Missions, Art and the Gospel... bridging the cultural divide

Culture: the beliefs,values, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time.

That word culture is such a loaded term, especially when we get into the church related world.  Culture, and the understanding of it to many, is simply a waste of time.  Our job, as Christians, as many define it, is to convince people of the truth of Jesus and save them from Hell.  

Leaving behind the theological ramifications of that, let’s focus on the practical.

Years ago I led a team of college and young adult people on a two week short-term mission in and around Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.  Guadalajara is literally the birthplace of what a majority of Americans know about Mexican culture.  Charro, Mariachis, Mexican pride and machismo all run deep in this region.  Arts and crafts from Guadalajara show up all over the world and who isn’t familiar with the “Jarabe Tapatio” popularly known as the Mexican Hat Dance.

But there is another sub culture if you will, that is also strong in Guadalajara, that of Catholicism.  Nowhere else in the country, including Mexico City will you experience the influence of the Catholic church like you will here.

On one of our free days with that team of young adults, we took them to the historic cathedral in the center of town and later to the Instituto Cultural Cabañas to see the great murals of Orozco. 

What I heard from the group that day might surprise you.  I was asked why we were spending time in a Catholic church when we could be outside preaching to people so they would know Christ.  After touring the museum, a couple of people asked me why, as a missionary, I was taking people to see secular stuff like art when we were there to be missionaries.  

Grady Martine, co-founder of Adventures in Life Ministry and I made an important and valuable decision that day after hearing those criticisms and reflecting.  We would always try to make sure people on mission with us returned home with a stronger understanding of the culture of Mexico.  

We needed to enter into the local culture, learn it, understand it and live it so as to give our voices credibility.  Unknowingly, we were adopting a Hudson Taylor missiology.  

We believed then, and we still do, that to serve people effectively, you need to understand their culture.  For us, confronting culture, as many missionaries did then, and still do, was not an option.

If one of our goals for people returning home after a short-term mission with us was a better understanding of Mexico, her people, the issues facing that great country and her values, we had to work hard with our participants to give them cultural learning opportunities.

It was as if we decided almost 20 years ago to embrace Cultural Intelligence [CQ] that David Livermore has popularized recently.  He defines CQ like this... Cultural intelligence is the ability to be effective across various cultural contexts—including national, ethnic, organizational, generational, ideological, and much more.

These are the reasons AIL Ministry celebrates and highlights the cultures of Mexico.  If you visit our Facebook page, you are just as likely to see in our opeing banner a picture of the Guelaguetza or an alebrije from Jacobo and Maria Angeles [carved, painted wood sculpture] as you are a group of people praying.  You might see a picture of the ancient Zapotec Empire at Monté Alban or some of those colorful Oaxacan rugs from Teotitlán del Valle.

The Apostle Paul, in his famous address on Mars Hill spoke to the philosophers of that area, the Stoics and the Epicureans.  He was able to hold his own in that particular marketplace of ideas because he understood their culture.  He was a student of culture.

Shouldn’t we be also?  Would not our mission, be it here in the United States, or somewhere else around the globe, be better for it?

You tell me...

[To learn more about the culture, art and life in Mexico, visit Dave's personal blog.  All of the pictures used here are from davemiller.mx 

Adventures in Life Ministry... celebrating 20 years of short-term mission in Mexico...

Tomorrow on October 7^th, Adventures in Life Ministry, a ministry I Co-founded with Grady Martine, will celebrate 20 years of mission in Mexico.

As I reflect, like many organizational founders, I wonder what our legacy will be.  I wonder how we will be remembered.  I wonder whether we will be remembered for our failures, or whether our successes will carry the day. 

In those early days, we had no idea what we were doing.  We were the poster children of bad short-term mission.  We were pretty sure we knew it all, even though neither of us could speak Spanish, generally pretty important in Mexico.

It was a good thing we had a loyal servant like Paul Lathrop alongside us in mission.  Because Paul, with his ability to speak Spanish and his knowledge of the culture of Mexico was a God send.  Paul was the guy who taught us how to order food, ask for the bathroom, and say con permiso and Dios le Bendiga, two central phrases for a Christian in Mexico.

It was Paul who was dispatched to literally be our eyes and ears, our window, into the culture of Mexico and her people.  In those days, short-term mission was just beginning to understand and talk about the importance of cultural intelligence.  Paul helped us start to be good at that even before it was seen as vital.

Paul was also the guy who had to make things good with locals when Grady and I, in our headstrong American way, overstepped the line, or just plain screwed up. 

One week, very early on in our ministry, we were working in a village called Santa Rosa, halfway between Tijuana and Ensenada, on the free road.  We were on our last day and the group with whom we were working wanted to have a campfire with marshmallows and hot dogs for the kids.

The First Church We Built In Mexico... Santa Rosa, Baja California
That's Paul on the far right

We gathered up a bunch of wood, built a huge fire, and the children of the village and our group had a great night together.  The next morning as we were cleaning up after the group had left, Grady and I noticed the father of Miguel, one of those kids, looking around in the tall grass for something.  

Naturally we sent Paul over to see if he could help.  A few minutes later Paul returned asking if we knew what happened to the big piece of wood that was laying in the grass over where Miguel’s father was standing.

As Grady and I looked at each other, we both knew the answer was in the ashes of the campfire.  We asked Paul why this piece was important and he said the hermano was waiting for a day off and was going to make a bed for his kids with the piece of wood that we had burned!

Thank God we had someone like Paul with us.  Someone who could explain that even when our ideas were wrong, our hearts were right.  Someone who helped us build the relationships necessary for 20 years of ministry.

When we needed to talk with pastors in those early days, Paul was there.  When our first ministry trip to Guadalajara was on the brink of collapse, Paul got on the telephone for two weeks to Mexico and pulled it together.  As our ministry grew to serve in Oaxaca, it was Paul who opened the doors and helped make that possible.

And it was Paul who taught us the value of relationship in ministry.  20 years after our founding, that is still a guiding principle of Adventures in Life Ministry.

Last night I was with a team that had served with us earlier this year and the team was going to be holding a yard sale soon.  To raise money to send to one of our ministry partners in Mexico.  Actually, to send money to one of their ministry partners in Mexico, because they went not to do something, but to build a relationship.

This weekend as Adventures in Life celebrates our anniversary, here is what our legacy looks like in Mexico… 17 churches built, 3 parsonages built, 2 Sunday school facilities built, kids and youth camps each year in Ensenada and Oaxaca, regular medical clinics held, a growing agricultural ministry, a local sewing ministry and much more.

But perhaps most important, are the thousands of interconnected relationships built on a foundation of Jesus Christ, not only in Mexico, but here in the United States also.  Just like those of that church that will soon be holding a yard sale to help their new friends in Mexico.

Thank you Grady for your help in founding Adventures in Life Ministry.

Thank you Paul for helping us see the value of relationship in short-term mission. 

Thank you God for 20 years of blessings in Mexico… may we have another 20 more. 

Culture & Mission... Putting culture back in cross-cultural missions...

I was in the 450 year old Cathedral of Guadalajara a number of years ago when one of the people on a short-term mission I was leading asked me a question.

Looking at the hand carved confessionals and artwork that had been there hundreds of years, he wanted to know why we were wasting our time looking at that stuff when we could be outside “saving souls.”

I have thought a lot about that statement in my work in Mexico with Adventures in Life Ministry.

Most Christians would agree that the reason for mission is to help people know Jesus. 

However, few seem to agree that even a rudimentary understanding of the local culture is an important part of a successful mission.

There is a sense that time spent learning about the culture, history, and beliefs of the people you are serving is time wasted, because it takes away from the whatever is the central task of your mission.  

Whether it is outreach, construction, or even medical work, many short-term missionaries, out of great motives, are reluctant to spend part of their in country time to experience the life of those they are serving.

With a majority of short-term mission pre-field training focusng on logistics, health, food and bathroom issues, people leaving our shores to serve are getting on planes woefully unprepared to really understand the complexity of life abroad.  

Even taking the approach suggested by long time missionary to Honduras, Kurt Ver Beek, of using the first day or two after a team arrives to orient and expose them to the culture becomes a challenge to US based teams dreaming of high production and instant results from their mission work.  They want to get started on the “real” work.

This attitude of choosing to ignore the culture where we serve in favor of “the more important” work is one of the major shortcomings of short-term mission.  With limited time, participants want to be as productive as possible, but at what expense?

My Co-founder of Adventures in Life Ministry, Grady Martine was a long time worker with Young Life.  He always spoke of “earning the right to be heard.”  This was the idea that when you invest personally with people where they live, he would say you earn the right to have that important Gospel conversation.

It is too bad that for much of short-term mission, we see that value as only being useful in the United States, choosing to ignore its important ramifications when we leave our shores.

Successful cross-cultural mission, with long term lasting transformation only happens, when we truly understand the people whom we are called to serve.   Because as we get to know the people and their heart culture, we gain the respect and cultural insight necessary to take part in God’s work of “saving souls.”  

The Apostle Paul inherently understood this.  The only way he could become all things to all people was to understand who they were and what they were about.  And he did it all for the sake of the Gospel. 

For us, it is a lesson we must learn and practice if we are to truly realize the promise of cross cultural mission, both long and short-term.

“Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became a Jew to win the Jews.  To those under the law, I became like one under the law.... I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means, I might save some...” 

1 Corinthians 9:19-23