Missions Minded

Continuing the series on the book Serving with Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short-Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence by David A. Livermore, today we’re going to wrap-up the section of the book titled “Conflicting Images: Americans’ vs. Nationals’ Perspectives on Short-Term Missions” with the chapter “Simplicity: You’re Either for Us or Against Us!” Here are some of the highlights:

- “Our conclusions about why we should go, our sense of urgency, and our use of Scripture and money all flow from our tendency to oversimplify complex issues. In particular the tendency to find common ground — wherein we tend to focus on similarities at the expense of seeing differences and where we generalize unique people and events to an entire culture — is seamlessly related to the simplicity conflict. All the other realities we’ve considered have important nuances worth exploring, but this one is at the core of much of the short-term mission work done by us as Americans.- “Simplistic categories have been central to our American ethos. An American is either Republican or Democrat, blue-collar or white-collar, liberal or conservative, modern or postmodern, environmentalist or industrialist.”

- “Some areas of life and thought are clear-cut, but most of life is not. In particular most cross-cultural issues are far too complex to simply be placed in one category or another.”

- “American Christians have often embraced the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle for lots of different purposes. K.I.S.S. is a familiar mantra in short-term missions too, whether it’s the importance of simplicity in planning your itinerary, your testimony, or your plans for follow-up…Clearly there is a place for the K.I.S.S. principle…But many times K.I.S.S. becomes a hindrance to cultural intelligence. If we live only by the K.I.S.S. principle and never ask the deeper questions, we’re at risk of missing some core issues, particularly in cross-culture work. We’ll keep it simple, but remain stupid.”

- “Another way simplicity frequently gets played out is the presence of a rock-star complex when we go cross-culturally for a few days. The rock-star complex is another way to describe ethnocentrism — the tendency to define what’s normal and best based upon our cultural perspective. It’s the assumption that the world revolves around us.”

- “Our assumptions about what happens as a result of short-term missions are oversimplified. As a result our expectations and motivations are inaccurate. Our desire to ‘Just do it’ comes from a short-term perspective rather than a long-term vision. Our tendency to look for similarities often keeps us from seeing differences, and as a result we miss out on the more colorful picture that exists among people of the world. Our reduction of the Bible to manageable concepts and cultural principles sucks the life out of the story of God. Our simplistic approaches to help poor people end up exposing our own poverty. Simplicity is endemic to short-term missions. It’s part of what it means to be an American. It’s part of what it means to be an American evangelical. But it doesn’t have to be.”

I’ve got to tell you, this chapter was very convicting to me. I’m guilty of applying the K.I.S.S. principle to, well, just about everything! I guess I’m hopelessly American. This chapter is a good reminder for me to put everything in context (in cultural context when applicable). The “American way” is not the only way. In fact, it’s not necessarily the normal way either!

It’s time for me to reevaluate my outlook, with the idea that simple isn’t always seemly.

I pledge to have a long-term perspective and vision when it comes to missions…

To look for the differences in culture and not just the similarities…

To not reduce the Bible to a “how-to” guide, but to read it as God’s story, set in a specific, rich, and beautiful cultural context.

Who’s with me?!

Tomorrow we’ll begin unpacking the third and final section on the book, “Sharpening Our Focus and Service with Cultural Intelligence (CQ).” I hope you’ll join me.