As a missionary in preparation, this year’s Christmas celebrations have resonated with me and my wife a little deeper than previous years. For us, this may be the last Christmas we spend in the United States for a while. This is the last Christmas at our places of employment. This could be the last trips to parents houses, the last Christmas dinners, the last gift exchanges, the last Christmas services with our congregation. In many ways, 2009 is the closing of another chapter in our lives.

2010 is ushering in a very different set of circumstances, with new locations and new possibilities. 2010 means a new home and a huge overseas move, a new position with my employer, a brand new ministry, all done while learning a new language. In many ways, 2010 is the opening of a new chapter in our lives.

I’ve lived an outpoured life long enough to know that the ending of one chapter and the beginning of another is both a little sad and immensely exciting and I’m hesitatingly enthusiastic. Thanks to all of my readers and fellow bloggers, you’ve made my missional blogging a joy. Until we meet again in 2010 have a wonderful Christmas and a blessed new year.

Last jots for 2009:

C.Holland over at Missionary Confidential writes why he’s “staying home for Christmas.” Well worth a read for a glimpse into the missionary mind at Christmas.

Heart of the matter online has an interesting post about making Christmas missional.

Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds posted an amazing video about the “Known {unknown} Universe” that Jesus upholds by the word of his power.

I ran across an interesting article from Kouya.net yesterday about realigning ourselves with a scriptural mindset. It’s an interesting thought, well worth considering.

“The Bible does not align us to God’s purposes by giving us a book of answers and instructions. Rather, as we soak up the Scriptures, the Spirit works in our lives to renew our minds (Romans 12:2) and to change our way of thinking. Because of this, we need to remember that the Bible is first of all about God, not about mankind.”

Tags: Missionary Life

One of my favorite bloggers, Tim Challies, is posting a 3-letter email exchange with Luke from Common Sense Atheism. The exchange started today and should prove to be interesting.

Another from the “Why Europe” file. A Christian registrar was forced from her post because she refused to officiate a homosexual union. The decision was appealed in her favor but then overturned by a London Court of Appeals last Tuesday all in the name of “equality.” Funny how equality only flows one way?

Is Google avoiding the tax-man in Britain? Is that what the Daily Mail is implying? They may be implying anything but the lively discussion about corporate responsibility is taking place here.

The naysayers said that it couldn’t be done but in roughly 3 years, the iPhone ecosystem has morphed into a computing juggernaut. Click here to read the beginning of a Financial Times 3 part series about Apple’s app store and here to read about Tapulous $1,000,000 a month revenue. Stunning.

Tags: Jots

Sending your car to the mechanic’s shop is never a blissful experience but leaving it at a new repair shop overnight is even worse. Last night we left our car at a new mechanic’s shop whom we’d never met on a street we didn’t even know existed. Aside from speaking with him on the phone to arrange the repair or this morning as he rattled off the list of repairs I had never even spoken to this person or seen his work. Where did this capacity for trust come from? My trust in him was not based on personal knowledge of his work, he’d never worked for me. My trust in him wasn’t based on first hand knowledge at all! Rather, my trust in him was vicariously built upon the recommendation of his reputation from friends. He treated them right and proved his trustworthiness so it was my hope that he would do the same for us.

I’ve never thought about it before but just like a mechanic, my success as a missionary stands or falls on my reputation too. When we ask people to financially support us we’re asking them to trust us. Most of them have never seen our work, have never been to the places we’re going, and will probably never know the impact their support makes. What that means is that we are obligated to maintain our reputations no matter the cost. Whatever you’re doing and wherever you’re serving, with daily repentance and humility, cherish and nurture your reputation. At the end of the day, it’s all we have.

“Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” 1 Timothy 4:16

Tags: Missionary Life, Support, Giving

I found this map on IMB’s website a few months ago but just never got around to posting it. You’ve probably seen it as many times as I have but I keep it around as a reminder of why we’re doing what we’re doing. That little country just north of Africa is where we’re moving, the lack of light is why.

Tags: Europe, Evangelism, Missions, Why Europe

As I noted in my first post in this series, one of biggest oversights in Christian missions is the lack of current event research taking place prior to missionaries moving to their locations. I’ve already covered the importance of getting to know the culture and understanding the cultural importance of food, but what about the day to day happenings and major news events in your target location? In the past, this idea would have been unthinkable; information travelled slowly and cultures were isolated pockets. If something happened on the other side of the globe it was days, weeks or even months before it was known elsewhere. Today however, technological and sociological advancements have revolutionized the flow of information. In the era of globalization and 24-hour news cycles global happening are literally a click away. For those of us preparing for missionary work, this means we don’t have a lot of excuses. With a computer and internet connectivity it is dead simple to integrate your target’s news stories into your daily routine. Read below and I’ll show you a simple way to set an automated news feed for anywhere in the world. Adding this to your preparation time will pay huge dividends for your cultural assimilation. I’ve been doing it for years and it has served me well.

1) For our purposes, we’re going to rely on a global news aggregator like Yahoo! news or Google news. All news organizations use the global news sources like Reuters, Associated Press, and Breitbart. These are the sources behind the sources but using these sites alone is too much work.

2) The next step is to narrow your news scope down to your preferred location or country. Go to Yahoo! News and type your target location in the search field as seen below. Keep in mind that news doesn’t hit the wires using one term. For my purposes, I have RSS feeds for “Portugal” and “Portuguese” which seem to grab most of the major news stories for Portugal.


3) Once you’ve pulled your desired results you’ll want to subscribe to the RSS feed (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) and add it to your favorite RSS Reader.


4) In order to subscribe to these terms you’ll need something that “collects” the RSS feeds. Some people have their RSS feeds updated in their favorite Internet browser- browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Firefox have RSS built in. Others like me use stand alone RSS clients for our subscriptions. No matter what platform, my choice for high quality RSS readers are made by a company called NewsGator. Their RSS readers are easy to install and use, well designed, and best of all free! (They’ve recently switched to an unobtrusive ad-supported model but are virus and spyware free for Windows users) NewsGator isn’t the only option out there but I’ve found them to be the best I’ve used. Click below for your particular platform. (No I’m not a paid endorser...just a satisfied user)


Following the news is another way we can get to know our target locations. This will make us better informed ministers, deepen our love for the people, and equip us in yet another way for the task of preaching the gospel. Happy reading!

Tags: Missionary Life, Missions

As I mentioned in my last post, one aspect of cultural preparation often overlooked during the scoping process is the centrality of food. When we moved to Ireland after living our entire lives in California (punctuated by two years in Texas) we entered into a food culture that was completely foreign to our lifestyle. We had no idea what the Irish ate or more importantly how food nuanced our relationships with people. For instance, “calling ‘round” unannounced to someone’s house for a cup of tea and a “bickie” was *gasp* normal. Having tea, fresh milk, chocolates, and biscuits on hand for the potential caller was of utmost importance, yet to us this was (initially) highly intrusive. It took us a while to warm to the idea of having people drop in or go to someone’s house uninvited.

In Portugal, we discovered that meeting for a meal in someone’s house was unusual until a close friendship was formed. However, once considered “family friends” all bets were off. Additionally, we’ve found over the years that when visiting my wife’s aunt in Portugal it is offensive to not plan to eat at her house. Even when she was ill during our visit this past September, not eating with her was out of the question! Even sick with a cold, she proceeded to fix us a beautiful lunch complete with different meats, vegetables, bread, cheese, and wine. Food was a way of demonstrating her familial love for us although we wished she would have stayed in bed.

“Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are” -

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

When we fail to consider food’s importance we unconsciously assume that all cultures see food as we do. This in turn dims our ability to speak into the lives of those we’re trying to share Jesus with. In other words, its difficult to share Jesus when you can’t share a meal together. What we eat, how we eat it, the quality and freshness of ingredients, who we eat with, where we eat and the time of our meals all play an important part in assimilation. While not the be-all and end-all, these are important ideas to consider during preparation not just after our arrival. Start now by reading blogs and books, buy a cultural cookbook, interview your national partners, carefully observe the role of food during your scouting trips, all in an effort to better understand and reach your adopted culture with the Gospel. It’s impossible to know the extent of food’s importance before arriving but it’s foolish to assume it has none.

One last important item...in becoming a Christian foodie don’t forget to have fun! Things always taste better that way.

Tags: Missionary Life, Missions

Most missionaries preparing to move to a foreign country have never lived in the place they’re moving to and therefore (understandably) don’t know their target culture. There are exceptions to this rule of course; kids from missionary families, students from university exchange programs, or whose parents worked for multinational companies. Aside from the fortunate few who have lived overseas, the rest of us are on our own to learn about our future adopted cultures.

While it’s unreasonable to expect future missionaries to have lived in their target location, not preparing for our future cultures by doing nothing beforehand is unacceptable. Most of us know that in order to better serve a culture we must know that culture intimately, and we all acknowledge that the best way to do that is to and learn the intricacies of being __________. (insert nationality) However, many of us are playing a dangerous game of waiting to “figure it out” until we’re there, deepening the culture shock and threatening our longevity. I’ve even heard stories of missionaries realizing they didn’t like their culture after they moved! That shouldn’t be you.

As an American I realize the difficulty of breaking outside of our culture due to the sheer size of our country. Having lived in Texas for a couple of years-did you know you can drive for 12 hours straight in Texas and never leave? Twelve hours in a place like western Europe can take you through 6 or more countries! Moreover, many Americans are rarely apprised of current world events because there is so much going on here. In America, it’s unusual to hear about international issues on the nightly news-they only have 30 minutes to cover it all! Negatively, this American isolation creates weakened ministries for those who do nothing about it. Positively, cultural illiteracy makes prime cultural sponges out of those willing to humbly learn. My contention is that starting cultural immersion before leaving makes stronger missionaries, eases the transition, and endears us to the people we’re going to serve. If this is true, what can you do to prepare before you arrive in your new location? Let me offer some ways you can get to know your future culture where you are:

Buy a cultural cookbook and learn some recipes. Food plays a central part of everyday life in many cultures; it’s imperative that you know and like the food of your destination. Importing American food every month isn’t going to cut it!

Discover cultural food items and try them. This might mean you try a localized beer or wine, packaged cookies, unique sweets, or coffee brand, as scripture and your conscience allows.

Attend cultural events in your area. Are you moving to China? Visit Chinatown. Moving to Portugal like us? Attend as many festa’s as possible.

Learn what the popular sports are and get the hang of them. I found live Portuguese soccer streaming on the internet a few months ago and now I’m hooked.

Find local television stations online and sample them. This is a great source

Start language courses. Some are offered in your area, you can buy a course online, or check one out from your local library.

Read their news. Sites like Yahoo news allow you to filter stories down to a particular country then subscribe to an RSS feed for that term. You’ll get local news delivered to your RSS reader daily and be “in the know” on current events.

Whatever method you ultimately use, getting to know as much about your target culture before you leave will pay dividends in your ministry, lower your stress level during culture shock, and create cultural ties to the people you meet. They’re doing it with our culture we’d better do it with theirs.

Tags: Missionary Life, Missions

It’s no secret, American home improvement stores and auto-parts dealers thrive off of the Saturday ritual of the weekend warrior. Each weekend these stores transform into base-camp for millions of home and car improvement nerds who mightily announce at bedtime on Friday night, “I’ll have it done tomorrow by lunch.” After tucking into the “quick” Saturday job sometime around noon, these arm-chair experts soon realize that the vital nail, screw, pipe, paint brush, socket, paint remover, tie, flange, or bolt needed for completion is no-where to be found. Thus the frantic, unshaven, unbrushed, dirty, oily, and angry scramble to the store begins; destined to be repeated at least 3 more times that day.

Since this is how the vast majority of us “fix” our homes and cars, it’s no surprise to me that we approach missions planning in the same way.

When we left for our first international ministry job in Europe our cultural education and planning looked a lot like the typical weekend warrior. We thought we had a vague understanding of our target culture but in reality we didn’t have a clue. We had never lived in Europe, our history of Europe stopped somewhere in the middle 19th century, we didn’t understand modern European culture or politics, had only travelled around Europe for a few weeks, and to top it all off, were still newlyweds. To say that we were green around the ears was an understatement. Our informal attitude was that we would simply figure it out once we got there and it showed. We quickly realized shortly after arrival that we were underprepared and slipped into culture shock within days. We made pointless mistakes that should never have been made and put ourselves through unnecessary agony. If only someone had taught us how to better prepare for our international move... (Or if only we had listened)

Understandably, there are some things that are only obtainable in country and I guarantee that you will never become a cultural expert by reading blogs or books. In fact, scoping handled wrongly can produce arrogant and cocky people damaging our impact from the moment we step off of the plane. (and as a missionary myself, I know that no one wants that) However, the lack of preparation with which some have entered the mission field is nearsighted at best and negligent at worst. Having made the mistake of not scoping prior to our first ministry, and knowing that there are many missionaries prepping to repeat the same mistake with theirs, it is imperative that we take the time to more adequately equip. Over the next few posts I am going to teach you what scoping looks like and how to properly scope your destination. My aim is to 1) increase our cultural awareness, 2) help elevate our cultural effectiveness, 3) ease the transition into your new culture 4) and enhance the quality of our ministries. No, you won’t become a cultural jedi after reading this series but you will be better prepared if you give scoping a go. If we American missionaries all commit to studying our future destinations humbly and earnestly imagine the cultural impact we could make for Jesus. What a staggering idea!

Tags: Missionary Life, Missions