December 6, 2024

The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

Category: Teaming

Cross-Cultural Living, Teaming, Multicultural Teams

Making the Most of Multi-cultural Teaming

SEND International is intentionally multi-ethnic and multi-national because it takes people from all nations to reach all nations. Our membership is currently composed of at least 13 nationalities, and many more cultures are represented within those nationalities. Our “multi-culturalness” provides unique opportunities as we seek to fulfill the mission of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ among unreached peoples of the world. But the diversity that accompanies this mix of cultures also has many inherent challenges; challenges that should be acknowledged and addressed.… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Cross-Cultural Living, Book Reviews, Multicultural Teams

Mapping Your Cultural Values

  I have just finished reading a great book on cultural differences as it applies to working with multicultural teams. The book: The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business is filled with fascinating real-life stories of how cultural differences impact relationships between people working together.  The author, Erin Meyer, is an American living in Paris and a professor at INSEAD, the “Business School for the World”.  She trains leaders from many different cultures of the world.   No, the book is not written specifically for missionaries, but is nevertheless a very valuable resource for anyone working in a cross-cultural environment, and particularly those who serve on multicultural teams. Based on extensive research and experience, Meyer has come to realize that you cannot simply categorize cultures into two camps on a particular issue.  For example, cultures are not simply time-oriented or event-oriented.  The English see the French as… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther2 mins read
Mission Leadership, Book Reviews, Multicultural Teams, Team Leadership

Leading multicultural teams

Just a few years ago, we could find very little that had been written about multicultural mission teams.  The subject has been of great interest in our mission organization, since our membership is becoming increasingly international, and many, if not the majority of our teams, already include members from countries other than the USA or Canada.   But very few resources for guiding the team leaders of such teams were readily available. A few would know of Lianne Roembke’s work, Building Credible Multicultural Teams.. Unfortunately, Roembke’s book has still not been released in digital form, and I cannot seem to find anyone who has written a review of it.  Then in 2011, Sheryl Silzer of SIL published her book, Biblical Multicultural Teams: Applying Biblical Truth to Cultural Differences. Silzer’s work focused on the formative nature of one’s childhood home and how that experience has impacted one’s view of what is right… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Teaming, Team Leadership

X-teams on the Mission Field

This entry is part 5 of 7 in the series "Types of mission teams".Part 5 on a series about teaming on the mission field.   In a previous post, we talked about the three main types of teams found in our mission organization. When new missionaries think about teaming, they are generally thinking about what we have called a basketball team. Basketball teams work together closely and interact frequently with each other about their various ministries.   But many of our mission teams are more like track teams than basketball teams. Track teams have a common purpose and team members support one another, but each person on the team works independently. But there is yet a third type of team that is commonly found on the mission field.   We call this an X-team or an expedition team.    X-Teams have at least two members, a guide and an explorer.  We think of expedition… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
The Track Team on the Mission Field
Photo by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash
Teaming, Team Leadership

The Track Team on the Mission Field

This entry is part 4 of 7 in the series "Types of mission teams".In a previous post, we talked about the three main types of teams found in our mission organization.   When new missionaries think about teaming, they are generally thinking about what we have called a basketball team.  Basketball teams work together closely and interact frequently with each other about their various ministries. But many of our mission teams are more like track teams than basketball teams.   Track teams have a common purpose and team members support one another, but each person on the team works independently. They generally do not do ministry together.  For many of our track teams, each team member works in a different church, a different ministry project, or even in a different town.  While they are geographically close enough to one another to make it feasible to meet together regularly, team meetings are relatively… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
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