Missions: Are We Doing It Right?
Glen Galbraith
As a missionary of twenty-five plus years, I often wonder if I’m doing this right! To be honest, when I look back on how I did ministry (and, specifically, cross-cultural ministry) all those years ago and how I do it now, I’d like to think that my approach to and execution of ministry has changed. Why would I want my ministry to look different now than twenty years ago? Because the world has changed. Culture has changed. People have changed. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the message that we are taking to this changing world. There’s nothing new in these statements; we’ve been saying these things for decades and even centuries. Charles Spurgeon once said, “We are not responsible to God for the souls that are saved, but we are responsible for the gospel that is preached and the way in which we preach it.” And, so, I think one of the biggest struggles that a missionary faces in every generation is preaching the pure and unadulterated gospel to a new and ever-changing culture.
Perhaps cross-cultural missionaries are more aware of this than most because everything in their life is new and changed. Once you leave your home culture you are faced every day with new and wonderful experiences. Whether in matters of language, food, clothes, or other outward expressions of culture, or even the unspoken things like humor, facial expressions, and manners, every culture is different than every other culture, and every present culture is different from every culture that came before it. I think these changes are made more rapidly in our present digital age and, at the same time, there is also a drawing together of cultures because of the world becoming “smaller and smaller” thanks to the ease of access to the internet (in most places). When our family landed in Scotland in 2004, we didn’t even need to leave the airport to realize that we weren’t in Kansas anymore! I can still recall my fear as I approached my first real roundabout! I can still remember my frustration the first time I went to a hardware store to ask for normal mundane things and realized that everything in Britain has a different name than I was used to. I still shake my head when I think about how every British person can identify people as Americans just by watching them eat!