Incarnational Missionary

1. Incarnational Missionary After surviving culture shock, learned the language and made friends the worst is behind. Major adjustments are primarily at the beginning, now we must learn the culture and identify with it

2. Identifying with a new culture • Three dimensions: knowledge, feelings and values • Stumbling blocks in each area must be overcome • Three Major Stumbling blocks are: • Cross cultural misunderstandings • Ethnicentrism • Premature judgments

3. 1. Cross Cultural Misunderstandings: Cognitive Blocks • Lack of knowledge and understanding that leads to confusion • Humorous incidents: Left hand in India, shaking hands in Japan instead of bowing, kissing in Argentina • Serious offenses: give a gift with left-hand in India, wedding feast spoiled for Brahmin priest because American entered the kitchen to give thanks. • Confusion in Africa about eating food in cans with picture of the food, then seeing baby food with pictures of babies! • Missionaries brought cat as pet to tribe where only the witchdoctors had cats • Missionaries prayed into boxes resulting in food and stuff coming the next day. Tribesmen tried it but nothing happened.

4. Overcoming Misunderstandings: Two Types • Our misunderstandings of the people and their culture: BE A LEARNER • Must enter into the new culture as LEARNERS through we come as TEACHERS! • Any attitude of superiority blinds us to see their culture and makes it impossible to accept us. • People always will help a learner. Trust is built and equal interest in us begins. • Temptation is to think we understand the culture when we only see the shell! • Their misunderstanding of us: BE OPEN AND CLEAR in explanations • With trust, more questions will come. Why sleep on beds? Do you really eat meat? • Why do you not marry your daughters at six? • They want to try our machines. • We loose most privacy and personal questions should be expected.

5. Inside Outside Viewpoints – Many ways to look at a culture • We learn to see our culture from the inside • We assume it is the only and right way to live • Anthropologists call this view “EMIC” • We look at other cultures through the grid of our culture and foreigners do the same • Cross-cultural transition is possible BUT NEVER COMPLETELY • Some argue that one must reject their own culture and convert to another culture • Virtually impossible because of indelible imprint of our original culture • Often our value to the people we serve is our knowledge of the outside world. We become “culture brokers” so being slightly foreign is okay. • “Migrant” missions are unique, they become citizens and never leave. It still take several of their family generations to make the cross cultural transition. • Missionaries may identify with the culture, but the Gospel is always foreign

6. More Ways to Look at a Culture • How is Cross Cultural Communication possible with different views of reality? • Must learn gradually to see the world through the eyes of our host nation • Develop higher levels o analysis: META-CULTURAL CONCEPT frameworks—to stand above both ours and host culture to be able to compare and translate. • Become aware of our CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS, commonly taken for granted. • Time: ever flowing, moving in one direction or an ever-circling cycle that goes nowhere • We look for comparisons, contrasts and implications • Developing this Meta-cultural framework results in “BI-CULTURAL PEOPLE” who are able to be detached somewhat from the first culture and explain beliefs and habits from one culture to another • An outsider’s perspective, not tied to any culture is an “ETIC” view of culture

7. EMIC and ETIC understandings compliment each other: • EMIC view to understand the people and their thinking to translate the gospel into their thought patterns • ETIC view to compare one culture with other cultures to come to a proper view of reality • Once the META CULTURAL view is seen then the Bible can be translated directly from the Biblical cultural setting into the target culture without injecting the cultural “baggage” of the translator.

8. Ethnocentricism • Affective level of cross cultural misunderstanding • Feeling your culture is superior and others are primitive: deals with attitude, not understanding • Tendency to respond to strange cultural habits by using our own affective assumptions (how we feel) and to reinforce these feelings with strong approval or disapproval • Confronting different cultures feels like our own culture is being judged—the easy response is to avoid the issue by assuming ours is better and they are uncivilized. Remember, this is a two-way street!

9. More Ethnocentricism • Occurs whenever cultural differences are found. • We are shocked to see the poor living in the streets, they are shocked to see our sick and aged given over to strangers for care • Different cultures see each other as superior to the other, urbans look down on rural, upper class are critical of lower. • Solution to ethnocentricism is EMPATHY – appreciate their culture and habits • Not easily rooted out due to pride and self image and self-centeredness and ignorance of others • Another solution is Cultural Pluralism—unless examined we will be threatened because it questions our belief that our culture is best. • Avoid stereotyping people in another culture—see them as humans with different habits • People love their own culture—if we wish to convince them of anything, it must be done in their culture, not ours

10. 3. Premature Judgment—Evaluative Level • Tend to judge before we understand and appreciate the culture • We use our own cultural values, not that of a meta-cultural concept • Result is wrong views and close the door to more understanding and communication

11. 1. Cultural Relativism • See other cultures as viable ways of organizing human life • Some are strong in technology, others in family ties, others in non-technical agricultures • All “do the job”—make life more or less meaningful • Results in concept, “All cultures are equally good”—“No culture should judge another”—View has some features • Has high respect for others • Avoids errors of ethnocentrisms and premature judgments • Doesnot deal with questions of truth and morality by withholding judgment letting each culture reach its own answers • Results in no absolutes, no error, any behavior is justified in its culture and sin is irrelevant then no need for gospel nor missionaries

13. 2. Beyond Relativism • No human thought is free of value judgments—society cannot exist without them • Judgments should be well informed after understanding and appreciating a different culture—most judgments are made on ignorance and ethnocentrisms. • Christians claim Biblical Norms as a Meta-Culture—affirming the good and condemning the evil • Truth does not depend on what we think, but on reality itself • Bearing witness to the Truth, does not pretend superiority, but join-cultural deficiencies to the Truth of the Gospel

14. How to keep from interpreting Scriptures from our own cultural view point: • Recognize we have biases when we interpret the Bible and are open to correction—we cannot trust the spirit to apply it to their lives and culture • Define the cultures of our own and where we minister to develop a Meta Culture Framework—Where we can compare and evaluate , etc. both. • Development of Meta Cultural system of values allows us to compare and evaluate the two, helps us avoid legalism of imposing foreign norms and situational ethics, totally relativistic. • Rejecting our culture reduces our effectiveness to the church as an outside contact—we become a valuable resource and positions of leadership

15. 3. Compartmentalization: • In Africa think African; in US, think American • If carried too far can have negative consequences • May be accused of hypocrisy and duplicity, especially if seen by the host culture • Does not deal with inner tensions when switching worlds, example: private ownership verses shared ownership

16. 4. Integration • Need well-developed Meta Culture Framework to enable accepting what is good and critique what is false and evil in both cultures • Provides a clear understanding of who we are as Bi-Cultural people • As Christians this Meta Culture must be rooted in Scriptural beliefs, affections and norms.

17. LEVELS OF IDENTIFICATION • Christ’s model for ministry: fully God yet fully man (Phil 2:5-8) without compromising either. • Lifestyle—language, dress, food, courtesy, live according to their time • Difficult to adjust to their mode of transportation and housing • Cars can identify you with government, rich or “foreigners” • Don’t measure success by number of messages preached or meetings attended • Housing is a problem—every norm is different, loss of privacy is common, homes are open to friends and relatives who drop by unannounced and servants all the time. • Dealing with children—play with neighbors? Go to schools? Date? Marry? Note: our children will never be fully a part of our original culture

18. 2. Arrive at a Meta Cultural Framework • Our cultural values are not absolute • We avoid premature judgments and seek to understand and appreciate their culture, thus minimizing in controlling it • When we become Bi-Cultural, we more appreciate other cultures and more critical of our own.

19. 3. Evaluate in the 3-Dimensions • Cognitive level—Different perceptions of reality including diverse ideas on hunting, farming, food preparation, house building, procreation, and disease • Must understand beliefs to understand behavior • Affective Level—Much is a matter of “taste” • Cultures that prefer peace and compassion may be more open than those based on hatred and revenge • Evaluative Level—many norms are “good” • Loving children, caring for elderly, family relations, etc. • Some norms are in conflict with Bible

20. LIVING IN TWO WORLDS • How do Bi-cultural people reconcile both ways of thinking? • Rejection of Host Culture • Host rejection • Brand it as “primitive”—they feel rejected, not to be taken seriously • Create an island of secure “home” culture in a compound –they see us as foreigners • Both isolate us from the culture • Rejection of Personal Culture and “go native”? • Motives for rejecting our culture may be wrong and communicate wrong values in nationals, become cultural misfits. • No matter how hard we try we cannot fully “go native”—we have cultural baggage with us always—suppression will lead to illness, anger, hatred and mental explosions • Accept that we will always be foreigners

21. 2. Roles • Need to work with or under national leaders • They will place us above them creating divisions that divide • Where church exists missionaries should assume a submissive coaching role • Problems: nationals may see no need for evangelism or church planting • Best to work within existing structure to bring about change

22. 3. Attitudes • Identification does not occur because we live like host people • If we maintain a sense of distance and superiority they will sense it. • Should treat them with dignity and respect

23. 3. Attitudes Conti.- • If we live in foreign house, eat foreign food, but really love them, they will know the sincerity • Love does not condescend • Love does not “distain” as inferior or uncivilized • Love sees everyone as people with whom to bond 1 Cor 13:3