The third approach is to send individuals. We have an exchange program with Chapel Hill Bible Church in North Carolina and with Elmbrook Church in Wisconsin, where we exchange our budding leaders to serve on the pastoral staff for one year. After that year in another culture, they come back and become a bridge person. That exchange gives those individuals the gift of seeing that the world doesn't always work from your cultural perspective. If you send us a young leader, we will do all we can to ensure that he doesn't incarnate into the missionary community in Nairobi, but that he incarnates into the African community! A year is a short time, but when those leaders go back, they can think biculturally.

Are there enough such churches in Africa to handle this level of partnership? I'm afraid once we publish this article, you'll be overwhelmed with churches wanting to do this with you.

In the whole continent of Africa there are increasingly more. What you need to become bicultural is a mentor, someone you can sit with on a weekly basis who will help you begin to understand our world from our perspective. It doesn't have to be a church like the Chapel; it could be a church in the slums that partners with a church like ours. In a cosmopolitan place like Nairobi, where so many have traveled overseas, there are countless potential mentors. And in the whole of Africa, there are multitudes of such churches.

The task we at the Chapel have is to say to other churches, wake up, there's a golden opportunity here to craft a new model of missions. So come, learn with us. There is enormous potential for us all to learn together.

This article originally appeared in our sister publication LEADERSHIP Journal, © 2007 by Christianity Today International. For more articles like this, visit leadershipjournal.net.

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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.