Richard Littledale's
Views on the News: May 2003

Experts or Exports?

As I write, a team of skilled volunteers at Teddington Baptist Church are preparing an interactive multi-media mission experience entitled Mission Impact. This event, which will run from June 6th - 8th, will encourage visitors to engage with the complexities, joys and challenges of cross-cultural mission work. Along the way they will encounter everything from candidate selection interviews and the visa application process, to language school, education, and simple health remedies.

Isn't this a little out of place in the Twenty-First Century? As Views was going out last month troops from largely Christian countries were storming into a largely Muslim country to 'put things right'. Can there be a place in our brave post-modern world for cross-cultural mission without the accusation of cultural export of the clumsiest kind? The answer would be a resounding 'yes' from the thousands of culturally sensitive missionaries who are offering their skills, their time and their compassion in countries around the world. They count it a privilege to serve God in the places to which their faith has sent them.

Of course, mission work is not without its mistakes. There are those whose reading of the culture into which they go is at best simple and at worst totally wrong. Un-necessary offence can be caused by the simplest cultural blunders. The sensitivities involved are considerably heightened in the place that the world has become post 9/11. That the task is difficult, however, does not mean that it should not be attempted.

In the final event, Christians have no choice about their involvement in the missionary task. Although only some of them go, all of them are involved. The reason is that that they are called to imitate Christ in all things. Since Christ made the greatest cross-cultural leap pf all time, stepping from heaven to earth, they too must cross boundaries. If they are to be authentic followers of Christ, they must follow him out of the comfort zone and into the world of the other - whether it is to be found over the garden fence or over the ocean.

Have you crossed any borders today?