cross cultural communication

That was our topic for the week. I think if I'd heard this speaker during my DTS it would've confirmed everything I'd feared missions would be. In other words it would've made me keep thinking that being a missionary means you have to be a complete weirdo and lead a miserable life. I've grown since I did my DTS two years ago and was able to receive everything with a much better attitude. I listened to his amazing stories of his lifetime spent as foreign missionary and my jaw dropped. I can see that the choices he made are not just for the sake of letting his culture go so that he can be different, but because to make an impact in any culture you need to let go of yours.

It's an easy concept to talk about and listen to, but when it comes to letting go of my culture I definitely pick up an attitude. I take pride in being an all-American girl! I love our country and don't want to conform to something else. But my identity can't be founded in my culture. As much as I insist that I find my identity in Christ alone, I live my days in a way that shows otherwise. We resist letting go of our culture so much. We might think it's some Biblical principle and fight to the death to hold onto it, but the truth is that it's just something we value in our culture and it can be laid aside for the big picture.

One of the examples he used was names. He started replacing people's names with things like Dorcas and Chester and it was irritating. Sidenote: most of the school was annoyed by the speaker. And he could read body language like a book so he would call people out on it. Which was hilarious. I had a military tshirt on the day he found out I was Mennonite and he had a field day teasing me about that, especially cause he could tell I hated that the Mennonite thing even had to come up. Same thing when he wanted us to guess the artist of the song he was singing and I was the only one who knew it was Carly Simon - "Wow Chelsea, that's pretty good for your Mennonite background ..." Yeah yeah yeah, I try to keep it on the downlow mister.

But back to the example of names! :) If you had to change your name to something quirky you'd probably be resistant to it or wonder why bother. Our names are just words but we put our identity into being Chelsea Lynn Shank. We should be willing to change anything if God asks us to. Plenty of people in the Bible had to change their names - Abraham, Sarah, Paul and Peter. God wants to lead us more than we want to follow. God loves us more than we love Him.

He focused on getting rid of the cultural "screen" that gets in the way of our communication with people. This can happen in our own culture, but obviously is more of a barrier when we're crossing borders. We evaluated where we fall in being time vs event oriented, task/persson, dichotomistic/holistic, crisis/noncrisis, achievement/status, and vulnerable/non. Americans tend to be on the first half of those groupings. I scored big on achievement, which is all about earning what we get. This is good for life but gets in the way with theology because I have trouble receiving grace. It's hard to understand the grace of God when you live with a mentality of having to work for everything you get. I was also big on holistic thinking, but in everything else I was right in the middle.

I have a lot more to write, but I have to go work in the kitchen! God is doing a lot a lot a lot in my life and it's awesome!