A headline caught my eye this week from a missions writer: God's bigger mission requires showing up differently when crossing cultures. Not preaching differently. Not believing differently. Showing up differently. The piece was about workers who go overseas and discover that the sturdy habits which served them well at home — the way they open a conversation, the way they explain a decision, even the way they say hello — land sideways in a place that is not their own. The message they carry is unchanging. The manner of carrying it has to be relearned, sometimes from scratch.
That is not a modern discovery. It is apostolic.
Paul Said It First
Listen to how Paul described his own working method: "Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews... To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings" (1 Corinthians 9:19-23).
Read that slowly, because it is easy to misread. Paul is not describing a man with no convictions who bends whichever way the room leans. This is the same man who would not budge an inch on the cross. What he surrendered was not the truth — it was his own comfort, his preferences, his right to be understood on his own terms. He gave up the privilege of being the normal one in the room. That is a real death, and most of us resist it more than we admit.
The Spirit Usually Gets There First
Here is what encourages me. When God pushed the early church across a cultural line, He did not send them in cold. Peter had a lifetime of reasons not to walk into the house of a Roman soldier. So the Lord gave him a vision on a rooftop, and at the same time sent an angel to Cornelius, and by the time Peter arrived the ground had already been prepared on both sides. Peter's own summary is almost stunned: "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism" (Acts 10:34). Then the Spirit fell on that room before Peter had even finished his sentence.
He still works that way. I have watched the Holy Spirit prompt someone here to check on a neighbor, only to find that the neighbor had prayed that very morning. That is not a coincidence and it is not a technique. It is God going ahead of us. Our job is mostly to show up, pay attention, and not talk over what He is already doing.
You Don't Need a Passport to Cross a Culture
We hear "cross-cultural" and think of an airplane. But there are cultures within ten miles of the church parking lot. The farm and the factory floor. The family that has been in Ravenna four generations and the family that moved out from the city last spring. A nineteen-year-old and a seventy-year-old can share a pew and still be speaking two dialects of the same language.
Leading people — in a church, in a business, anywhere — teaches you fast that being right is not the same as being heard. The most useful thing I know to do when I am the outsider in a room is to become a learner before I become a talker. Ask a real question. Let the answer be longer than you expected. Assume the other person knows things you do not. That is not watering anything down; it is the ordinary courtesy of love, and Paul called it strategy.
Where That Lands Tomorrow
Tomorrow is Mission Sunday at Outpouring Worship Center, and we gather at 10:30. Mission Sunday can sound like it is about far-away places and money for people we will never meet — and yes, some of it is that, gladly. But it is also about a posture. Whether God sends you to another continent or across the road to a porch you have driven past a hundred times, the same thing is asked of you: go, listen, love, and be willing to be the one who adjusts.
And if you are reading this feeling like you have never crossed anything for anybody — no dramatic story, no obvious door — take heart. Jesus crossed the widest gap there has ever been to get to you. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us" (John 1:14). He learned our language, ate our food, wept our tears, and never once compromised who He was to do it. He did not wait for you to become explainable to Him. He came. That is the whole pattern, and it is also the whole hope.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.