As many Christians know, the world of missions is an exciting and continually evolving field that offers individuals the opportunity to grow as intellectual and spiritual beings. Visiting other countries-and the exposure to new languages and cultures that such travels entail-can be fun and personally rewarding. Additionally, learning how to adapt to new cultures and peoples can be professionally advantageous given the fact that burgeoning realities like globalization and multiculturalism are affecting the way employers hire and education systems function. Despite the benefits that come with missionary work, however, there are many complications which can engender challenges when one attempts to communicate the gospel if they are not addressed and solved. Although several such complications in missions work exist, the most challenging can be acclimating oneself to another culture. The solution for this challenge is simple: become an incarnational missionary.
In their own discourse regarding learning how to think and act advantageously in new cultural contexts, Moreau, Corwin, and McGee introduce the phrase incarnational mission to describe the ideological shift missionaries must undergo to be effective. In essence, they say, missionaries must incarnate themselves into new contexts just as Christ was incarnated from a divine medium into a finite human being (2). Although missionaries do not enter the new culture as babies and subsequently immerse themselves in it, they can make a foreign land familiar by learning its language and inundating themselves in the ways of the people. It is this practice that increases the likelihood that the missionary will be successful in sharing the gospel of Christ given that one’s ability to connect across cultures is contingent upon understanding and maintaining receptivity to its core principles.
Some Christians might think that understanding and responding to the cultural specificities of another land is ancillary to the missionary’s central goal. Proponents of this claim might argue that the primary purpose of missions work is to effectively present the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost world desperately in need of the love and salvation that He offers. While most Christians would probably agree that this summation is accurate, it does not negate the fact that recognizing the cultural idiosynchrasies and ideologies of a nation’s people can be integral to effectively interacting with individuals and subsequently connecting them to Christ.
That failing to master the art of understanding and responding to culturally specific modes of being and knowing can engender anxiety and hinder the missionary’s evangelistic endeavors is plain. For example, missionaries reared in America are likely familiar with the country’s strongly individualistic leanings. This proclivity towards thinking and acting independently can make venturing out to form new friendships easier for Americans than people raised in collective cultures. Individuals in the latter group are often born into a group of people who become their friends for life, making the formation of new friendships difficult or undesirably anomalistic. This can make it particularly challenging for missionaries from the U.S. to develop relationships with such people and subsequently share the gospel with them. Yet recognizing this cultural barrier and establishing strategies designed to make the process of relationship development effective and inoffensive will likely aid missionaries in fostering the emotional and intellectual connections necessary to make communicating the gospel a sincere and meaningful enterprise.
Innumerable other examples of cultural barriers-and the need to transcend them-exist. For example, some people involved in missionary work know that many Middle Easterners interpret the friendliness of American women as sexual aggressiveness. In recognizing this cultural reality, female missionaries attempting to talk about Jesus in this region may consciously choose to mediate their behavior so that their amicability is not misinterpreted.
The contemporary need to relate to individuals who are not of one’s own culture grows with each passing day, and this reality will continue to profoundly affect the world of missions. As made evident by the onset of postmodernism and the increasingly inclusive value systems that give shape and substance to the realms of business and education, people from disparate sociopolitical and cultural regions are now constantly coming in contact with one another. With these unfolding developments in mind, it is more important than ever for missionaries to master the art of interacting with people from other places. Indeed, being an incarnational missionary-one capable of adapting to new cultural settings-may be integral to the successful dissemination of the gospel in the 21st century.
Sources:
Moreau, Scott A., Gary R. Corwin, and Gary B. McGee. Introducing World Missions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004.
Jocelyn Crawley is a Masters of Divinity student. She holds B.A. degrees in both Religious Studies and English.
