I just read a very helpful interview of missions expert Paul Borthwick on the future of short-term missions. What stood out to me most was what he said regarding technology and missions.
After showing that today’s modern technology can, in a very positive way, allow “short-term teams [to] come back with more ability to stay in touch with the people they served alongside of”, he goes on to share one of the primary hindrances of modern technology to missions:
“Unfortunately, technology can also have a negative impact. It’s getting increasingly difficult for Westerners to be emotionally present where they’re serving. Rather than becoming culturally immersed, they go out during the day and do ministry, but come back at night to check their Facebook pages and update their blogs. They don’t become part of the local culture because technology is keeping them connected to home.”
Its the part about not becoming part of the local culture that worries me most! If you don’t become immersed in the culture and learn the language and customs of the people you are trying to reach, then you will not likely bear much fruit.
With the easy access to the internet that most missionaries today enjoy, it is very difficult to “disengage” from our native culture (which we access daily online), and to purposefully engage with our new adopted culture. But engage we must, for the purpose of making Christ known among the unreached people that surround us!
What do you think? What are some practical ways that missionaries can safeguard against staying too attached to home while ministering cross-culturally?
Great thoughts. Much for each to personally seek God’s guidance over. A few thoughts I hope to be helpful..
I believe the purpose in God’s call that He has for each of us as believers is coming to the place of total dependence upon Him. The stories of Moses, David, Paul and the 12 diciples and Jesus show us the way.
Who or what are we listening to each day?
Being fully present with someone is a gift and done by God’s grace when He is doing His work through us.
Praying for the fellow believer whether one is 100 or 1,000 miles away is also by grace.
Theology, doxology, technology etc… what is the effect,outcome?
If the internet is down, how do we respond?
Chose this day whom you will serve…
Glory to God!
Thanks for sharing this Eugene.
As a missionary to Viet Nam myself, and being just 25 years old, this conversation really hits home.
On one hand I love staying connected. My friends, family, and supporters back in America can read my blog & facebook, they can see my pictures on my picasa, and we can chat or video call regularly on Skype. In so many ways this is a huge blessing.
However I have new friends and family here in VN now. Every conversation that I have with friends and family in America is taking time away from my friends and family in VN (the most important family now) because they are the ones I am ministering to.
Where is the balance? Certainly missionaries “back in the day” fully immersed themselves into their cultures and not only ministered to people but became just like those people to every degree possible.
Now we have all of these new tools/or distractions, depending on how you want to look at it.
Seeing as how most missionaries need financial support from their families and friends back home, it’s great that we have these ways of staying connected.
At the same time, if we minister during the day and go home to our macbooks, iphones, cable tv, internet and western ways everyday, it makes it much more difficult to really become a part of the local culture.
Just some of the thoughts I wrestle with daily.
Thanks again for sharing,
Keith
I’m with you Keith. The reason these paragraphs stood out to me so much is because I can see myself in them. This is not a black and white issue. Everyone will have to wrestle through to their own conclusions and balance in ministry.
My last team of nine to India used their technology all to frequently. Reporting every move and photo back home. In so doing they never really bonded with their hosts. I felt the trip was not succesful for the team because no lasting change evidenced except in one. Our science has allowed us to be distant at the very time we should not be. Thanks Gene and Paul Borthwick.
Hi. I’m not a missionary in a host country right now, but might be interested in going — and currently do try to practice missions here in my hometown.
I also enjoy occasionally being connected with friends who are serving on longterm overseas missionaries, although I don’t really care as much for the play by play reports. Once a week is more than enough, I find, in order to get a pretty good grasp of their work and how we can pray for them back here in the US.
One side question I’d have is: Do overseas missionaries find that staying connected to their sending body helps them to maintain their spiritual strength and growth? i ask this because, I have served overseas for one year twice and was grateful to be able to stay connected to a solid body back home. At times when I would grow weary or perhaps tempted to go a little too far in “absorbing the culture” it was great to have that accountability, which kept me from becoming too inculturated (and possibly falling into sin).
Does that make sense? Do long term overseas missionaries ever experience this? Thanks!
Staying connected with the sending church or organization might help a long-term missionary maintain spiritual strength, but I doubt that it can replace having a church or team or body of some sort on the field. If someone is only staying strong or growing or being refreshed with contact back home, then they will eventually burn out and end up living back home. At some point, the worker must be part of a church in their host country, in order to grow as a Christian.
You mentioned having accountability with those back home. Again, that should probably be coming from some sort of fellowship on the field instead of from back home. E-mails and phone calls can only provide so much.
The home church definitely has a role to play, but it probably shouldn’t usurp the role that the church in the missionary’s new adopted home should play.
Does any of that make sense?
The technology debate is relevent whether overseas or at home. I think the comment that Keith made is significant in understanding the balance. Is the technology, whatever it is, a too or a distraction (excuse)?
If we are using technology as a tool, it serves the purpose that we are focused on (hopefully God’s purpose). But we can also use technology as a distraction from the things that are difficult (immersing yourself into a new culture; leaving houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields; lonliness; …) or make excuses for entitling ourselves to a lifestyle that does not match our ministry. Technology can support our busyness, and allow us to add more and more to our day and leave less time for God and people.
I’ve noticed this especially with the use of cell phones. There is such a degree of disrespect in the use of cell phones. The phone has become the central focus that now takes priority over anybody that you are actually face-to-face with. It is no longer a tool used to serve the user, rather the user has all too often become a servant or slave to the phone. Many people forget that they are not obligated to answer it every time it rings, or that they reserve the right to turn it off if they don’t want to be distracted. Instead, we shut out personal relationship in order to accomodate technology.
Obviously I am the kind of person that could rant on and on about this, but I’m just as guilty. Too often the internet and email and facebook are the focus of my attention, while the people in my house are being ignored and neglected.
Technology isn’t bad, but we have to keep it in it’s place and make sure that it is serving us instead of us serving it.
Excellent article. Never thought of this before. I can see the negativity but also on my end love hearing from you daily either on FB or email. It makes having you and the family half way around the world seem much closer. When Stan was overseas we only heard from him by letter, maybe once a month. I was young but remember the excitement when we would get that letter.
Agreed that it can be a distraction, but it can also be a mobilization tool, if utilized properly. Short term mission participants should be partnering with a local ministry and adhering to the cultural norms and standards. I find that by doing a technology fast for the first few days and slowly integrating short visits to the internet cafe (if available) can be a good way to encourage engagement while providing opportunities for them to communicate what they’re seeing/experiencing. That is, of course, if this is culturally relevant and appropriate.
Thanks for the post. My wife and I work in South Asia and are definitely tempted to sustain our connectivity to our other ‘home’ world of friends, family and fellowship. But it’s just not healthy over the long run.
But let’s slay one misnomer: “back in the day” some missionaries were fully engaged in their host cultures, and “back in the day” some missionaries were utterly useless because they were unable to let go of certain home-cultural notions. Missionaries 30 and 60 and 100 years ago faced completely different challenges in engaging their ‘new’ cultures, and today we simply have different ones. To suggest that “back in the day” they did things better is to ignore the vastly different and broad ways people are now engaging culture in ways that are (arguably) better than in the days of missionary compounds and village crusades.
Blessings!
TSMITH, I agree with you. I can even picture certain types of missionaries from centuries past spending inordinate amounts of time poring over letters received and writing and re-writing letters to send back home. This is definitely not something new, although the access we now have to so many different ways of communicating is probably MORE of a temptation than it was when writing letters was about all that could be done in communicating with the home culture.
I wrote about this late last year in “I’m Not There” http://www.missionaryconfidential.com/i%E2%80%99m-not-there-why-the-missionary-can%E2%80%99t-have-it-both-ways
It’s something we have to be constantly on guard with because it’s too easy to hide in old, familiar relationships; yet, I wouldn’t advocate severing contact with your homeland, either. More than anything, I think those in their teens and early 20s need to be warned about this technology quandary as they seem to struggle with it the most out in the field. Probably because they grew up with computers, texting, etc. being a larger and earlier part of their life.
Great thoughts, Jordon. Thanks!
C. Holland, I read that article and enjoyed it a lot! Thank you!
Here is another article that deals a little bit with this issue, although admittedly not in a cross-cultural context:
http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/06/17/meet-the-new-american-family-digitally-deluged/
“Technology on the field is not the reason for missionaries not becoming part of the local church.”
A couple of thoughts:
First, I said local “culture” not church. There is a difference. In many countries where it is dangerous to be a Christian, the foreigners who come to minister do not ever become a local church “member”. They might work together with the locals in different ways, but its generally too dangerous or too sensitive for locals and foreigners to be seen meeting or worshipping together.
Second, technology might not be the primary reason for missionaries not becoming part of the local culture, but it very often is a factor, or at the very least it becomes the scapegoat for people who are dealing with other issues.
Third, I think there IS a sense in which technology keeps even the “best” of missionaries from becoming as integrated into the local culture as they could be (or at least as was done in centuries past, before modern technology). I’m not saying that we should dump technology completely, because it serves a lot of amazing, God-glorifying purposes as well. But I think we must be careful and purposeful in our use of technology so as not to let it affect our ministry more than is absolutely necessary.
Eugene,
I couldn’t agree with you more. I feel that our constant need to “connect,” update, and facebook is due more to our own cultural addiction to technology than from a sincere desire to link people at home with what we are doing. I was a overseas worker for two years, and I know that I felt that struggle in my own heart, and probably lost the battle more than won it.
When we go into new cultures, it can be easy for us to say “I will eat the food, I will wear the clothes, I will learn the language, (maybe easy to say this, not to do it). We don’t really even think along the lines of “how do I entertain myself? How do I rest?” All too often these questions are answered in American ways, which is of course understandable because we are in fact Americans.
All that to say– I’m glad that your post challenges that status quo. Let’s think more clearly and speak more forcefully and love more sacrificially. Let’s learn to leave behind technology (to a degree) and other American apparatus so that we can be more fully engaged with the lost– including in our own country.
“We don’t really even think along the lines of “how do I entertain myself? How do I rest?” All too often these questions are answered in American ways, which is of course understandable because we are in fact Americans.” Jared, I couldn’t agree with you more. Technology is a new facet of missions work that just needs to be addressed so that it can be used as a tool where necessary, not a crutch.
It’s definitely a danger to be too plugged in. How much is too much? That’s always what it comes down to. I definitely can understand the story about the team to India that spent every night updating photos and blogs.
This article definitely holds truth. However, I can also say that via skype, blogs, photos, and all the other means of encouraging supporters and keeping up with them, that the emphasis on furloughs and time out of the mission field can now be greatly reduced.
Technology is like every other advance in history. There are new challenges to juggle, as well as major benefits. I’d challenge somebody to try to convince a Wycliffe missionary that technology is bad. Technology has cut their necessary number of years for Bible translation from about 25 to about 10.
Some teams work over skype from many different countries to keep doing translation work, without needing to be together.
It’s about censuring the way we use the technology. After the invention of the printing press, we had pornographic novels 100 years before scientific journals, but that doesn’t make the printing press bad. We all know that on the contrary it was essential and still is for getting the Word to every person in the world in their native tongue.
It’s simply a matter of the way we use the printing press, or technology, for our work.
You make a good point about technology. My wife and I have done two short term trips to a closed country with 100% unreached people. In order to bond with the culture, we simply used technology on an as needed basis. (Which wasn’t very often.)
It seems that there are two different issues here, and the major one is definitely
“Its the part about not becoming part of the local culture that worries me most!”
Technology on the field is not the reason for missionaries not becoming part of the local church. The issue is deeper and more serious than that.