this includes developments of cultural transmission. After a missionary has labored hard to make the gospel the only stumbling block, yet still finds that the locals have adopted some of his home culture, he can rest in the sovereignty of God. The power of the indigenous church has not been forever ruined because the missionary (or someone else) introduced a certain service order which the locals have eagerly taken ownership of. No, God is sovereign, even over cultural transmission. In fact, the transmission that he ordains may become one of the particular strengths of the new indigenous church, such as when Middle Eastern believers gain a witness because Jesus (and emulating their missionary mentor) has made them more direct and honest in their speech.
Looking to missions history, we see many examples of how the sovereignty of God was working through the very culture the missionary introduced along with his gospel work. The missionary Bruce Olsen, in his book, Bruschko, writes of the farming improvements he introduced to South American tribes, which greatly improved their crop yields. The Lisu people of China became known as a singing people for Christ because the missionary who reached them, J.O. Fraser, was an accomplished pianist. And the illiterate, pagan Irish surprisingly became the great scribes and missionaries of Europe in the centuries after the fall of Rome. Why? Because Patrick had taught them of the love of Christ – and the love of books.
As in any area of practical theology, the sovereignty of God is no excuse for laziness or carelessness. Missionaries should be conscious of the ways local believers are adopting Western versus local forms, and act as mentors who try to guide this messy process. But we must embrace a deep trust in the sovereignty of God as we seek to plant healthy indigenous churches. Their cultures exist in their unique historical positions for God-ordained reasons. They are drawn to certain things and repelled by other things for God-ordained reasons. “The secret things belong to the Lord,” but we know that at least some of those reasons of providence are so that many will hear the gospel message, understand it, believe it, and become the indigenous church.
God is sovereign, even when one culture bleeds into another. Our approach to the fear of cultural contamination begins with the Bible’s call for direct ministry in word and deed and call to guard against false gospels. It ends with a deep trust in the sovereignty of God. Alongside these truths we draw from cross-cultural common sense, which invites us to take a realistic view of how cultures and relationships actually function. And we also lean into personal humility, which asks us to remember our equality as well as our limitations.
When missionaries are shaped by these truths, they are helped to keep the danger of cultural “contamination” in its place – as a real, but secondary danger. Gospel workers should keep a wise eye on it, but not let it be a primary driver of their missiology or become a fear that keeps them from the timeless task of preaching the gospel, making disciples, and planting churches.
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Sometimes, friends from another culture experiment with violating the norms of their culture around you. It’s as if your foreignness creates a little bubble where they can safely break certain cultural laws of behavior and decorum. This is usually all fine and well – but only if you know it’s happening. When you don’t know it’s happening or don’t see it coming, it gets downright confusing, as nobody knows which rules are still in effect.
Why is your local friend not fighting you when you offer to pay for their lunch? Arguing over the bill is the respectable thing to do. Is that male student making casual eye contact during conversation with your wife because he is being inappropriate, or because he finds it refreshing that foreign women will actually talk to him like his sisters will? Did that person really just accept your honorable yet hypothetical offer to buy them a very expensive plane ticket? How did they miss the cues of what is, after all, their culture, not yours?
Our local friends can see when we are doing our best to become acceptable outsiders in their culture. But because we can never fully become cultural insiders, they must meet us part-way, which means altering some of their behavior for our sakes. One principle of cross-cultural relationships is that whenever genuine relationship is present, cultural adaptation is always flowing both ways, whether this is recognized or not. We become like our friends, and it’s always been this way.
Sometimes, however, your friends jump at the chance to do things differently, and when they do that without explaining what’s going on, you can get caught quite flat-footed. Here, I am reminded of a local friend who came to stay with us one summer. Last-minute hosting for a night or two is very normal in the traditional culture of the area. But local wisdom says that guests are like fish – after three days they start to stink. This friend stayed for nine nights, and all indications were that he intended to keep staying. Exhausted, we eventually planned a trip out of town so that we had a mutually face-saving way to kick him out.
Another example of this happened right after our youngest was born. My wife had made the brave choice to give birth in-country, and the experience was, shall we say, mixed. Because the umbilical cord was around our son’s neck, the doctors decided a C-section was necessary. When administering the anesthesia into her spine, however, they poked too many holes in the spinal cord lining. This meant that a lot of my wife’s spinal cord fluid escaped, leaving her bedridden for a week and with a tremendous headache and pain whenever she viewed light, or tried to sit up or walk around.
The upside of giving birth in-country was the care we received from the believing foreigners and locals. Our fridge quickly ran out of space for all the food we were given, and many local friends came for the congratulatory post-birth visits, which typically last 15-20 minutes. Local culture is practical in this way, respecting the family by visiting, but also giving a nod to the fact that moms who have just given birth aren’t in much shape to host. In our case, my wife was bedridden in a darkened room and in no shape for even much conversation, so I did my best to serve chai and sweets to the guests, show off the newborn in between feedings and diaper changes, make conversation, corral our kids, toggle the house electricity as it came and went, and make regular trips back to the bedroom to see if my wife needed more pain meds. Not for the last time, I thought to myself how utterly practical the extended family model of living is, where these responsibilities would be spread out among various relatives, and not all fall on one parent.
Most of our friends gave their gifts, read the room, and after twenty minutes or so announced they had to be going, politely refusing my multiple offers for them to stay longer. One couple, however, got caught in the foggy no man’s land of cross-cultural relationships I have described above. When I protested their departure – “But it’s still so early!” – they looked at one another, smiled, and then sat back down. Oh no, I thought to myself, it’s happened again.The wires of our different cultures have crossed. Three hours later, they were still there.
When midnight came, I was utterly at a loss for how to communicate that it would be super helpful if they left. I really didn’t want to offend them. The husband was a new believer with a very sensitive and emotional personality. His wife, not yet a believer, was literally a sniper in the local armed forces. So, I just kept the chai and sunflower seeds flowing and became an expert in how my wife was supposed to eat a gnarly flour/sugar/oil paste that locals swear by for a post-birth recovery diet. After all the visits, we had ended up with a massive bowl of the stuff in our fridge.
Sometime after midnight, our guests stood up again and announced they really needed to be going. This time, I couldn’t bring myself to honorably protest. Instead, I squeaked out something open to interpretation like, “Wow, what a time we’ve had, eh?” and we proceeded to say goodbye dozens of times as we shuffled out the door, through the courtyard, and to the outer gate.
I went back inside and saw that there would still be about 20 minutes of electricity before it would shut off for the night.
“Are they gone?” my wife groaned when I went back to check on her.
“Yes, they just left,” I said.
“Wow, they are… sweet… but what happened? Why did they stay for four hours?”
I just shrugged, “I have noidea…”
“Hey,” I smiled, “want some of that yummy paste stuff?”
My wife made a gagging face, laughed, regretted laughing, and proceeded to settle down for a couple hours of sleep before our son’s next feeding.
If you have cross-cultural friendships, look out for the no man’s land, when because of contact with you, your friends begin unexpectedly experimenting with their own rules. When this happens, the normal rules go out the window – and you may find yourself very much in the fog.
To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.
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Several years ago my wife and others hosted a Valentine’s Day outreach for local women. As a part of the event, they read the story of the prodigal son from Luke 15, and led a discussion about its meaning and implications.
Surprisingly, when they asked the local ladies what they thought about the father’s response to the return of his wayward son, these ladies responded that the response was right and good. “That’s what a father should do for a son.”
Either my wife or one of our teammates then posed the question differently. “What if it had been a prodigal daughter rather than a prodigal son?”
At this question, the mood of the room shifted dramatically. Everyone knew that a prodigal daughter should never be welcomed home and forgiven like that. No, if it had been a daughter rather than a son who had dishonored her family by wasting her inheritance on prostitutes in a far country, she would be a dead woman. She would never be welcomed home with joy and celebration. Instead, if she showed her face again the men of the family would have to kill her in order to restore their honor in the eyes of the community.
In this situation, because of their own culture these local women didn’t feel the shamefulness of the younger son’s actions, even after it had been explained to them. But when the connection had been made with an equivalent example from their own culture, then the weightiness – and the scandalous nature – of the father’s actions sunk in.
Much has been made of the connections between contemporary Middle Eastern/Central Asian honor-shame cultures and the cultures of the New Testament era. And there are many similarities. These cultures are certainly closer to one another than they are to the modern west. Yet there are also some very significant differences that mean a direct understanding or resonance with New Testament era culture shouldn’t be assumed.
One major difference would be the way in which our Central Asian culture places the burden of the family’s honor almost entirely on the conduct of their women (at least in part a downstream effect of Islam). The honorable reputation, community standing, and future prospects of the extended family all hinge on whether the community believes the young women and the married women are sexually pure and faithful. If I had to quantify it, I’d say it’s something like ninety percent of family honor that comes down to this. The other ten percent is made up of whether or not the men are hospitable, loyal patrons and clients, not thieves, not drunkards, not gamblers, and if they come from a line of honorable fathers.
The men do have a small part to play in maintaining the family honor, but in general they are given all kinds of grace and freedom to go out and sow their wild oats. At the end of day, they are the beloved sons who will be welcomed home by mama and papa and all will be forgiven. The same cannot be said for the daughters of the family. One misstep – or one nasty rumor – can spell disaster for them. This is why the women of our people group are so much more observant in their Islam. It’s also why believing women are outnumbered by believing men by about ten to one. If you feel that this is terribly unjust, you are right.
So, what does the gospel laborer do in this kind of situation where the culture means the locals do not understand and feel the point of the parable? In our telling of the story, should we replace the son in the parable with a daughter? Not at all. Though it may be tempting to do something like this, we must remember the proper roles of the word and the culture when it comes to communicating God’s truth. The word of God is where all the authority and the grounding of our teaching comes from. The culture, on the other hand, is what we use to illustrate.
Rather than replacing the prodigal son with a prodigal daughter upfront, instead we need to explain what this parable would have meant and felt like to the original audience. Then, we use a comparable example of shamefulness and scandalous forgiveness from our target culture to help our hearers wrestle with the offensive grace communicated by Jesus in this parable. In this way, we are being faithful to God’s powerful word as it was originally revealed, and we are also doing our best to help our audience understand it with both their heads and their hearts. This is in fact just what the ladies on our team did during their Valentine’s outreach.
Any of us reformed-types who scoff at the study of culture out of a professed trust in the word of God are missing something important here; namely, that effective teaching and preaching requires more than faithful exegesis of the text and argumentation. It also requires faithful illustration and application. To do all of this you must study the text first, and then study your people.
As with any culture, the honor-shame dynamics of our Central Asian culture contain both hindrances and helps when it comes to making sense of God’s word. Though they are wrong to place the burden of family honor almost solely on the shoulders of their women, they are not entirely wrong in their belief that sin means that someone must die in order for honor to be restored.
From the very beginning, sin deserves death (Gen 2:17). This divine law has never changed. Their culture simply needs to universalize it. Instead of just women who have allegedly shamed the family, every single individual deserves death because of how he has fallen short of the glory (the honor) of the Father. The amazing good news is that a perfect Son has been killed so that we don’t have to be. He has died in our place and has taken upon himself the righteous anger of the shamed Father. By doing so, he has also satisfied the demands of divine honor (Mark 10:45, Rom 3:21-26).
The local women at the Valentine’s outreach shuddered when they thought of the forgiveness of a prodigal daughter. But such a daughter’s shame is not any greater than their shame, or my shame. The sacrifice of the divine Son means that we no longer need to kill our children to restore the family honor. Someone else can cover that shame and restore honor in the only court that really matters, the eternal one. Whether prodigal sons or daughters or prideful older sisters or brothers, we must all turn from our futile attempts to deal with our sin and shame and trust in him alone.
For any of those local women, to let go of their hard-fought honor and to admit their true shame is a terrifying thing. How could it not be when your conformity has been enforced all your life at knife-point?
But some will. And those who do will know the amazing warmth of the Father’s welcome – and the wonder of his undeserved honor.
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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.
To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Entrusted to the Dirt 