This past month, I read Duane Elmer’s book, Cross-Cultural Servanthood: Serving the World in Christlike Humility. Elmer, a former faculty member at Missionary Internship (now MTI) has written a number of helpful books about the process of transitioning into another culture and working effectively as a cross-cultural missionary. Cross-cultural Servanthood addresses the question of what we need to do so that we are actually perceived as servants by the cultures to which we have come. As he points out, servanthood is culturally defined, so our efforts to serve others may actually be perceived as superiority and condescension by the host culture and national church. Elmer has heard many host culture people say, “Missionaries could more effectively minister the gospel of Christ if they did not think they were so superior to us.” How do we unconsciously communicate superiority, and how can we avoid this and demonstrate Christlike servanthood?
One of the chapters talks about the importance of adopting a learning attitude. As missionaries, we often are infected with the “right answer” virus. One of the symptoms of this infection is that we find it difficult to learn from those whom we perceive to be less educated or less spiritual than us. Unfortunately, in my personal experience, the more experienced we are as missionaries, the more virulent this virus becomes. Elmer says to combat this virus we need to take a big dose of humility and learn about others, learn from others and learn with others. Although learning about others is important, we need to move on to learn from and learn with the people of the host culture to which we have been called.