Archive - Culture Shock RSS Feed

Missionary shock!

June 16, 2011 in Cultural Adaptation, Culture, Culture Shock, Ministry Tools, Training Leaders with 0 Comments

One night, I was invited over to the home of a missionary that worked in the area where the national pastor I mentioned in the previous post lived. This missionary had a very bad reputation among the nationals. (his bad reputation had to do with how he treated the nationals) This missionary had a reputation that he didn’t want to preach, and he’d come down there as a mechanic but yet he’d like to take pictures of their churches.

And I am in his home and he told me that he didn’t understand how I can fellowship with this guy and how I can preach in his church after what he had done. And as we talked, I asked him to tell me stories maybe where this national might have been offended. I was told a story of him going down to work at a camp on the beach, and when they got down to work at this camp on the beach, the pastor of the largest church in the area and although it ran about 200, that would have been a mega church for the time in the area. This pastor was working in the camp; then one day this pastor worked until 2 or 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

He just told the guys, he said, “I’m going to take a dip in the ocean and I’m going home. I’m tired.” And a bunch of his men left, and this missionary began to call his hand and to fuss at him, to let him know that he didn’t agree at all with his laziness. He was setting a bad example for the men, and he was harming the work of the camp.

I said to him, “You can’t talk like that to a pastor; you don’t have any authority over that pastor, and this pastor is the pastor of the largest church in this area. If anything you needed to have said ‘whatever the pastor says, I want to get along with.”

He said, “No way, that man was hurting the work, and he needed to be reprimanded to the face.”

Then I proceeded to ask him, “Would you have done the same with the pastor of his American church?” His pastor at that time was a very well-known pastor and famous on the west coast.

He said, “Of course I would.”

Now I said, “You and I both know your pastor pastors the church of over 2,000, and you would never reprimand him to his face and in front of everybody about that sort of thing.” He persisted that he would.

There’s no wonder that missionaries get a bad reputation. Often missionaries won’t eat with the nationals. They will even buy the food for the nationals to eat.

You know, there are good missionaries that would never do any of these things. And this is not being written to talk about those. There are missionaries who have eaten the food, slept with the people, missionaries that have paid the price. The man that mentored me when I arrived in the city where I served would have eaten anything and slept anywhere and done anything they asked him to do.

But there are some missionaries that would send the nationals to eat in one place and give them basically beans and rice and go to a restaurant and eat good American food. They would give them some form of kool aid, while they drink cold Coca-Cola in another place. It begins to cause the nationals to have a major attitude problem. That’s what you call missionary shock.

Check out bcwe.org

Dealing with nationals!

June 15, 2011 in Cross-Cultural Evangelism, Cultural Adaptation, Culture, Culture Shock, Ministry Tools, Training Leaders with 0 Comments

The following will not be agreeable to many of you! I do not want to be hurtful but I do think that we need these experiences, however rare they are, to be able to avoid making some mistakes. I love missionaries. I believe in missionaries. I love nationals and I believe in them too! I know that there are two sides to every story and this is just one side but maybe we can learn from it!

When I was first planning to be a missionary and I went to my first orientation, I was in awe of all missionaries. I would have never been able to explain to you what I thought of any man who was willing to give up the comforts of an American and travel overseas. This was back in the mid-80s, and I was enthralled.

Since I was a little boy, I dreamed about being a missionary, missionaries were my heroes. We said it in our church; we said it everywhere. And it was such an exciting thing to be around missionaries and to know missionaries, but I was still very naïve. I had this idea that they were somehow super surrendered, super talented, super gifted in giving their lives to the Lord.

While we were in orientation that first week, the comment was made as we prepared for culture shock that one of the biggest shocks we would ever face will be missionary shock. They explained to us that we would soon arrive on the field and find out that missionaries were not what we thought they were. That was discouraging to me; I didn’t believe it. I was young, and I was naïve, and I’ve not been around yet. And like you, as you read this, my heart was broken, I couldn’t believe people would even think that we were talking about missionaries that way.

Then we arrived on the field; as we arrived on the field, it was not intentional that we sought it out because we didn’t. I’m not talking about little things like personal standards or convictions. I’m not talking about, many times I’m not even talking about doctrinal issues as much as I am work related, training related, ministry related issues that brought about a great deal of shock.

I was preaching at a church in one city and the pastor there was known as a “gringo” hater. Of course that was shocking to me, what did it mean that he was a “gringo” hater? So they said, word was, that he had been known “to bodily remove missionaries from his services who came and took pictures.” Again, I was pretty much in shock. The word was that missionaries would come to the churches, take pictures, go home and report that as being their work. Yet, they gave no money, attended no services, did no work in that church, but somewhere way back down the line maybe the mission board had started that church and so they wanted to claim it.

This national pastor was meeting under a tin roof on a dirt floor with very raggedy benches. He lived in a house with a dirt floor, and his life was pretty despicable, pretty hard. And so he had a very bad attitude about missionaries. So he called me and asked me to preach because word had gotten around that I liked nationals, and I wouldn’t do anything to harm him. I went in and preached for him. I preached the entire week, and I ate wherever he took me to eat, and I slept wherever he put me to sleep.

Then he called me to go preach another meeting, and when I was at that next meeting, he said to me, “Why don’t you ever bring your camera, why do you never take pictures of my church.”

And I laughed and I said, “Are you crazy? I will not have you bodily remove me. You have a reputation among all the Americans that you would bodily remove them.” And I said, “I don’t ever want that to happen to me; and so, no sir, I have no intention of ever taking pictures of your church.”

And he said, and this is shameful, but he said, “I wouldn’t mind you taking pictures because I don’t think you’d lie. I don’t think you’d claim it was our work. I’d think you said, ‘Look at this brother, see what he’s doing, and if you want to help him that would be good.’” He said, “So you can take pictures anytime you want in my church.”

Although I preached for him on numerous occasions, and actually one time when a bomb blew up a bus just across the street from his church during the days of terrorism, I never took any pictures in his church the whole time I was there.

Check out bcwe.org

Prayer letter from Peruvian missionary to North Africa

July 14, 2010 in Cross-Cultural Evangelism, Culture Shock, Ministry Philosophy, Muslim Missions, Muslim World, Persecution, Prayer letters with 0 Comments

Trips
As you know the country has a population of thirty five million inhabitants, and we, as the Light Baptist Church have a great responsibility of carrying the gospel to these people that live in darkness.

To be able to reach this goal we have established a project which we are calling Seven Cities. In this project,
we have divided the country into seven principal points, with their seven principle cities being
approximately two hours from another. For example, one can pass from one of the principal cities to the border of another in only two hours.

We actually have two places where we are working. We make a trip to another city every week to have meetings there. We have a group of brethren that meet to grow and to learn of God. From the our zone within two hours distance there is another city. We have had a group meeting there and Lord willing we will continue to do so again.

Each week the trips we make are full of surprises as we must journey from where we live in the north of our country to the south, about five hours. During these trips we have had many anecdotes to occur. I will be sharing these with you below.

Salvations
To this point in the year we have been working on evangelizing people in the street, people that come to our
meetings as well as acquaintances of those who attend our meetings. This year, God has given us the privilege
of seeing two new people come to the feet of Christ. One of them is named *** and he is from the city we live in. He had been coming to our meetings and after a long while with us hearing the message of Jesus Christ he placed his faith in Christ. They say that the average time required for an individual in a muslim country to
place their faith in Christ is five years after hearing for the first time.

The other person is a lady. This lady was very excited to place her faith in Christ. Now we only ask God that he would help us to be able to be a blessing to the new Christians.

Light Baptist Church
Our church is advancing in the work little by little in its own city; the brethren are learning to take responsibilities as new Christians. One of our church members has family a member that is being helped to Christ and is coming very close to placing his faith in Jesus Christ. Please pray for him, that God would give him a great desire to know more of God.

The church
Our new workis advancing, each week we travel and the meetings we have there are growing to the point we actually have no place to meet. We are doing so in the homes of the church members. Until now, things are going well there, but we are looking for a place to rent. Please pray that God would provide the funds to be able to rent a place and also that he would continue to provide for the trips that we are making to the other city each week. If you have the desire to help support the work in the other city it would be a great blessing. Each week that we journey it takes approximately $60 USD.

Pastor Friend
In one city friend named. He studied for a few years in Lebanon but now he is doing the work here and as you
will know, here in Lebanon it is not possible to pay the pastor, but thanks to God this brother has been faithful to his ministry and continues on, but please pray that God would provide him a way to financially sustain himself. As a missionary, I am convinced that the works of nationals is of great importance. If any of you would like to make a special offering or adopt him as your missionary, please let me know.

This pastor receives the contacts that we have in his zone and he does the follow up and visits with them. Please pray from him. In various opportunities the police have been following him to see what he is doing. Both he and his wife have been interrogated by the police on different occasions.

Training
For the past seven weeks we have had one day each week in which we have been capacitating the brethren that feel call to serve more faithfully in the work of God. Two brethren have been taking this course and another one from another city. We have been studying about the church, each week we have had different lesson that have been of great blessing to them and a great challenge for us to share these lessons in Arabic.

God has been very merciful with us to help us to learn this language, although we are still in the learning process.

In this training we have been able to touch on other topics that came out while we were teaching the lessons. Really these last seven lessons have been of great blessing. This Friday we will be finishing our series of eight week about the church and we will see what the next topic will be.

Documents
We will have to renew our visas soon. I want to ask for your prayers for all of the documents that we must
obtain. As you know, this country will not give us residence for three to five years, we are obligated to renew our visas each year. The authorities here are suspicious of all foreign missionaries that preach the gospel here, which is why they only grant annual visas. Please pray that God would grant us favor before the police so
that we can continue to work another year
.
Missionary situation.
During the last year, a country in North Africa has become obsessed with expelling the greater quantity of missionaries. The news here states that 7,000 ulemas, (Muslim legal scholars), have publically rejected Christian proselytism. In this country the king is the person they call “Guarder of the Believers”, so by having this title, he cannot permit other religions to come in and to evangelize his Muslim people.

Accompanying this event, the ministry of the interior began expelling Christians in the month of March. In 2010 so far, they have expelled one hundred thirty missionaries and workers from different organizations. The last expulsions have taken place since last week.

Please continue praying for this situation of Christian and also for all of the missionaries that are working in this place. If you would like more information about this topic, please write and I will send you the material that you would like about the expulsions.

While we witness
Last week while we went out into the street to evangelize one by one I found a young man that was reading a Muslim book. It was the book that the “Prophet” Mohamed. I thought my friend was going to speak with him, but he didn’t so I stayed there and sat down to witness to him. While we were talking I realized that he was searching for the truth. It was on Friday, so he had been to pray and was seated to read a little more of Islam
and of Mohamed’s orders.

I asked him if he had read the gospel and he told me that he never had. So he began conversing with me and after about twenty minutes of talking about Jesus, the death of Jesus, (Muslims believe that Jesus never died but that he ascended into Heaven before dying), I had to leave him. I left him with a New Testament and marked the story of Cornelius, (Acts 10), as this history is like the life of many Muslim people who with their
hearts are trying to seek God.

While we journeyed this week I had the opportunity to sit with a person that was very young. After a few moments seated in a very hot bus without air conditioning we were both sweating in an uncontrollable manner. After a while he took out a piece of bread and began to eat, and as a part of his culture he offered me some. After this the Spirit of God began to work on my heart to witness to him about Christ. This young person turned about to another man behind us and said ‘this foreigner thinks the Gospel has not changed’. The person behind us told him that indeed it had not and the young man was very surprised and began stating the Gospel was lies and they two began to talk for about two hours. The young man seated behind us was actually one of the men being trained with us who was traveling with me that day. At the end of it all, several people were upset with us because we are Christians but at least we were able to share the Gospel with these people.

The police
In these last few weeks the police have called my friends to be interviewed. They have been threatened by the police. At this moment in this country the Christian nationals are interrogated continually. They never know when the police will call them and cause them to give account of their faith in Christ. I thank God that my friends have not denied their faith. They have witnessed to the police, sharing their personal decision to follow Christ without receiving any gain. Many people believe that Muslims only convert to Christianity for money, trips or the like.

The people think that others only become Christians to receive money. They are incredibly mistaken. I know many Christians personally who for the love of God and His Savior have converted to Christianity.

Check out bcwe.org

Page 2 of 2«12