Arriving at an invitation-only social event you discover to your utter dismay that you are the only one wearing a suit. Everyone else is dressed casually for a cookout around a pool. You can feel the stares and the unspoken question hanging in the air. “Didn’t you get the memo?” Almost everyone has either experienced it or dreamed about it in a nightmare. Why do we feel so awkward or out of place on such occasions?
We all have a desire to fit in and to be accepted as part of the group. Most of us have grown up watching how our own culture treats people who are either oblivious to or who refuse to accept the cultural norms around them. Such offenders are usually avoided, isolated, made the brunt of inside jokes, or even mocked openly.
The ways a local culture imposes unspoken demands on its subjects are many and varied: dress code, speaking accent, manners, body language, vocabulary, tone of voice, speaking volume, and the list goes on. Local people never speak about these things because they don’t have to—they just know the way people behave. Everyone who does not fit their pattern is obviously an outsider.
One simple example we experienced while living in central Europe was the fact that polite people there do not speak loudly in public and rarely speak at all on elevators or public transit. Children and teenagers are given a certain latitude—adults are not. While living there it was fairly easy to make that adjustment. Soon it was easy to identify American tourists on any bus, train, or even at local restaurants. At first it was humorous to notice. After a while, it became so annoying that it was easy to emulate local citizens and roll your eyes before getting off at the next stop and walking away from “the tourists.” After all, people who live here don’t behave that way.
Imagine being one of those tourists—fresh off the plane—completely oblivious to local unspoken rules of politeness, attempting to give out gospel tracts. As person after person walks away from you in disgust, you are completely oblivious as to the real reason. It would be too easy to imagine that it is these people who are rude while you are being persecuted because of the gospel. In fact, the opposite is the case. They are not rejecting the gospel at all. They are rejecting a person they perceive to be impolite and who shows little respect for their culture or ways of life. With a little orientation and sensitivity, the results might be completely different.
Every culture demands its own price to become an insider. Pat Burroughs, a missionary friend serving with another organization, once put it to me this way: “There is always a cultural price to pay to take the gospel to a people group different from our own.” Humanly speaking, the ability of a missionary to successfully penetrate any people group with the gospel is largely dependent on his or her willingness to pay the cultural price in order to win a hearing for the message of Jesus Christ.
Describing the price of cross-cultural ministry, the Apostle Paul said it best: For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; . . . to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some (1 Corinthians 9:19–22).
Imagine the changes Paul must have experienced during his life and ministry in order to win Jews, Greeks, Romans, slaves, soldiers, prisoners, and merchants, both men and women. Pray for our missionaries to be willing to pay the cultural price in order to communicate the gospel effectively to all people.
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4/16/12
Mary Lou Brownell passes away at 82
Brownell served in Bangladesh and the Home Office for many years.
3/27/12
Corabelle Stowell, wife of longest-serving Board member in ABWE history, passes away
Her husband, Dr. Joseph Stowell II, went home to be with the Lord in June 2007
