Crossing Cultures: Husbands, Dads, and Family Management

I’ve observed two extreme lifestyles among cross-cultural workers that can greatly disrupt family life, diminish effectiveness of the family in the work, and sometimes even send them back to their home country before their first term has come to an end.

The bulk of responsibility for a well managed home belongs to us husbands and dads. But, if we can avoid the following extremes and do some good prep work, our job can be a lot easier.

Living in a Bubble

Some families who come to do cross-cultural work never seem to adjust to their host culture, the people to whom they were called.

One spouse may have little or no experience with a second culture. Sometimes, a spouse is leaving his/her home culture for the first time. I’ve observed wives, especially, who go overseas because they feel strongly about being supportive of their husbands, but who sense no clear calling for themselves to be with and minister to people of a different culture.

As parents, they are often over-protective of their children, and transfer what can be a suspicious, almost paranoid attitude about the local people to their kids, whether intentional or not.

After 6 months to one year, when the newness of living in a new country wears off, the inevitable culture stress, experienced by all cross-cultural workers, hits this family much harder than usual.

If this family doesn’t get help quickly and make the needed adjustments, they usually sink further into their insulated cocoon, spending less time in language/culture acquisition, and more time in their own cultural “bubble”. They watch more movies, seem to get sick more often, spend more time on the internet, struggle more in their relationships with team members and locals, feel more isolated, and eventually leave the field earlier than they planned.

Going Native

The other extreme almost always includes a husband/father with a very clear, strong calling to serve cross-culturally. He usually has had previous experience serving overseas. He is the primary minister in the family. He travels a lot, and seems very productive. This man rightly wants an incarnational ministry with the local people, but in his efforts to identify himself as “one of them,” his relationships with his wife and children are neglected. He sees little of his children and thinks that his wife is doing just fine, while she’s actually withering away in isolation.

They also leave their field of service much earlier than originally planned. The reason stated for leaving, which is very often health-related, is usually secondary to an underlying dis-connect between the husband and wife.

So, what do you do if you feel called to missions, especially if you have a family? How can you be prepared for the long haul, and connect with your host culture, while thriving together as a family on the field?

Share the vision

Thriving cross-culturally together begins long before you set foot off the plane in your new country. If one spouse does not sense a clear calling to go, then it may be a matter of waiting for God’s timing. If you are having significant issues with a child, especially a pre-teen or teenager, and they’re very discouraged at the thought of leaving their home culture, this needs to be seriously considered, as well.

Last month, the 250^th anniversary of the birth of William Carey was celebrated. He’s been called the “Father of Modern Missions”. By the time Carey died in 1834, there were around thirty missionaries, forty teachers, forty-five mission stations, and about 6oo church members all connected to the mission he had founded. For thirty years, he was professor of Bengali, Sanskrit, and Marathi at William College in Calcutta. Carey and his team translated Scripture portions into more than forty languages.

[http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b3careyw.htm]

But there’s another side to the William Carey story. Dorothy Carey, William’s first wife, never shared his vision of cross-cultural missions. She probably would never have left England if a family friend had not first told her that she would likely never see her husband again if she didn’t go. While Carey busied himself with missions work, his wife struggled daily with raising their children in an extremely difficult environment, chronic sickness, mosquitos, frequent moves, and poverty. The family also suffered the death of their five-year old son.

[http://lexloiz.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/dorothy-carey-and-the-cost-of-mission/]

Over time, she lost touch with reality, often screaming in the room next door while William did his translation work. After over a decade of suffering this way, she died on the field of a fever. [http://www.frontline.org.za/articles/whatdifference_onemake.htm]

There is no shame in waiting if you sense that your call is a question of timing. Or, perhaps, one or more family members will never be willing to go away from their home culture.

If the latter is the case, don’t be discouraged. Don’t lose hope of ever making an impact on the unreached people groups of the world.

A friend of mine recently posted that in one zip code in New York City (Flushing, Queens) there are approximately 130 nations represented. Opportunities to make an impact on the world abound, often in our own neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools. See if perhaps God may be calling you together to a ministry such as this.

Check your attitudes

Are you or another family member fearful of those of a different culture from your own? Take advantage of opportunities you have in your own culture to engage people who are culturally different from you. If you have a prejudiced heart in your home culture, then you can only expect failure in your relationships with your neighbors overseas.

I spent my first two years living overseas as a single, in an Asian country, experiencing for the first time the good, the bad and the ugly of cross-cultural service. I remember a co-worker with much more experience than me continually talking about “us” and “them”. He would regularly complain, “I can’t believe these people…” and “They never …” Or “They always…”.

Yes, cultures are radically different and every frustration this man had with adjustment to locals’ ways and lifestyles was stuff we deal with everyday. We continually have to ask God to help us see people the way He sees them, and to not grow blind to our own prejudices.

We also must not be guilty of hyper patriotism. Another worker on my team was actually quite fearful of his host culture. One day he told me that he didn’t want to live anywhere that he could not see an American flag waving nearby. I really felt sad for them, more than anything, because I thought that their pride in being American made them distrustful of anything and anyone not American. Their level of patriotism was destroying their ability to disciple the nations.

I’m very thankful for being an American citizen, but any nationalistic, xenophobic attitudes that we hold onto in our own culture will only worsen overseas, and will certainly hinder the work we’ve supposedly been called by God to do.

Our children, especially, will pick up on and reproduce our prejudicial attitudes, whether they are spoken or not. They see and hear more from us parents than we can ever imagine, especially in our heart attitudes toward locals.

So, over time, I think our attitudes should change from “us” and “them” to just simply “us”. Whatever our ethnicity and cultural upbringing, we’re all human, in need of forgiveness and divine purpose and direction.

Start small

Most of my colleagues serving on the field now had some kind of previous short-term missions experience. There are cases where career cross-cultural workers have never set foot in a different culture before beginning their first day of long-term service, but they are rare.

Consider taking a short-term mission trip, anywhere from two weeks to two months - the longer the better. Going with your whole family would be best. Be sure your trip is not a glorified touristy kind of “feel good for the foreigner” project. There are too many of those. Whether you go with your church missions team, or some other sending agency, it’s best if there’s been some ongoing relationship with local believers and churches on the ground in your host culture.

Ideally, you will be able to spend time not only with some new local friends but also with longer term cross cultural workers/families who can give you a living example of what it’s like to live and work overseas.

Stay engaged at home

Once you are on the ground in your new culture, ready for the long haul, don’t make the mistake of not paying attention to your family.

Husbands and dads, we especially have a tendency to become completely engrossed in the work. The ministry really doesn’t all depend on us, but that’s how we sometimes act. Something’s going to go sideways if our hands are not glued to the plow, we think.

“[An overseer] must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (I Timothy 2:4-5).

Scripture is quite clear on this point. Perhaps our attitude should be that managing our families is the main task, the plow that we must keep our hands glued to. Like it or not, men, you are modeling to your local friends how to live, how to walk with Christ, how to be and do church, and how to be a family man. If you’re not leading in this, then the men you are working with will not be the Godly leaders you want them to be, either.

Don’t go ladder climbing

Unless you are a language/culture learning phenom, you will spend anywhere from 3 to 10 years (I know this is a pretty wide variation, but so much depends on how different your host-culture language is from your own heart language) just getting to the place where you can have really deep conversations with local friends.

Time and again we have seen denominational mission agencies and other sending groups thrust cross-cultural workers into leadership positions just at the time where they are beginning to go deeper in making/multiplying disciples, or in much-needed theological education. Why?

Larger sending agencies, unfortunately, sometimes resort to leadership structures and field strategies that mimic corporations rather than follow good disciple-making practices. There is truly a big need for more seasoned workers to help those coming onto the field for the first time.

But, if you believe God’s called you to make disciples cross-culturally, then don’t give in to pressure from your leadership to make any moves that would pull you away from time with your people.

Any time that you spend supervising and/or supporting fellow workers is that much less time that you have to spend with your family and with your local friends.

God has gifted His people with leadership and administrative skills; pray for Him to send out more of these gifted ones into His harvest, and keep on making disciples.

The same pressure to climb ladders in corporations can often be found within mission organizations. A good question to ask yourself, when approached with the offer of a move “up”, would be this: “Would saying ‘yes’ to this opportunity be coming from a desire to bring glory to God by submission and obedience to His ongoing call? Or is there some other secondary motivation, like fear of man, or wanting to make a name for myself?”

Get out of town

During our first term overseas, we had some friends from a different sending group offer us good counsel. They had already been on the field as a family for quite some time, and said that they had made a practice of leaving their host culture for some vacation time every 6 months.

We’ve tried to do this, and it’s been very helpful for us. You may find that you are able to do this without leaving your host country; it’s a lot cheaper and you’ll probably save on travel days. However, we found that it was not possible for us to truly rest without leaving and going into a bordering country, because we were always faced with the same culture stress when trying to retreat from within our own host country.

Regardless, the principle, I think is the same. Jesus made the time to retreat, and we need the same refreshment. Find a place that you can do that on a regular basis and you’ll be thankful for the results.

Crossing Cultures: EECWTC2C

Today a friend said that he had just been through a presentation of Creation to Christ with a local. When the local friend did not say they wanted to believe, our friend wondered. In our conversation, he was asking himself whether or not it was appropriate for him to simply stop meeting with this person, in fear that time spent with him might be less time spent with more receptive local friends.

Questions: What if faith is actually very near this person? What if he needs some more time? Our friend is learning the local language, what if he misunderstood some important questions that this local person had about Christ or His story?

We know that there are examples in Scripture of where Jesus did tell His disciples to move on; when there was rejection of the Gospel in some of the towns He had sent them to, for example.

How do we know for sure if God’s telling us to move on and find new local friends to share faith with, and should we stop being friends with lost people, ever?

I’ve been trained in EE and CWT and have even been part of writing other such presentations of the Gospel, tools to be used in calling people to faith and repentance, and in training others to do the same.

But I think we are wrong when we see C2C or any other tool simply as a filter to find receptive people. It should rather, I think, be used as a good resource, among many, to help us know how to dialogue about our faith better with local friends.

In discipleship, we have to have a level of language and cultural learning so that we can understand what questions our friends have about the Story, from creation to Christ, from questions about other religions, about the practical aspects of faith, about ancestors who have died apart from knowledge of Christ, about idols, and hundreds of other real life issues. And discipleship really begins, not at the point of conversion, but with lost people who are encountering the Biblical worldview for the first time.

If it’s hindering you from getting to really know people and making them followers of Christ, then throw away your canned Gospel presentations and start fresh with your Bible and God’s Spirit.

Dinner table discipleship

I’m helping coach the International School’s girls’ basketball team. Local School Number Five defeated the girls today. I had this silly notion going into the game that Number Five would have an all-girls’ team, too. But while I was watching their team warm up, I was sure that at least three of their players were not girls. But then my wife, generally much more observant about such things than I am, informed me that at least one of the boys was wearing a bra.

We were talking about this at the dinner table tonight. I said, “Some boys need to wear a bra,” after which my son let out this really big, silly laugh-giggle. I was being naughty at the dinner table. It was worth that moment.

I like it when our family eats dinner together at night. We catch up on the day, what student friends of theirs did what, what teachers really bugged them. Our children are perfect, so I know that all the International School teachers are idiots, if my kids say they’re idiots. I could be biased toward my children.

But we’re communicating with each other, and almost always end up laughing together at the table about stuff that we probably wouldn’t talk about to anybody else outside our immediate family.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Family life gets pretty real, pretty raw, if real communication is taking place. We all see each other’s best and worst moments, our best and worst attitudes. Nothing’s really hidden. And, if we can’t love each other after all that, then it’s doubtful we’re going to be able to really love, unconditionally, the people in the world out there, like those bra-wearing boys from School Five.

Family is your first and best discipleship group. Who knows, but God, whom these kids are going to influence one day.

“Discipleship” is so crazy to define, because definitions are either way too complicated or far too simplistic.

But, I think if you look at Jesus, He got so close to a few friends, that His communication with them was raw, real, and open. They spent a lot of real-time hours together (as opposed to virtual, Facebook, Twitter, blogging hours), seeing each other’s responses to life with and around Jesus.

They were experiencing together the miraculous, as well as the everyday mundane stuff. But Jesus, the Creator and Sustainer of the whole Universe and all of life, was walking with them through it all.

So, I think that this level of interaction has to be the foundation of “making disciples”. There are no shortcuts.

The fall of nations, the rise of the Kingdom

[Proverbs 21:1]

People love money and things more than God.

One result of this sin is the current economic turmoil the world is experiencing.

It’s hard to imagine that our own passport country, the USA, will be recovering from the fruits of its own greed and materialism any time soon.

Don’t be discouraged. God is still in control.

Pray for the governments, for “the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord, he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).

Nations will rise and fall, but God’s Church is always victorious because of Jesus’ cross and resurrection.

Be thankful that, even though God may choose to allow the fall of nations, His purpose will stand, and in days ahead His church will have more opportunity to help others and bring glory to Christ.

We stand corrected.

“Blows that wound cleanse away evil; strokes make clean the innermost parts.” Proverbs 20:30

Part of this process of remaining teachable is being willing to be corrected when you are falling short of God’s glory - when you are beginning to wander from Truth.

God sometimes does this by sending someone to confront you. Your response in moments like this will determine whether you will begin a downward spiral of self-righteousness, self-justification and self-pity, or whether you will thank God for the correction, turn back from your wandering and keep following Jesus.

By Jesus’ death on the cross we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. Humbly receiving correction means acknowledging, once again, that we are completely lost and hopeless apart from God’s grace and mercy given through the death of His Son.

Checking our Opinions

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion” (Proverbs 18:2).

What is it that you want to say?

First, hold your tongue! Is your thought based on the wisdom of God? Does it line up with the whole teaching of the Word of God? Has God used His Word and the experiences He’s allowed you to go through to give you His understanding about a particular matter?

If the answer is ‘yes’, then you have a belief and a conviction that God may use to encourage others, strengthen His church, build His kingdom.

If you are not sure, or if the answer is ‘no’, then it’s best to keep your thoughts to yourself and bring them back to God in prayer for examination. By definition, opinions are beliefs that are based not on what’s necessarily true, but on what seems to be right or probable.

More churches and ministry teams have gone astray, missed the mark, and wasted precious time because their course of action had been determined not by the leadership of God’s Spirit, but by the opinion of the majority.

Let’s bring glory to God today by taking pleasure in His wisdom and understanding.

What’s in the bucket?

While on stateside assignment one year, we visited one of the Great Wolf Lodge resorts. It’s a huge, EXTREME indoor water park, with ridiculously fast slides.

In the center of the park is a really fun water playground. Perched about 3 or 4 stories above this network of walkways, water cannons, bridges and smaller slides is a massive bucket, continually being filled with water. Imagine your bedroom being filled with water; that’s about how much water this bucket holds.

Every 10 minutes or so, the bucket begins to reach the tipping point as it overflows with water, and then the deluge falls, flooding the playground below. A loud bell is rung when it’s about to tip over, so kids -- yeah, adults, too -- from all over the park come running to stand under the bucket and feel the weight of the flood hitting them from that high above.

“The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out” (Proverbs 17:14).

Imagine for a minute that all that water represents sin, and the bucket is your heart. You know what’s going to happen if you keep letting your heart fill up with anger and hatred and bitterness toward others?

When you feel strife building up inside you, the best thing is to immediately go to the Lord with it, or even perhaps talk to a brother or sister in Christ who can help you go to the Lord with it. Nothing good comes from reaching the tipping point.

God, continually fill up our hearts to overflowing with Good stuff from You today, and let that be what pours out for those around us.

Don’t Kid Yourself!

“All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit.” Proverbs 16:2

How quick we are to justify our sin!

Listen to some of what we tell ourselves:

“It’s okay for me to tell details about that brother/sister’s life; how will people know how to pray for them specifically, otherwise?’

“It’s okay for me to watch this movie, I really need to keep myself informed of what’s out there in popular culture, you know?”

“It’s okay for me to argue with them, because THEY’RE WRONG!”

Lord, help us to wait on You, today, and listen. Help us know what is pure and right in Your eyes, and not do what we think is best in our own eyes.

The London Riots and the Will of God

Living overseas, our family has taken a special interest in keeping up with international news and sometimes using that as a basis for discussion about God’s workings in this world.

Often, when we read about and see reports of events such as the London riots, which took place August 6-10 of this year, we’re prone to think, “What’s this world coming to? Why is God allowing this to happen? The whole world is just going crazy!” I recall having some of the same thoughts during the L.A. riots in ’92, and while watching the twin towers fall on 9-11.

Psalm 76:11 reads, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise You.”

In his commentary on this verse, Charles Spurgeon (see http://www.spurgeon.org/mainpage.htm for more of his writings) gives a remarkable illustration that helps give us a proper perspective on such events. Spurgeon writes:

“Meanwhile, the Lord has a muzzle and a chain for bears. He restrains the more furious wrath of the enemy. He is like a miller who holds back the mass of the water in the stream, and what He does allow to flow He uses for the turning of His wheel. Let us not sigh, but sing. All is well, however hard the wind blows.”

Let’s not be afraid or discouraged, but pray for God to have mercy on us. Let us continue to reverently submit to His will daily, enjoying sweet fellowship with Him, and let even world events such as these remind us that God is ultimately in charge.

When God Seems Cruel

In Psalm 66, the singer is remembering the miraculous event at the Red Sea, when Yahweh turned the water into dry land, allowing His people, the Israelites, to cross over and escape the pursuing army of Egypt.

Have you ever met anyone who has never been around large bodies of water? Not only do they not know how to swim, but the thought of even wading out into water over their knees really makes them nervous. Big water can be frightening to folks who have never been exposed to it from the time they were young.

I imagine that many of the people of Israel were horrified during their crossing of the Red Sea. Their culture used water for drink, they caught fish from water, and used boats for transport. But, given their captivity in Egypt and subsequent years of wandering in the desert, I think that there were probably not many swimmers in this group of Israelites.

It took some time, getting all those people across with their animals and belongings, with that wall of water looming over them. They were walking by faith, not by sight.

But, this was Yahweh’s doing. Sometimes He seems cruel. Making us walk by faith through difficult, sometime even horrific trials, are still to be counted as part of His awesome deeds (66:5 – “…He is awesome in His deeds toward the children of man”). At times, He lays “a crushing burden on our backs” (66:11). Sometimes, we may “feel” that Yahweh is not even there at all.

The Psalmist tells us to shout for joy to Yahweh and sing the glory of His name (66:1-2). Even when His workings may, for a season, seem cruel to us, remember that He is working out His eternal purpose. We are walking through fire and water, but He is bringing us out to a place of abundance (66:12).

OF PARALLEL UNIVERSES: WHAT IS REAL?

II Kings 6:16-17

Israel and Syria were at war. The King of Syria thought that he had a traitor in his camp, because, more than once, Israel had been informed of attacks planned against them.

But Elisha was the man who, having heard from God, had been warning the King of Israel of Syria’s next move. So now, Syria sends a massive army, with horses and chariots, against Elisha and his servants.

One of Elisha’s men is terrified, seeing this vast army of Syrians surrounding their little camp.

What does Elisha do? What does he say to his servant, who is overwhelmed with fear?

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed in the circumstances you are in?

Elisha tells his servant, “Do not be afraid.” And then he states a simple fact, “…those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

Elisha then simply asks God to do something for his servant: “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see”. God then opens the man’s eyes to see the mountains full of horses and chariots of fire, the army of God, ready to do God’s bidding against those standing against Elisha and his servants.

So many today who profess faith in Christ live in fear and with feelings of being overwhelmed by their circumstances. This fear often becomes the root of anger, unbelief, discontent, bitterness, jealousy, impurity and various other sinful thoughts and behaviors.

What about you today? Are you a child of God? If so, you do not have to be afraid. You do not have to live with feelings of being overwhelmed.

Many scientists, and laymen, as well, are consumed with theoretical physics and the idea that multiple unseen, extra dimensions must exist. This obsession has fueled the production of hundreds novels and movies that can be categorized in the “parallel universe” genre.

Ironically, as Christians, we often want to escape our circumstances by delving into such books and films, imagining that we can find relief in a better, newer, more exciting reality for us.

Why do we settle for such cheap, pathetic imitations of Truth?

We’ve got to wake up! The answer to our fear and feelings of despair is not in giving way to sinful thoughts and actions, nor is the answer in escapism.

The answer is in God’s Word.

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (from the Bible, Romans 12:2, New Living Translation).

And that, kids, is what’s Real.

God, open our eyes to see the Reality of who we are in You, and of the full and abundant life You have graciously provided for us. We are Your children, citizens of Heaven, not of this world. Help us to act on Your truth today and experience the victory You have already won for us through the cross of Christ.

getting real.

[proverbs 15:11]

The honesty of little children is sometimes shocking, intimidating, and can even be a bit annoying for us old folks who think we pretty much know everything.

It’s been way too long since my Childhood Development class in college, but between the ages of 2 and 5, I believe, kids will say whatever comes into their little minds, without any hesitation or tact, whatsoever. This is age-appropriate behavior for them.

But their honesty illustrates an aspect of child-like faith that we need to remember today. When we come to Jesus in prayer, He has no use for any fake-ness or hypocrisy. He already knows what’s inside us, and all the secrets of our heart.

In your conversations with God, cut right to the point. He knows already, anyway, you know.

God, help me today to experience a deeper friendship with You. Help me have joy and peace with You regardless of circumstance, by putting away any fake-ness and coming to You with what’s on my mind.