Serving with Eyes Wide Open - Part XV
Today’s the day we wrap-up the series on the book Serving with Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short-Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence by David A. Livermore. I hope you’ve enjoyed some of the posts over the last three weeks. Today I’m going to finish with some concluding thoughts from the book’s final chapter — and some take-aways for people serving in short-term missions.
- - “At the end of the day, cultural intelligence — serving with eyes wide open — helps us do what we were created to do — extend the mission of God. At the very core of being human is the task of missions.”- “If missions is what we were created to do, and if we’re to be the physical presence of Christ in the world, then working on how to best embody him to the world should be of prime importance — that’s the essence of cultural intelligence…It’s a way to enhance how we live out our eternal mission as people — to reflect God’s glory to the world. It’s more than just a tool for short-term mission trips. It’s a pathway for helping us live out our mission as we encounter people from different cultures in a growing number of encounters every day — at the airport, at school, at work, on the phone, in the grocery store, and online.”
Livermore concludes — and I will as well — with “Ten Starting Points for Doing Short-Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence.” I’m going to do my best — and I hope you’ll join me — to improve in these 10 areas…and to trust God’s grace to cover my inevitable screw-ups!
- 1. God’s a Lot Bigger than Your Short-Term Mission Trip
“God’s sovereignty above and beyond our mission trips should be a word of encouragement…”
“To love people is to get involved in their lives. That’s messy and complicated.”
3. Be Yourself
“Serving with eyes wide open means seeing yourself and others in a new light and making appropriate change to who you are and how you relate.’
4. Seek to Understand
“Prepare for your short-term trip by enhancing your knowledge CQ.”
5. On Second Thought — Think Again!
“Question your assumptions” (interpretive CQ).
6. Try, Try Again
“On the other hand, as you question, question, question, don’t be so paralyzed that you remain in a never-ending cycle of contemplative reflection. Persevere through the conflicting perspectives you begin to observe by using perseverance CQ.”
7. Actions Speak Louder than Words
“Eventually we must move beyond conceptualizing cross-cultural work and go for it through behavioral CQ.”
8. Give Up Trying to See Who’s In and Who’s Out
“I’m to faithfully love God and love others and leave up to god what only he can do — rescue their souls.”
9. Incorporate Short-Term Missions as Part of Your Seamless Missional Journey
“Short-term missions is just another opportunity for us to live out what we need to be living 24/7 wherever we are.”
10. Love God, Love Others
“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 in order to more effectively reflect God to people who are culturally different from you.”
That’s it! That’s all I’m going to write on Serving with Eyes Wide Open. I hope you enjoyed the series. I’m sorry for being so long-winded. And I hope you’ll go out, buy a copy of the book, and start putting these concepts into practice on the mission field!
