Global Ministry & Resources for Understanding Cultural Differences

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Ben Kreps:

Hey everyone, and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our Executive Director. Mark as people who have been tracking along in Sovereign Grace know, God has blessed us over the last number of years to expand our partnership, to be one that is more global in nature. So, that's wonderful. That's a blessing. But along with that comes a steep learning curve because of the diverse cultures that we are partnered with. And you guys and the Leadership Team have been working through trying to learn how to best become and lead a global family of churches. Tell us about that.

Mark Prater:

Yeah. We, as a leadership team, are really trying to understand what it means for us to be a global leadership team. And under that banner, under that heading, what does that mean for us in terms of leadership? What should our leadership look like and how is our leadership best experienced in different cultures? Because different cultures relate to leaders differently. How do we effectively communicate as leaders, because in different parts of the world, communication is different depending on the culture that you live in.

So, we've been doing some reading and study with books that have been recommended by Dave Taylor and will continue to discuss as a team. I've found them really helpful as I think about where I might travel outside the United States; how I might communicate in my role to pastors and members of our churches throughout the world. I think these resources, at least initially, are helpful. Not just for Americans, they're helpful for any pastor or member of a Sovereign Grace Church, regardless of where your church is throughout the world, because the resources really drop into different cultures. They might explain yours very well, but when you travel to another country, it's good to understand how people in that country think, how they talk, and how leadership is received. So, that's what we've been doing. We're early on in our learning journey, if you can put it that way. And just trying to figure out how to best serve our family of churches that, as you said, is becoming more global than it has in the past.

Ben Kreps:

Yeah. It's a thrill to follow along with what's happening. But certainly, ministry in the Philippines is very different than, for instance, ministry in Ukraine or in West Africa. So what are the resources that you have found helpful and that you guys have been discussing?

Mark Prater:

Yeah, we asked Dave Taylor to help us with this. And, he sent each Leadership Team member three different books. Two of them are secular authors. One of them is a Christian author. The first one I wanted to mention is called Foreign to Familiar: A Guide to Understanding Hot and Cold Climate Cultures written by Sarah Lanier. And she just kind of drops into whole hot and cold climates, because they think differently and they communicate differently. Then she lists different nations that she would put in hot and cold climates. For example, the Northern United States and Europe, would be cold climate cultures.

Warm climate cultures would be places like the southern part of the United States and Latin America. She gives obviously more countries than that, but those are just to illustrate for the sake of the podcast. And then she talks through different issues like relationship versus task orientation. So, cold climate cultures are very task-oriented. We want to get things done in cold climate cultures. In warm climate, hot climate cultures, they're very relationship-oriented, and that affects how they go about doing work and how they do go about doing ministry; direct versus indirect communication. Cold climate cultures are very direct in their communication. However, warm climate cultures, hot climate cultures, are very indirect in their communication. I found that chapter in particular, especially helpful in thinking about how do I communicate?

Inclusion versus privacy was a chapter that I also thought was really good. Different concepts of time and planning. Cold climate cultures, man, because we're efficient, we want to get things done and we plan. Not so much in hot climate cultures. They want to get things done, but they're less schedule-driven. So it's a really very helpful book. It's a short book. It's a very easy read: Foreign to Familiar by Sarah Lanier.

The next one, also a secular book, called The Culture Map. And that is written by Erin Meyer, who teaches at an international business school and has worked and lived in Europe, Africa, and the United States. And, she just does a great job helping you to think through different cultures. She drops into specific issues that I found really, really helpful. So one of them, I'll just point out one, chapter four on leadership hierarchy and power. The chapter's entitled, How Much Respect Do You Want?, <laugh> is the, is the title. And basically what she does in this chapter is she breaks down cultures as either egalitarian or hierarchical cultures, and by egalitarian meaning that there's little distance between the boss and the employee; that would be Australia, for example. You travel to Australia, you're one of the mates. When I travel there as the Executive Director, I'm just one of the mates, whereas hierarchical culture, that would be in places more like Latin America, for example, when I travel there, they view people in leadership much differently. They're much more careful how they communicate and tend to overemphasize the role, for example, and the leader. So it's just helpful to understand those differences, especially when you travel to different cultures and you're doing ministry there. If any of our pastors are planning to travel and serve outside of the United States or in actually any part of the world, I would recommend this book, The Culture Map.

And then, the third book is written by a professor at Trinity. Anthropological Insights for Missionaries by Paul Heibert. He was a distinguished professor of missions and anthropology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Before that he was also a missionary and pastor in India. And I'm not all the way through this book yet, but I've found it extremely helpful. For example, he defines culture, and I thought his definition of culture was really good. He says, we will define culture as the more or less integrated systems of ideas, feelings, and values, and their associated patterns of behavior and products shared by a group of people who organize and regulate what they think, feel, and do. I thought, oh, that's just a really helpful way to think about culture because as you go to different cultures, how are you defining culture? That's a great place to start. Very early in the book he makes a good, I think apologetic, case for, or a good argument for understanding anthropology and the importance of anthropological studies in doing ministry in other parts of the world besides your own country. So those are three books I wanted to recommend to pastors and members of our churches that listen to or read this podcast. And, I hope they serve you, especially if you're planning to travel outside the states on a team, or a pastor is planning to lead a team. Those are our go-to resources. That would help.

Ben Kreps:

Excellent. Yeah. Thank you for the recommendations, Mark. Helpful even for people like me, some of us live in communities where there are large immigrant populations, and we have a very large Nepali community in the Harrisburg area. And, certainly, as we've related to Nepali folks, the cultural differences become readily apparent. And navigating through those and caring for and reaching out to people in those communities is important to do wisely. So thanks for the recommendations. May God continue to grow us as a global family of churches. Thank you for watching or reading this podcast. We'll see you here, Lord willing, next week. Bye for now.