Tag: Cross-Cultural Training
Crossing Cultures: Boundary Events and Paradigm Shifts
In 1973, I left my rural Christian childhood home and became a university student. I experienced the dissonance of a world that was much bigger, more diverse, more troubled, and less predictable than anything I had known before. My questions of who am I, where am I going, and who will go with me were […]
Crossing Cultures: Perspective and Spiritual Maturity
When our own cultural perspective is extremely limited, our capacity for ministering cross-culturally will likewise be significantly constrained. A perspective growing out of spiritual maturity—more and more of us and fewer and fewer of them—will go a long way toward effective ministering cross-culturally.
Crossing Cultures: Missio Dei and Missionary Formation
The God of mission has a church, a people he shapes and sends in collaboration with missio dei. God himself accomplishes missionary formation through a series of shaping events that unfold over a lifetime.
Crossing Cultures: Capacity and Insight
Expectations for new missionaries as well as for their sending bodies should include a long-term developmental perspective that recognizes on-field difficulties as expected and as the normative shaping events God intentionally uses to develop cross-cultural ministry capacity.
An Interview with a Missions Leader in China (3)
International mission agencies can offer guidance. We need guides. I don’t mean a simplistic, short-term orientation course. But neither do we need a boss who only gives commands and does not truly walk with us. I mean each missionary needs a genuine guide.
An Interview with a Missions Leader in China (2)
My vision is for training with the goal of fruitfulness. There is a great movement happening in the Chinese church, but there isn’t a great deal of actual church planting happening. How do we help them to bear fruit?
An Interview with Mike Frith, Founder and Director of OSCAR
ChinaSource is excited to partner with OSCAR, which stands for One Stop Center for Advice and Resources. The UK-based website offers both in-person and online courses, including the British Culture Orientation course. Find out about this course and more aspects of OSCAR’s work in this “3 Questions” video interview with Mike Frith.
3 Questions: Interview with Mike Frith, Founder and Director of OSCAR
ChinaSource is delighted to partner with OSCAR, which stands for One Stop Center for Advice and Resources. The UK-based website offers both in-person and online courses, including the British Culture Orientation course. Joann Pittman recently spoke with Mike Frith to find out about this course and how churches can use it to help diaspora Chinese Christians.
The Culture Tree
Culture Learning: A Book Review
“One of the beautiful things about symbolizing cultures with trees is that this picture captures the essence of variation and uniqueness among groups… The image of the tree allows you to first think about commonalities by acknowledging all trees have the same parts, and then to address differences by thinking of the many different types of trees.”
Skills No Longer Needed
Re-entering a country that is “home” can be confusing. There is an unlearning—a releasing of some of the strategies that were only needed in a place with different rules and ways of living. We do not return as people who have stayed as we were before we left. There are things to shed; there are things to keep.