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.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

Praise God, one of the international churches in our region got a pastor! But there’s still another church looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

*Names have been changed for security

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Conservation via Catastrophe

[Mesopotamia] contains the site of the earliest known writing, in the lower reaches of the Euphrates valley. But in its western zone, in the coastal cities of Syria, it was also the first to make the radical simplification from hieroglyphs that denoted words and syllables to a short alphabet that represented simple sounds. The political effects of this were massive. For the first time, literacy could spread beyond the aristocratic scribal class, the people who had leisure in childhood to learn the old, complicated, system; positions of power and influence throughout the Assyrian empire were then opened to a wider social range.

The area also contains the first known museums and libraries, often centralised, multilingual institutions of the state. But by an irony of fate which has favoured the memory of this clay-based society, its documents were best preserved by firing, most simply through conflagrations in the buildings in which they were held, a circumstance that was not uncommon in its tempestuous history. These catastrophes were miracles of conservation, archiving whole libraries in situ, on occasion with even their classification intact, and have materially helped the rapid reading of much unknown history in our era.

-Ostler, Empires of the Word, p.34

Countless written sources from ancient history have been lost because the libraries where they were stored went up in flames. The tragic losses of the libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad come to mind as a couple of such catastrophes. What might we have known that is now lost had these libraries survived to pass on their priceless knowledge?

It’s interesting, then, to realize that it’s because even older libraries burnt down that many of their records were preserved. When clay, not papyrus, vellum, or paper, was the medium of preserving written records, ancient fires actually had the effect of helping to preserve some of these records for future discovery. Twice-baked clay buried in the dry climate of the Middle East tends to last a very long time.

This is especially relevant to Christians because so many of these ancient cuneiform records have gone on to confirm the accuracy and trustworthiness of the Bible. Just today, I read about a newly discovered cuneiform fragment in Jerusalem. This ancient record from the late First Temple period refers to a payment the king of Jerusalem owed to the Assyrian king. This discovery aligns very well with the Old Testament’s claims that later Judean kings came under Assyrian vassalage.

There are many parts of the world where the climate does not allow for the same sort of preservation of undiscovered artifacts over thousands of years. Perhaps part of God’s plan in centering his revelation in the broader Middle East was because of these unique possibilities for conservation – even conservation via catastrophe.

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

A Proverb on the Ultimate Loneliness

There was no one to say to me, “How much is that donkey?”

–Local oral tradition

How might your culture and language paint a picture of utter loneliness and isolation? In Central Asia, apparently, being utterly alone means there’s not even anyone making inquiries about donkeys. Talk about being left out in the cold.

We were on a trip back to Poet City this week when we heard this proverb used for the first time, when a young preacher was describing how lonely middle school had been for him. Most of us have been there. Middle school can be a very rough time. The Bible has its own imagery describing these anguished depths of isolation, the strongest of which is probably Psalm 88:18, “Darkness is my only friend.”

Darkness makes sense, but why donkeys? Well, on the one hand, our Central Asians find donkeys so ludicrous, so hilarious, that they seem eager to fit them into their proverbs whenever they can. Another working theory is that because donkeys are viewed as very base, dumb, and dirty, it may be that ‘donkey business’ functions as a kind of shorthand for the lowest and most menial of human interactions. In this sense, it means sometimes you’re so alone that no one even bothers to interact with you even on these most base and even embarrassing fronts.

Though sometimes unavoidable, and even temporarily beneficial, the Bible consistently teaches that it’s not good for us to be alone. In fact, this is the first thing in the created world described as “not good,” such a bad situation, in fact, that it led to the glorious creation of woman. The preacher in Ecclesiastes elaborates further, stating that being with others means a better return for your labor, help back up after a fall, staying warm at night, and self defense (Ecc 4:9-12).

That’s a lot of benefits that come from not being on your own. Our Central Asian friends would add one more. Turns out it’s also better for donkey business.

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.

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Why Did The Lystrans Think Paul and Barnabas Were Hermes and Zeus?

Ever wonder what was going on in Acts 14 when the Lystran crowds respond to a miraculous healing at the hands of Paul and Barnabas by proclaiming them Hermes and Zeus? Check out this helpful background context:

The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men. This phrase recalls a well-known mythological story. One day Jupiter (Zeus) and his son Mercury (Hermes) disguised themselves as mortals and visited a thousand homes in Phrygia. Each denied them hospitality until Baucis and her husband, Philemon, opened their humble home to the gods. After feeding the guests with their best food, the elderly couple soon realized they were hosting divine visitors after the wine flagon constantly refilled itself. When Jupiter and Mercury warned them about an impending flood that would destroy their wicked neighbors, Baucis and Philemon fled to high ground. After the flood, their lone-standing home was transformed into a magnificent temple. When asked their one wish, Philemon and Baucis requested to die together. Many years later, while caring for the temple, the couple began to sprout leaves, and the two were simultaneously transformed into trees in the sight of their neighbors.

It is little wonder that Paul and Barnabas were treated as they were, for the crowd thought Jupiter and Mercury had possibly returned. Barnabas, as the older of the two, was undoubtedly identified as Jupiter, while Paul, as the speaker, was perceived to be Mercury, the messenger god.

-ESV Archaeology Study Bible, note on Acts 14:11-13

As it turns out, the locals in Lystra did have a category for a pair of normal-looking men showing up and performing miracles. Recalling this myth that allegedly recounted events from neighboring Phrygia, the Lystrans put two and two together and wrongly assumed that Paul and Barnabas were the gods come to visit in human guise once again.

What I’ve heard said of children can also apply to the unreached or unchurched unbelievers – they are wonderful observers, but terrible interpreters. This story demonstrates the importance of explaining the meaning of our actions to the unbelievers as quickly as possible. Otherwise, they will use their pagan worldviews to project shockingly wrong meanings onto even the ‘normal’ Christian things we’re doing.

During our season of doing refugee ministry and living in a poor apartment complex in Louisville, we had all kinds of people regularly coming in and out of our apartment. This was because we were hosting game nights, weekly community meals, and Bible studies. Imagine our shock when an older African-American friend and ally, Miss Mary, informed us that the word on the street was that we were running some kind of prostitution ring – and that my wife was the pimp!

Unbelievers will come up with all kinds of wild and crazy claims to try to make sense out of the things we’re doing in ministry. In one sense, this is not entirely surprising. Believers sharing the gospel and making disciples are, after all, like the apostles, turning the world upside down. Until the Holy Spirit grants spiritual sight, it’s hard to know what to make of this.

In addition to this, the story of this crowd’s reaction in Acts 14 also makes a subtle case for the necessity of mother-tongue ministry. I believe that trade language ministry, like Paul and Barnabas are doing here in Greek, is valid, biblical, and often effective. But here we see how quickly things go wrong in part because Paul and Barnabas don’t understand what the crowds, speaking in Lycaonian, are saying about them. Once they find out, things have gotten so out of hand that their attempts to shut it all down almost result in blasphemy and do result in Paul ultimately getting stoned. Yikes.

No wonder Paul later asks for prayer that he might make his gospel proclamation clear (Col 4:4).

We should find out any day now if we’ve met our goal and are fully funded for our second year back on the field! 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 do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Why the Qur’an Doesn’t Seem to Know There Are Four Gospels

If you talk to Muslims about the Bible, or if you read the Qur’an, you’ll very quickly realize that Islam doesn’t teach that there are four gospels. No, the Qur’an, and the vast majority of Muslims, assume that Jesus came and revealed one book, called The Injil, i.e. The Gospel (Surah Al-Ma’ida 5:46). The Qur’an seemingly has no idea about the four separate books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Why is this?

Some of this seems to be due to the Qur’anic worldview and its assumption that all true prophets bring their own heavenly book revelation with them for their specific people, such as the alleged ‘scrolls of Abraham’ (Surah Al-Ala 87:19). These prophets and their books are said to all contain the same basic message about turning from idolatry toward worship of the one creator God because the day of judgement is coming.

This is the narrative that Mohammad claimed about himself (Al-Ma’ida 5:48). Then, to try to defend his own prophethood when challenged, it’s also a narrative he forced onto the story every other prophet. Of course, everyone who has actually read the Bible knows that this is not true of every prophet, and not even true of many of the prophets the Qur’an is aware of, such as Abraham and Elijah. It’s not even true of Jesus. He didn’t come revealing a book from heaven; rather, he was the revealed Word of God, and his disciples later recorded his life and ministry in the four gospel accounts. This is yet another piece of evidence that Mohammed likely didn’t have access to a Bible he could read, though he does seem to have had access to lots of Jewish, Christian, and heretical oral tradition floating around in seventh-century Arabia.

However, this week I learned that there may be an additional reason why the Qur’an doesn’t seem to know that there are four gospels. This reason has to do with an early church figure named Tatian, who is a rather complex figure. Discipled by Justin Martyr, Tatian later returned to his home area of Adiabene, old Assyria, what is today N. Iraq, and proceeded to write a fiery treatise, “Address to the Greeks,” on why Christianity is superior to Greek beliefs – but also how he believed the East to be vastly superior to the West in general,

In every way the East excels and most of all in its religion, the Christian religion, which also comes from Asia and is far older and truer than all the philosophies and crude religious myths of the Greeks.

Significantly, Tatian seems to have been the first figure in church history to attempt to translate some of the New Testament into another language. Tatian combined the four gospels into one account, translating this work into old Syriac. This book was called the Diatessaron, and for several hundred years it was the primary form of the gospels used in the Syriac-speaking Christian world of the Middle East and Central Asia. A standard translation of the four canonical gospels didn’t take its proper place among the Syriac churches until a few centuries later. Tatian himself eventually drifted into some problematic asceticism and was proclaimed a heretic.

Here’s where Tatian connects with the Qur’an’s ignorance about the existence of four separate gospels. The Diatessaron was very popular in the broader Syriac-speaking region – a region that overlapped considerably with the territory of Arab kingdoms and tribes. Biblical scholar and linguist Richard Brown puts it this way in his paper, “ʿIsa and Yasūʿ: The Origins of the Arabic Names for Jesus,”

For several centuries, the Diatessaron was the standard “Gospel” used in most churches of the Middle East. When the Quran speaks of the book called the “Gospel” (Arabic Injil), it is almost certainly referring to the Diatessaron.

Why doesn’t the Qur’an seem to understand that there are four gospels? There is a good case to be made that this Islamic confusion about the actual makeup of the New Testament goes back to a well-intentioned project of an early church leader.

In this, there is a lesson to be learned about the unintended consequences of pragmatism in mission contexts. It’s not hard to see how those in the early church, like Tatian, might have felt that it would be more practical and helpful to have one harmonized gospel book instead of three very similar synoptic gospels and one very different Gospel of John. For one, it would have been much cheaper to copy and distribute. Books were very costly to produce in the ancient world, often requiring the backing of a wealthy patron. In addition, a single harmonized account would have also seemed simpler to understand, rather than asking the new believers in the ancient Parthian Empire to work through the apparent differences between the timelines and details presented in the four separate gospel accounts.

What could be lost if the Word of God were made more accessible in this fashion? Well, for one, this kind of harmonization loses the unique message and emphasis present in the intentional structure and editorial composition of each book. The authors of the Gospels were not merely out to communicate the events of Jesus’ ministry. They were also seeking to communicate the meaning of those events by how they structured their presentation of them. For example, consider how Mark sandwiches Jesus’ cleansing of the temple in chapter 11 between accounts of Jesus cursing the fig tree. This structure is intended to communicate to the reader that the cursing of the fig tree was a living (and dying) metaphor of the fruitless temple system of the 1st century – and its impending judgment.

Tatian’s pragmatic decision cut off Syriac-speaking believers from so much of this crucial meaning because he did not simply translate the four individual gospels. Further, he also inadvertently contributed to confusion among the ancient Arabs about the nature of the Injil, a confusion that was later codified in Islam and continues to trip up Muslims to this day, creating doubts in their mind about the validity of the four gospels.

If you find yourself in conversations with Muslim friends about this question of why there are four gospels instead of one, knowing this background might prove helpful. The Qur’an itself doesn’t know that there are four gospels. This is because of its own errant understanding of prophethood – an understanding, unfortunately, aided by some ancient and pragmatic missiology.

We need to raise 28k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. 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 do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash.com

Consciously Multilingual Mesopotamia

This is a region of so many world firsts for linguistic innovation. Unlike Egypt, China or India, its cities and states had always been consciously multilingual, whether for communication with neighbours who spoke different languages, or because their histories had made them adopt a foreign language to dignify court, religion or commerce. This is the area where we find the first conscious use of a classical language for convenience in communication, as a lingua franca, an early apparent triumph of diplomatic pragmatism over national sentiment.

-Ostler, Empires of the Word, p.34

Here, Ostler is referring to ancient Mesopotamia. This is a region – like our own area of Central Asia – that has been ‘consciously multilingual’ for as far back as we have records. This is a different posture toward language than many of us are used to who come from societies more in the monolingual tradition of ancient Egypt or China.

In a multilingual culture, a person is raised to assume that multiple languages will be heard and used on a daily basis. To gain a competitive advantage, as well as just for the convenience and joy of it, many will pick up two or three other languages in addition to the mother tongue spoken in their home. These societies do not assume that language use is a zero-sum game, where the use of one language inevitably means the demotion or withering of others. Rather, there is often a pragmatic long-term bilingualism or trilingualism. In one city close to us, many are even quadrilingual, using four languages on the regular. And they’ve been like this for countless generations.

Given the strengths and weaknesses of different languages, I prefer this approach that chooses to have not just one, but multiple tools in one’s toolbelt of tongues. For example, English may be fantastic for its motley plethora of specific nouns and adjectives (case in point – motley and plethora). On the other hand, English is a rhyme-poor language. So, for poetry, I’ll take our Central Asian tongue.

The Jerusalem Talmud would also concur with this position that languages have unique strengths: “Four languages are pleasing for use in the world: Greek for song, Latin for battle, Syriac (Aramaic) for dirges, Hebrew for speech.” Even God himself must have, for reasons of his own, chosen Hebrew and a short detour into Aramaic for biblical revelation until the coming of Christ, and then chosen Greek for the revelation that followed. Among his many reasons for this, one of them must have had something to do with the nature of the languages themselves – not that they were more holy or somehow superior, but that they were somehow more useful.

When it comes to missions, all this means that when sharing the gospel with a multilingual people group, we should be like the ancient Mesopotamians. We should feel free to share as soon as possible in a language they understand, even while we gauge over the long term which language might lead to the strongest advance of the gospel among them. The ancient inhabitants of Ur had a ‘diplomatic pragmatism’ when it came to their language use. Our own ‘spiritual pragmatism’ in language use should be shaped by whatever leads to the clearest and most compelling proclamation over the long haul. That might mean learning two languages, perhaps first a dominant (and often easier) trade language to see some friends come to faith and then a much more difficult minority mother tongue to see those friends formed into a church that goes on to multiply faithfully among its people group.

We also need to be careful that those of us from predominantly monolingual societies don’t impose limitations upon our multilingual friends that simply aren’t present in their language worldview. For example, the churches of one of our sister people groups hold all their Bible studies and church services in two languages. Their mother tongue is used for worship, prayer, discussion, and preaching. But the Bible is always read and studied in the national language. This is because they cannot read or write in their mother tongue. Yet because of the school system, they are highly literate in the national language. So, they simply switch back and forth as needed. To outsiders like us, this may seem a highly inconvenient or unsustainable system. But to a multilingual people group, this is fine. “We use this language for this part and that language for that part. What’s the issue here?”

We need to be careful that when it comes to big decisions like who gets a missionary and who doesn’t, who gets a bible translation or not, and whether or not we will make the costly investment to learn a second language, we are truly seeking to understand how ‘consciously multilingual’ people groups actually function.

They have a kind of freedom toward language that may be hard for us to grasp at first. It may challenge some of our categories. But if we can join them in that freedom, then we may be able to leverage it for the spread of the gospel.

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 do so here.

Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash.com

How I Finally Learned the Word for Speed Bump

It took me a long time to remember the local word for speed bump. This word, like thousands of others in our Central Asian language, is a loan word from a larger regional language. The words borrowed from this particular larger tongue simply won’t stick as easily in my brain as the native words of our local Indo-European one, or those borrowed from other related languages. This is because this other language is from a different language family altogether, so when I hear this kind of new word I feel like I’ve got nothing to connect it to, nothing in the broader structure of language forms and meaning that I can hang it on. It feels like random syllables of sound floating in space that I just have to memorize with no help from context whatsoever. It would be like learning English if English were infused with thousands of random Chinese words. The sound and meaning clues of these Chinese words would be from an entirely different system than the rest of the English language being learned.

No, I eventually learned the word for speed bump because it was shouted at me over and over again on a drive with Hakkan*, a former guerilla fighter and father of Zoey*, one of my wife’s good village friends. Hakkan, a strutting and mustachioed patriarch in Underhill village, is the kind of character who believes that foreigners can understand your language better if you say everything more slowly – and much louder.

“A.W.!”

“Yes, elder brother Hakkan?”

“WE’RE EATING GOOSE TODAY!”

“Wow, why are you all troubling yourselves so much on our behalf?”

“NO! YOU ARE OUR GUESTS! SO WE WILL EAT THE FAT GOOSE! LOOK AT THIS HUGE KNIFE I WILL BEHEAD IT WITH!”

Hakkan always got a kick out of showing off his huge knife, especially when my wife was around, whose name he could never quite remember. Instead, he called her a mashup of Islamic names that, if tortured enough, bore a slight resemblance to my wife’s name.

“SAIF-ADI! I’M BEHEADING A GOOSE! A FAT GOOSE, EH?! HAHA!”

Anyway, during one of our many trips to visit his household, the family planned an outing to a nearby city. Something was wrong with their vehicle, so they asked me to drive us all in our SUV. In true village style, nine or ten of us piled into our seven-seater as we began the drive to this nearby city. First, we drove about a half hour down a road with ancient and modern village ruins on our right and melon fields and a large lake on our left. Then, at the end of the lake, we turned right and began to zig-zag our way up a mountain. Our destination was on the other side, in the next valley over from Underhill village. I had once looked down on this city from a different mountaintop with my friend, the Sufi Mullah.

As it turned out, this road was full of unmarked speed bumps. In recent years, traffic speed cameras have begun popping up in the larger cities and even some of the popular intercity roads. But for decades, and still to this day in most places, the most effective method of combating the maniacal driving tendencies of the local men is to force them to drive over dozens and dozens of punishing speed bumps.

Now, I consider myself a pretty good driver. But, for the life of me, I have the hardest time registering an oncoming speed bump, especially if it’s the same color as the road and otherwise relatively unmarked. It’s so bad I’ve sometimes gotten actual airtime from hitting speed bumps way too fast. Yes, dear reader, say a prayer for the poor suspension system of our family vehicle.

Hakkan was in the front seat with me that day as I drove this particular mountain road for the first time. And every time that I managed not to see a speed bump in time (which was quite often), Hakkan would brace himself and yell,

“TASA!!!” which, of course, is the local word for speed bump.

On that drive, I heard, “TASA! A.W.! TASAAA!!!” so many times that the blasted loanword finally stuck in my brain.

Eventually, we made it down the other side of the mountain and to our destination. I thought I had driven pretty slowly overall, but I distinctly remember Hakkan’s younger teenage daughter in the backseat moaning from carsickness,

“I have died, ohhh, I have died!”

Hakkan, as always, was somehow scowling and smiling at the same time, looking like he could kill you but like he’d rather make you laugh and show you some large knives.

It’s been years since that day when the word for speed bump finally stuck. But today, as my family once again drove into the mountains, anytime my wife spotted a speed bump for me she would impersonate Hakkan from that outing long ago,

“TASAAA!!!”

As for Hakkan, I haven’t heard from him ever since he tried to recruit me to help him get a second wife without his first wife or daughters knowing about it. He had somehow met a migrant African worker in a nearby hospital who knew English but not much of the local language. So, Hakkan called me up to get me to translate for their secret plans for polygamous matrimony. For my part, I was very disappointed in Hakkan and told him I wanted nothing to do with it. That seems to have put a damper on our relationship.

However, this being Central Asia, sooner or later I’ll hear from Hakkan again and he’ll pretend like nothing ever happened. And when that day comes, I’ll tell him how thankful I am that because of his help, I finally learned the word for speed bump – and that every time we hit one in a bad way, we think of him.

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 do so here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

*Names of places and individuals have been changed for security

Why Majority Language Ministry Isn’t Reaching Minority Groups

In the 1800s, most missionaries who worked in the Muslim world worked among the ethnic Christians of the region. The theory was if these spiritually-dead ‘Christian’ communities were reawakened and genuinely came to faith in Jesus, then the gospel would flow from them and penetrate the majority Muslim community. Sadly, this compelling theory proved to be completely wrong. The historic animosity and barriers between the minority Christians and the majority Muslims instead prevented the gospel and church plants from flowing from one community into the other. This was true even though the minority community was fluent both in their native Christian languages (Armenian, Syriac, etc.) and in the language of the Muslim majority (Persian, Turkish, Arabic). There were encouraging exceptions now and then, but largely, the original theory was based on a wrong assumption, that missionary engagement with a minority language group would lead to the majority language group also being reached.

Today, a kind of reversal of this story is taking place. Many are assuming that our unengaged minority people groups can be reached by missionaries focusing on the majority language groups.

Specifically, the unengaged people groups of our region keep getting passed over by both large organizations who want to ‘maximize their impact’ as well as by the small number of specialized missionaries explicitly trained to learn two languages in order to church plant among such minority groups. On paper, it makes sense. Most, if not all, of the members of our area’s minority language groups can clearly understand the gospel in one of the more dominant regional languages. This is because they have grown up as minorities needing to be fluent in a national or regional language in order to go to school, do business, and navigate government processes. Were someone from these minority groups to come to faith, the thought is that they could then join a church that worships in one of the majority languages that they know.

With this kind of bilingualism or trilingualism being the long-term situation on the ground, our minority language groups get categorized as having access to the gospel – and therefore not as urgently in need of missionaries as those minority groups that cannot clearly understand the gospel in the languages of their neighbors. There is a clear logic to this ‘triage of lostness’ that I do not completely disagree with. Those who can understand the gospel in another language because they are bilingual or trilingual are not in the same situation as those who cannot currently hear the gospel in any language they can understand.

However, I believe there is a faulty assumption that comes along with this valid distinction. And that assumption is that because the minority group can speak the majority language(s), the gospel and even church plants will then actually flow from the majority group and into the minority communities. Essentially, the assumption is that fluency or near-fluency in a dominant language means the primary barrier to the gospel for these minority groups has been removed. So, if missionaries are present planting churches in the majority language, then the outworking of this assumption is that this is sufficient for passing over these minority language groups. They will be reached, eventually, through the dominant languages.

It’s a sound theory, but alas, it doesn’t hold up on the ground. At least not in our corner of Central Asia. I wish this weren’t the case. But we must work with the lost as they are, and not with the lost as we wish they would be, nor as we thought they would be back when we were in training.

Unfortunately, the witness of decades of gospel work here has shown that apparent access to the gospel through majority languages itself doesn’t remove the necessary barriers keeping churches from taking root among these minority groups. It removes one barrier, yes, but there are apparently other barriers in place that keep the gospel from penetrating these minority groups in a significant way. This means that the ability to clearly understand the gospel in a majority language should not be used as the only or primary filter for considering whether certain groups should receive missionaries who learn their language or not.

What will it take to reach these minority groups? The same thing it has taken to plant churches among our focus people group (itself a minority group in its country, but big enough to be a dominant language group compared to these smaller language communities I’m discussing). What is needed is a long-term commitment to engage a people group in the language that is closest to its identity. This helps answer the objection that some of these groups are functioning as if they have two heart languages. Sure, they may be fluent in two or three languages. But only one of them bears their name. And for most of these members of minority language groups, the language that bears their name is still the language they dream in, talk to their spouse in, curse in, and pray desperate prayers in.

The missionary who does the hard thing and learns that tongue (often in addition to learning one of the majority languages – probably 6-8 years of labor) will find himself doing ministry with greater power, skill, and trust than were he to simply do ministry in the majority language. Yes, to learn someone’s mother tongue when no one from the outside has ever learned it before gives you serious power in conversation, and I use that term intentionally. This is a natural power in communication that the Spirit can then also infuse with spiritual power when he sees fit. If you have ever learned even a phrase or two in a minority tongue then you know what I am talking about (or if you’ve ever been stuck in a foreign land and experienced the immense relief that comes over you when someone addresses you in good English). Along with power comes skill, the ability to speak clearly and compellingly in the intimate language a person uses with their parents, their lover, and their children. And with all of this comes trust. After all, by learning this tongue no one else will take the time to learn you have led with an incredible display of honor, respect, even love – and that for a language that is usually ignored, suppressed, or mocked. The locals will come to trust you and share their secrets with you in a different way than if your relationship was only in the majority language. You have learned their heart language, so they’re more likely to entrust their heart to you. This is simply the way humans work.

So, what are the barriers preventing the gospel from naturally flowing from our majority language groups to our minority language groups? Well, as we’ve established already, it’s not the lack of a shared language. The minority groups are fluent in the majority languages. Rather, there seems to be a complex web of factors that prevent our good theory from working in reality, that prevent the gospel and churches from taking root in these communities. These interlocking barriers would be things like majority-minority identity preservation, distrust and animosity between communities, and the fact that seeing a church in your neighbor’s language and culture might not actually convince you that this Jesus thing is actually an option for people like you.

If none of your ancestors have ever believed in Jesus, then this last barrier often requires a peculiar kind of demonstration. Often, it requires a Jesus follower from the outside entering into your language and culture and awkwardly attempting to model all this for you. “God knows your language and he knows and loves your people, my friend,” they will try to tell you in your mother tongue, while probably butchering the grammar of that sentence. This, believe it or not, can have a similar effect to having witnessed some kind of miracle.

We may feel like we can cross minority language groups off the list if they can hear the gospel in the majority languages of their country. But at least for our area of Central Asia, this would be a tragic mistake. These groups have been bilingual or trilingual for hundreds of years and not lost their distinct ethnic and linguistic (and sometimes religious) identities. They aren’t going away anytime soon. And they aren’t being reached ‘downstream’ from the work being done in the majority languages. No, it’s going to take something much more proactive, intentional, and downright stubborn for churches to be planted among these minority groups.

We need gospel laborers. We need trailblazers. Those who are willing to question missiological laws and ask the hard questions about why solid theories aren’t actually proving true on the ground. Eight years of your life to learn two languages is totally worth it if it means churches planted among a language group that has never before had gospel witness in its own culture and tongue.

Unreached language groups can be reached. But the best way to do this is by preaching the gospel to them in their own language, not in the language of their more powerful neighbors. This is true even if they are bilingual and even if they say you don’t have to. Learn that unknown tongue. See what the Lord does with that sacrificial labor. It will be so hard. And it will be so worth it.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photos are from Unsplash.com

An Idiom for The Demystified

The magic has been emptied.

-local oral tradition

“What’s the infinitive form of that verb?” I asked my local friend.

“Aha! You are smart to look for the infinitives. Once you know the infinitives of our language then the magic has been emptied.”

“Come again?”

This conversation is how I learned this new saying this past week. Essentially, this local idiom can be used for any situation where something previously incomprehensible now suddenly makes sense because you’ve found the key to understanding it. It would be equivalent to our English ‘pulling back the curtain,’ something being ‘unraveled,’ or ‘lifting the veil.’ This idiom seems to reference the universal “so that’s how!” exclamation of understanding when you find out how a magic trick is really done.

My friend was using this idiom to communicate that once a foreigner learns the infinitives of the local language’s verbs, then the whole system of verbs and their many perplexing forms will make so much more sense. Finding keys like this that bring order to a foreign language (or culture) that initially feels like chaos is usually a moment of significant breakthrough for a weary learner. Every language has its own logic, its own keys. Find them and it will be demystified and suddenly logical and accessible. Its ‘magic’ of inaccessible mystery may be emptied, but the magic of getting to understand and use the language well will have just begun.

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 do so here.

Our kids’ Christian school here in Central Asia has an immediate need for a teacher for the combined 2nd and 3rd grade class. An education degree and some experience are required, but the position is salaried, not requiring support raising. If interested, reach out here!

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photos are from Unsplash.com

A Pro-Translation God

…perhaps, indeed, we should be talking not of language prestige but language charisma. Sanskrit, besides being the sacred language of Hinduism, has owed much to disciples of the Buddha; and Hebrew would have been lost thousands of years ago with Judaism. Arabic is more ambiguous: in the long term, Islam has proved the fundamental motive for its spread, but it was Arab-led armies which actually took the language into western Asia and northern Africa, creating new states in which proselytising would follow. Arabs were also famous as traders round the Indian Ocean, but the acceptance of Islam in these areas has never given Arabic anything more than a role in liturgy. Curiously, the linguistic effects of spreading conversions turn out to be almost independent of the preachers’ own priorities. Christians have been fairly indifferent to the language in which their faith is expressed, and their classic text, The New Testament, records the sayings of Jesus in translation; and yet Christianity itself has played a crucial role in the preservation of, and indeed the prestige of, many languages, including Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Gothic.

– Ostler, Empires of the Word, pp. 21-22

Ostler makes some interesting observations here on the effect that religion has on languages. It’s a mixed picture. Clearly, religion can be one major factor in why languages spread and how they are preserved. But as he notes, the results can be very unpredictable. The acquisition or spread of a new faith along with a new language sometimes go together. But not always.

In terms of Christianity’s posture toward which language we use to make disciples, we often forget the fact that the sayings of Jesus in the New Testament are a Spirit-inspired translation of his actual words. This is good evidence that God is a pro-translation God, modeling for us that the most important truths in the universe can indeed make the jump from one tongue to another. This apparently holds true even though the range of meanings for an individual word in a given language is always slightly or even vastly different from that of its equivalent in another language – if an equivalent exists at all. Languages are never one-to-one equivalents, and yet God provided four infallible translation accounts of Jesus’ teachings. This provides much hope for those of us involved in translation work that is definitely fallible, but God willing, still good.

Christianity’s preservation of languages through Bible translation alone is something celebrated even by pagans. But languages redeemed to serve the Church can still go awry. Forgetting that not even the language of Jesus was preserved by the authors of the New Testament as the holy language of heaven and earth, believers in certain ages have tried to elevate their own languages instead, whether that be Latin, Greek, Coptic, Syriac, or KJV English. While the desire to preserve a tongue once used mightily by God is commendable, it becomes a bad thing when a rigid ongoing use of that tongue in liturgy or preaching increasingly denies God’s people the kind of hearing that can lead to faith.

Every Sunday for decades, the gospel was utterly unintelligible for one of my closest friends who grew up in an ethnic Christian community here in Central Asia. This was not only because he was not yet born again – but because God’s word had been fossilized in an ancient form of his language that was no longer intelligible to anyone but the priests. Turns out the miracle of the new birth can only take place when the gospel is communicated in a language we can understand.

The language is never the end in and of itself. It is the means by which we reach our goal of spiritual communication. Lose sight of this and we risk losing entire people groups that once were saturated with vibrant churches and true believers.

If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (only 3k currently needed), you can reach out here.

Our kids’ Christian school here in Central Asia has an immediate need for a teacher for the combined 2nd and 3rd grade class. An education degree and some experience is required, but the position is salaried, not requiring support raising. If interested, reach out here!

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photos are from Wikimedia Commons