What Matters Most?
As we live out Christ’s presence in the world, we need to remember what Jesus considered to be the most important commandment: “Love God, love others.” Everything else rises and falls on this.
This was Jesus’s reply when the teacher of the law asked him, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” (Matt. 22:36). Jesus’s response wasn’t random. He quoted something he had been reciting since his childhood—a portion of the Shema from the Old Testament. Shema means “to listen” or “to hear.” To a Jew, the Shema was as familiar as the song “Jesus Loves Me” is to many of us today. The Shema was one of those phrases children recited when they were young, and they never forgot it.
Jesus’s reference to the Shema helps us live out our mission—whether in our everyday lives at home or during a two-week mission trip. He brings us back to what God’s people were called to do throughout the Old Testament. For several centuries, day after day, year after year, the people of God recited the Shema as a continual reminder of what mattered most as they lived out their mission. The Shema was to be embraced in their hearts, impressed upon their children, and declared to all who encountered them both in word and in deed (Deut. 6).
This daily practice of reciting the Shema continued during Jesus’s day. He grew up reciting it with Mary and Joseph at home and in the nearby synagogues. The followers of God declared it every day during Jesus’s childhood as a way to acknowledge their allegiance to God alone. To recite the Shema was to wholeheartedly accept the kingdom of God in their lives.
Paul also declared the centrality of the Shema to living out the mission of God. Paul frequently referenced the priorities of loving God and loving others as he ministered for several decades after Jesus ascended to heaven. All his letters include both emphases.
The purpose of enhancing our cultural intelligence is to become better at loving God and loving others. As we persevere through the challenges that come with interacting cross-culturally, we demonstrate a love that reflects God’s glory. As we understand the people God has made in cultures all over the world, we’re drawn to worship. As we behave in ways that set others at ease and respect their differences, we give people glimpses of Jesus. That’s why CQ is so vital. It’s not about simply being more successful at cross-cultural work; it’s a way to move us forward in expressing God’s love to people everywhere.
As soon as we lose sight of the Shema, we risk doing short-term missions for ourselves rather than for the sake of those we’re serving—or God. Self-serving missions can be described as “Christian ‘parachuting,’ a decontextualized ‘dropping in’ to a needy situation just long enough to distribute beneficial goods that sometimes places unwanted stress on a beleaguered community.”[122] These kinds of so-called mission trips are more like sightseeing than genuine service and ministry to a group of people. We cannot truly serve those we do not know and love. However, as we enter into deep relationships with those we serve, we, in a small way like Jesus, take on others’ burdens as our own and begin to truly lay down our lives so that those we serve may encounter the life of Jesus.[123]
Love for people and love for God have to drive our short-term missions work. That happens only as short-term missions experiences become part of a lifelong journey of seeking to love people cross-culturally, whenever and wherever we encounter them.
We’ve covered a lot of ground in our journey together. My hope is that you won’t be discouraged from engaging in cross-cultural settings because of the many pitfalls exposed. Instead, continue to pursue cross-cultural opportunities to live out God’s mission and do so with your eyes wide open. I want to conclude by reviewing several things to consider as we serve with eyes wide open.
Ten Starting Points for Doing Short-Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence
1. Realize That God’s a Lot Bigger than Your Short-Term Missions Trip
God’s sovereignty above and beyond our mission trips should be a word of encouragement to some and a word of caution to others. Our North American sense of urgency can cause us to think God’s work around the world is entirely dependent on our short-term missions projects. God graciously allows us to be a part of extending divine redemption around the world. But countless others are part of that as well. When we’re discouraged, may we be reminded that God has had thousands of years of turning our most feeble attempts at missions into beautiful reflections of God’s glory. When we’re tempted to overstate our role, may we be reminded that only God can turn a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. Only God can use a group of twenty people holding Romanian babies to be a part of what gives those babies a real-life experience of Jesus. In the words of Jonathan Edwards, at the end of the day, “God’s work of power and grace will not be thwarted by our great many errors and sin.”[124]
2. Stop Petting the Poor
Whenever possible, find a way to connect your short-term projects to long-term, interdependent relationships. Dropping into a food shelter once a year at Thanksgiving or making random mission trips that get us more stamps in our passports don’t keep the Shema at the forefront of missions. To love people is to get involved in their lives. That’s messy and complicated. Let’s persevere through the hard work of hanging in there with the same group of people rather than blowing in and out of a lot of different places. When you go, sit down with people and hear their stories. Share your story—not just the shiny, testimony-material parts of your story but also the parts that reveal your weaknesses.
The North American church has things to share. The majority world church has things to share. The North American church has needs. The majority world church has needs. Let’s move beyond demeaning relationships that put us in positions of power and move toward interdependent, loving relationships in which we meet one another’s needs.
Here’s what some African church leaders said when asked what they wanted most to say to North American churches: “Please raise our dignity before the Christians and citizens of North America. We are not naive, backward, and ignorant black people. Instead, we are your brothers and sisters in the family of God who are seeking to be faithful to his calling on our lives.”
Initiatives such as the one led by Chip Huber at Wheaton Academy give us a positive example of short-term missions done with a heart to benefit both the goers and the receivers. Huber describes the long-term relationships Wheaton Academy high school students have been developing with some of the Zamtran people in Zambia. It’s a great picture of affluent, Chicago suburbanites engaging in missions with passionate, prayer-dependent Zambians. The Chicago students sacrificed time and money to raise more than $225,000 to battle AIDS among the Zamtran people; Zamtran believers sacrificed time and money to host the American students and taught them what it means to pray sacrificially. The Zamtrans blessed the Americans, and the Americans blessed the Zamtrans. Together they discerned before God what it looked like to be a blessing among the nations, particularly among AIDS victims and their families.[125] Long-term commitments to do missions interdependently and cross-culturally are extending the reign of God.
3. Be Yourself
The tension we’ve considered throughout this journey is to understand cross-cultural differences enough to adapt and act appropriately without trying to be someone we aren’t. Serving with eyes wide open means seeing yourself and others in a new light and making appropriate changes to who you are and how you relate. But it’s not about trying to be like whomever you’re with. Sometimes North Americans react to the criticisms of majority world pastors by bashing all that’s North American. It can be tempting to deprecate everything Western as a way to gain credibility with non-Westerners, but that’s inauthentic and an overreaction. There are some wonderful things about being Westerners and North Americans, and while we have plenty to redeem in our culture, the point is not to run from the culture of which we’re a part.
4. Try, Try Again
Don’t be so discouraged by the critiques in this book that you don’t get involved
at all. Persevere through the conflicting perspectives you observe by using CQ Drive. I’ve been in cross-cultural settings where I apologized for my North American perspective so much while teaching that it became laborious for my students. I understated the value I could bring by saying I was merely there to facilitate discussion, to which my host privately countered, “We did not bring you all the way here just to facilitate our discussion. Teach!” We need to keep our awareness on high alert as we seek to gather and interpret cues and acknowledge our limitations given our cultural programming. Then we need to teach with conviction and passion. Don’t allow the challenges of cross-cultural differences to make you so overly tentative and apologetic that you come off as timid and uncertain.
Without question, my hardest weeks of work are those I spend in a new place trying to navigate a new set of cultural values and assumptions. Cross-cultural work is not for the weary. The excitement of new sights and sounds wears off pretty quickly. But as we persevere through the inevitable conflict and dissonance, we will reap the rewards of seeing ourselves, others, and God in renewed ways.
5. Seek to Understand
Prepare for your short-term trip by enhancing your CQ Knowledge. Spend time learning about the cultural differences you’ll encounter in the specific place you’re going. If possible, talk with others who have been where you’re going and, best of all, interact with people from the culture itself. Use your short-term trip to improve your overall understanding of cross-cultural differences. Allow your growing understanding to give you an enhanced perspective on what occurs in cross-cultural situations without having a Sarah-like, know-it-all approach.
6. On Second Thought—Think Again!
Question your assumptions. Question your assumptions. Question your assumptions. If this book has done nothing else, I hope it’s helped you rethink your assumptions about short-term work. CQ Strategy sounds technical, but it’s simply slowing down our activity long enough so we can look at what’s going on below the surface. Work on this during your next short-term trip. Practice it when you encounter someone from another culture in the next week or so. When you’re inclined to make an assumption about that person or you hear someone else do so, stop and consider whether it’s an accurate assumption. Don’t be too quick to jump to conclusions. Turn off the mental cruise control.
Question your assumptions about why you’re doing a mission trip in the first place (motivation). Question your assumptions about what’s urgent and what isn’t (urgency). Question your assumptions about how much the people you’re going to encounter are like you (common ground). Question your assumptions about what’s biblical (the Bible). Question your assumptions about how happy people are who make two dollars a day (money). Last but not least, question your assumptions when you begin to jump to either/or categories (simplicity). We’ll make a lot of strides in embodying an accurate picture of Jesus when we step back and question our assumptions.
7. Realize That Actions Speak Louder than Words
Eventually, we must move beyond conceptualizing cross-cultural work and go for it through CQ Action. Mistakes are inevitable. Use your actions as a way to assess whether you’re spending enough time in the other three dimensions of CQ, since those three are the best ways to enhance CQ Action. Few things will help you grow in those areas like actually encountering people and lifestyles in a different setting. I teach intercultural courses in many different settings, but I’m well aware that classroom content can only do so much to enhance cultural intelligence. There’s no substitute for being immersed in actual cross-cultural situations.
If you’re part of a group on a short-term trip, allow regular time throughout the experience to process what’s occurring by way of intercultural behavior. Find someone from the culture, preferably your host, to be a “cultural interpreter” for you. Don’t just spend all your time with your fellow teammates or with Western missionaries. Finally, don’t miss out on the value of the lessons that can be learned after returning home. Commit to investing in something more than a picture-sharing party. Find ongoing ways to process the lessons learned as a way to enhance your CQ Action in future interactions cross-culturally. Read this book again after you come home. See how your perspective has changed since the first time you read it.
8. Give Up Trying to See Who’s In and Who’s Out
Sharing Christ with people is a core part of most short-term missions projects—whether through verbal presentations of the gospel or projects that tangibly embody elements of the gospel, such as medical clinics or relief work. While taking our Christian calling seriously, we need to be freed from trying to figure out who’s “in” as a member of the people of God and who’s “out.” I’m not suggesting we go easy on calling people to follow Jesus. Every one of our encounters, every day, should include a call to our fellow human beings to follow Christ—whether the call comes implicitly or explicitly.
I often talk with short-termers who are confused about which religious groups they should consider close enough to our faith that they can assume people in that movement are genuine believers. Or they want a list of the groups whose followers are “out.” I’m really not interested in going there, because it’s far too risky for me to think I can ever know God’s final judgment on another person, particularly if I determine that solely in light of their religious affiliation. In the words of missiologist Leslie Newbigin, “I do not claim to know in advance [a person’s] ultimate destiny. I meet the person simply as a witness, as one who has been laid hold of by [Christ] and placed in a position where I can only point to Jesus as the one who can make sense of the whole human situation that [we share] as human beings.”[126] I’m to love God and love others and leave up to God what only God can do: rescue souls.
9. Incorporate Short-Term Missions as Part of Your Everyday Life
Serving with eyes wide open means not only asking the deeper, reflective questions evoked by CQ Strategy but also placing them within the full scope of our lives as yet another way of living out our Christian calling. We best not reduce the priesthood of believers or our obedience to the Great Commission just to short-term missions. If we do, most of us get to engage in missions only a couple weeks a year at best, maybe only once in a lifetime, and for people like my parents, never! Short-term missions can be part of the Great Commission and of living out our priestly role—part of it!
Don’t go running overseas to do something you aren’t already doing in your own neighborhood. If you want to fight for justice in the brothels of Cambodia, start by being an agent of justice in your home and at work. If you want to share Jesus with children in a Romanian orphanage, don’t neglect the children playing at the park around the corner from your house. If you have a heart to use your business skills to help people in Uzbekistan create wealth, think about how your business practices in your suburban office have global implications.
I could go on and on. My book What Can I Do: Making a Global Difference Right Where You Are is specifically devoted to this topic. Teachers can introduce students to global issues from their suburban classrooms, computer wizards can develop software that serves people in places around the world, and musicians can compose pieces that reflect God’s glory—all of these are part of living out our Christian calling in an increasingly multicultural world. Short-term missions is just another opportunity for us to live out what we need to be living 24/7 wherever we are.
As we’ve seen many times throughout the last few chapters, CQ is not something we master before our next mission trip. It’s a lifelong journey of wrestling with what it means to use our finances, our gifts, our connections, and our time to extend God’s reign among all the nations. As we grow in our CQ, our short-term missions trips will be a more effective part of God’s work in the world and will help us live out God’s mission—whether we’re in a cubicle in Midwest America or swinging a hammer in Namibia.[127]
10. Love God, Love Others
More than anything else, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 22:37–39).
When you get up and when you go to sleep, love God, love others. When you travel on vacation and when you travel as part of a mission team, love God, love others. When you encounter an immigrant and when you overhear a foreign language, love God, love others. The essence of serving with eyes wide open is gaining cultural intelligence so we can more effectively reflect God to people who are culturally different from us.
A Checklist for Serving with Eyes Wide Open
Since the first edition of this book was released, a great deal of my research has moved toward asking, What does effective short-term missions look like? After taking a good, hard look at the criticisms, I’m far more interested in examining what we should do rather than what we’re doing poorly. The following checklist stems from some of the most recent research on effective short-term missions and cross-cultural engagement. Most points apply specifically to leaders and organizers of short-term teams, but even those going on individual trips can benefit from many of them.
Designing the Trip
Before You Go
Define the objective. Be clear on what you’re trying to accomplish. Do this together with your partners on the receiving end. Ask what’s needed and then ask again and again and again. You may need another organization to help you discern what’s most needed in a local community or ministry. Be clear about what it is you’re trying to accomplish for everyone involved.
Commit to life change for everyone who participates (senders, goers, receivers).
Plan the trip in light of the objective.
Make sure your trip is part of a long-term plan for everyone involved (goers and receivers).
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