The following post is an article I wrote for our Church’s Monthly Newsletter. It was inspired by my trip to Bolivia and thought you may find it interesting…

Cultural Differences
One of the many things my mission’s trip to Bolivia has caused me to reflect upon is the reality and influences of culture in our lives, specifically in Christianity. Although I knew cultural differences would exist, I didn’t realize that they would exist in such stark contrast. For example, there are obvious differences between what South Americans consider personal space issues verses what we consider personal space. There are also striking differences in what “on time” means as we have a very scheduled culture and expectations, where South American culture is very laid back and things start when enough people arrive. There is also the difference of our very individualistic culture while their culture is more based on community. There are also differences in how we as North America consider and find “stuff” important compared to those who live in the third world, where they are more focused on community rather than commodity.

Although I never directly experienced this, I was also told that in Bolivia, and probably for many South American cultures, it is culturally unacceptable to deny a request. For example, if you are invited to attend a birthday party, it is an insult to deny someone’s invitation. Instead, it is more polite to say you will be there (even if you won’t) rather than to offend the other person by saying you have a previous commitment. South America is also a very different culture in that people are very willing to do what you ask of them. One of the things my friend Ken told me was that if I were to have an alter call and have people physically respond by coming forward after a church service, almost everyone would. They would do it whether or not they agreed with what you were teaching or not. Even if they disagree with you, it is just polite to do what is asked.

Those are just some of the examples of cultural differences between North and South American cultures. These differences have prompted me to reflect upon a number of issues related to culture and Christianity. Christianity, at its core, is not a Western belief system, but an ongoing life-transforming relationship with God that supersedes culture, language, time, nations, genders, etc. Although our cultural expression of Christianity may be “western,” Christianity is not. This is the entanglement that has demanded my attention lately, the determination and distinction between the core message of Jesus and the North American, western, twenty-first century expression of Christianity.

Christianity Beyond Culture And The Compulsion It Creates
I think that if we truly believe that the Good News of Jesus is essential and applicable in every time, culture, language, nation and genre, then it would make a fundamental and radical difference to us. Thus as we, and those on our behalf (Missionaries), bring the message of Jesus to others, we first and foremost bring a message of life – an invitation to be a part of the Kingdom of God. We bring a message that it as applicable and desperately needed to any culture around our globe at any time in history.

But we also need to understand and realize that each culture needs to express their love for God differently and for us to convert them to “western” culture is not what we are called to do and I would strongly argue that it is also both counter-productive and wrong. Instead, we need to understand that each culture needs to express their love for God within their own language and culture.

This is dramatically presented in the scene from the movie “The Mission,” where we see the main character, played by Robert De Niro, hauling a massive organ up a mountain under the false pretense that the people of that culture couldn’t worship God without it. In essence, he confused a cultural expression with the core and essential message of Jesus.

Moving One Culture Closer
You may be reading this and saying that you agree with me and missionaries need to do this all the time but I would like to challenge your thinking one step further. Although we may find it easy to say that Missionaries need to do this and should do this in their ministries, I also believe that there is a need for us to constantly be rethinking this in our own ministry context in North America. When you look at your life, as well as the ministry of Devon Alliance Church, what are the cultural expressions that you, or we, have established as essential to the Gospel message of Jesus?

Knowing Culture… Explaining God
Which leads me to this… in order to know how to communicate God’s truth and love in any culture, Missions 101, we have to know the culture in which we are sharing God’s love and the message of salvation with. I think we would all agree that the colonial way of doing missions was both unwise and wrong. The colonial missions philosophy transported culture and cultural expression of Christianity and radically confused it with the core message of Jesus. Instead, we need to learn a culture and understand it so we can explain and share the message of Jesus with the people in it – the timeless, language-less, genderless and cultureless message of Jesus. But to do this we MUST know and live in the culture. We can’t explain or interpret something to those we don’t know or understand.

It would be like the Americans I heard about in Bolivia who arrived on a mission’s trip to the boy’s home and were under the false presumption that if they talked loader and slower the boys would understand them. That somehow English spoken slow and loud equated Spanish. The same goes with Christianity. We have to know and understand the culture to which we are sharing it with – to do it any other way would be meaningless.

This is the example we see in Scripture with Paul at Mars Hill in Acts 17. Here Paul uses culture and the local philosophy/religion to share that the unknown God they were worshipping is the God who sent his son Jesus; the same Jesus who lived and died for them so that they could have and live the abundant and eternal life in Him. We need to learn from Paul in how we view missions and evangelism. In order to know the culture we have to live in it. The Bible says to be in the world but not of it (John 17:15-16). We have too often focused on the second half of that phrase and forget that we need to live in the world, culture and society to interact and share the life-transforming message of Jesus with those in it.

In Bolivia there are some examples of those who I would argue have gone to the extreme of not being a part of the world. There are several Mennonite colonies in Bolivia that only speak German and live very separated lives from the society at large. It is quite bizarre to walk down the street in South America and see a traditional Mennonite family from an isolated colony, as you would see in Canada, walking down the street. The problem with this philosophy, whether lived exuberantly or subtly, is that God’s message stays within rather than moves out. Think of the phrase “abundant life” (John 10:10). This phrase implies that there is so much life, it is overflowing and must be shared. I would even argue that it can’t, by definition, be horded or protected… it must, by its very existence, be shared and given away.

The Message of Jesus and Us
We need to consider how we view the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus. Have we relegated it to our cultural expressions and substituted those insufficient expressions for the life changing/transforming message of Jesus. If we truly believe this, I contest that our voices and our passion for the lost would grow and our heart for missions would explode. And consequently, our desire for the Kingdom of God (the dream of God) would begin to germinate in our lives and in the world.