This leads to the fourth point of our vision: to be a catalyst for missions. There was a time when the West would talk about "closed countries" to missions. They were never closed to Africans!

Africans are not looked on as colonialists or imperialists. Usually Africans enter a society at the lowest rank. We are non-threatening. We tend to be looked down upon. Jesus himself entered society at the most vulnerable point, as an infant, threatened, unwanted—a refugee. This tends to be the door that Africans use to enter communities around the world.

Americans don't do missions that way. Americans always enter from the top. Because they're well resourced, they represent a majority culture. If you try to enter quietly into the city of Nairobi, we all know that you're there! But when I go into London, I can enter quietly—except for the police, people don't notice me. I think that actually puts us at an advantage in terms of the communities around the world that we can enter.

What must Americans learn, and unlearn, to be effective agents of God's mission in the world?

When you look at the Scriptures, Paul's model of missions is very different from the model of Western missions in the last 100 years. The West has designed a model of missions that only works for the West.

It depends on a monetary unit that is recognizable internationally, it depends on a strong economy that has a lot of disposable income, so that a lot of missionaries don't even go to the church for support. They go to the general community, to their networks of friends and family. In Kenya, you cannot support yourself that way as a missionary.

Likewise, Americans enter the economically depressed communities of the world with a lot of resources. They come and stay in hotels. Paul's model says, "Stay with whomever opens their door to you."

When I come to America, I depend on the goodwill of Christians in this country to open their doors, because I can't afford to stay in hotels. But when Americans come to Kenya, they prefer to stay in the hotels.

We are a very hospitable people. But we've found that Americans want their space. They want to be picked up from a hotel in the morning and be dropped back in the evening. And they can afford to pay for their space. They can afford to eat what they want. They can, in a sense, travel with a little bubble of America around them.

But the two-thirds world cannot afford this model. In my own country, until recently, when you left the country, you had to pay an airport tax, collected in U.S. dollars. I'm not even out of my country, and they are refusing my money! And if I pull out my money in this hotel here, they wouldn't know what to do with it. But you pull out the greenback anywhere around the world, and they're happy to take it!

So what is the alternative model of missions?

Well, Paul presents a model that depends on hospitality. When Africans come into the U.S., they go where they can find hospitality. The second largest population of Sudanese in the world is in Minneapolis—St. Paul. When a Sudanese comes into American with no money, that's the first place he goes. Sure enough, he will know somebody, and he can depend on that network of hospitality.

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Ministering Cross Culturally: The training articles in this download will give you a starting point for ministry in a new culture. Here you can read about cross-cultural ministry as we see it in the Bible; you can gain skills to help you with cultural immersion (and to avoid culture shock); and you can re-approach ministry in our ever-changing, globalized world. This is an ideal resource for a short-term missions team to discuss before they travel.