Part 1: Everybody in the Pool | Part 2: But First … | Part 3: More than Good Intentions | Part 4: Semper Gumby
Short-term cross-cultural work is not for obsessive perfectionist control freaks.
First, you need to realize that there’s much about the target culture that you don’t know, and you’ll need to trust and depend on locals, or long-term missionaries, to correct your thinking, and you’ll need to do what they say. Further, if you believe that going is a call from God, and if you believe in providence, then you need to expect that God will do things with this experience that will surprise you and perhaps change your plans. You need to depend on him for direction and move confidently when he changes things.
Sometimes you’re going to be offensive—we’ve noted that fact repeatedly in this series—and you need to be prepared to be corrected, to take the correction gracefully, and to apologize. Once my team was going out into a neighborhood in Johannesburg to pass out fliers for a youth event that evening. I suggested that we go out in pairs, one American and one “African.” Without going into the long history of racial evil and distrust in South Africa, I’ll just say that calling these South African “Coloureds” (those of mixed race) “Africans” was highly offensive to them. I was mortified, and I apologized profusely. A deeply humbling moment.
On a more positive note, let me describe a delightful instance of a providential change of plans.
We were in Cape Town, working with an indigenous pastor, and he suggested that we go to a nearby suburb where a missionary was having a youth event at a high school. I had corresponded with this missionary during the planning stage, and I knew he had a team from a US church working with him that week, and I didn’t want to crash their party. But the pastor insisted, so off we went.
We walked into the school building and followed the sound to a chaotic, noisy group of elementary children in a courtyard, with two American teenaged girls who were clearly overwhelmed. I knew this event was supposed to be for teens, and I wondered what was going on. After a minute the missionary walked out of the gym into the courtyard, saw me, and said immediately, “Boy, am I glad to see you! We advertised a youth rally, and I’ve got 200 teens in the gym. But a hundred little children showed up too. We told them this event isn’t for them, but they won’t leave, and we’re not prepared to deal with them.”
I said, “Do you want us to take care of the children?”
“Boy, do I!”
The previous week we’d been running a children’s camp in Kenya, with teams and mascots and cheers and games and preaching. I turned to this well-experienced team and said, “OK, you two are the team leaders. Set up two teams and teach the kids some cheers. You two are in charge of games. And Jonny, you’re preaching in 45 minutes.”
We sent the greatly relieved American girls from the other team into the gym to help there, and in 5 minutes we had a smoothly running day camp. So smoothly, in fact, that I went into the gym to see if there was anything I could do there.
The preacher in the gym was the leader of the other American team. He introduced himself to me after the sermon, as if he knew me. His name was familiar, but I didn’t recognize his face at all. Turned out he had been one of my students in an online Systematic Theology course a couple of years earlier. So the name was familiar, but we’d never met in person.
What a great experience that was! What a joy to see my team providentially prepared for exactly the unexpected situation they were facing! And what an encouragement it was to both teams—and to the missionary—to see God not only meet the need but expand the ministry in ways unplanned by the organizers!
God is great, and God is good. If you’ll see all your ministry experiences, even (perhaps especially) the unexpected ones, as gracious gifts from a God who knows what he’s doing, you can find joy in intimidating circumstances.
Go.
Part 6: Closing Thoughts I | Part 7: Closing Thoughts II | Part 8: Closing Thoughts III
Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash
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