Mission Etiquette for Dummies: Could Be Book Title

Westlind (see accompanying photo), who is finishing his doctoral degree in intercultural studies, recently spoke about cultural contexts and how it affects how one does ministry at a one-day interactive workshop called The Journey at First Covenant Church in Sacramento.

Mark and Alice Westlind were missionaries in Colombia, based in Cartagena, before they headed to Chicago for home assignment. The family has been in Covenant mission works for 14 years, giving them plenty of fodder for a book's worth of advice.

"I guess the first thing I'd tell people is to observe and observe and observe and keep your mouth shut," Westlind. "As babies, we spend nearly two years listening and picking up things, yet when we go into another culture, we immediately try to launch (into language). We need to try to see how people relate to each other before we leap out and make our foolishness known."

At the beginning of his session, Westlind spoke Spanish for an extended time so people could experience how difficult it can be to try to communicate in another world. Westlind talked about the differences in perspective for different cultures. He put participants in a hypothetical situation where family members were in a boat that was sinking, with only one life jacket available.

A child would probably be the first one saved in an emergency because they hadn't lived very long, Westlind said in reference to the American culture. In many Latin American countries, however, the mother would get the life jacket due to the respect the family has for the matriarch.

"When people get to the field, they have so much zeal and they wonder why the career missionaries don't get it," said Westlind. "And the newer ones don't always understand the context of ministry. It's like coming out and not having enough training, and you try to repair something that doesn't need to be repaired," Westlind observed. "You're thinking about it with an ethnocentric mindset - you can't see it from their perspective.

"There's also a pervading view that the West has the correct way to exegete scripture, and often when you get out there and live in the other culture, you discover that some of your own scriptural biases are really cultural," Westlind continued.

As a case study, Westlind cited a story of an Indian tribe in Paraguay where families with more than two children killed others that were born. Missionaries tried to stop this practice by asking for the extra children, agreeing they would pay for each child. The idea backfired when the Indian families began having numerous children in order to gain economic wealth.

Westlind shared a "short list" of things not to do when you visit a foreign country in a mission situation:

• Don't admire items in an individual's home because they will give it to you as a gift
• Don't expose the bottom of your shoe in the direction of an individual - it has negative connotations
• Don't lose your temper if you can help it - people don't approach conflict resolution with anger
• Don't be offended if people come close to you - that's a form of intimacy
• Don't look into a woman's eyes too long because it is perceived as a flirtation
• Don't bring a watch - time is not as important as relationships and people linger in their interactions

For more information about the Department of World Mission or events like The Journey, call 773-907-3317.

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