earthsedge

Wow, this week was a busy one.

We’ve been preparing for an Intercultural Trainers Workshop that will happen in a few weeks. Leaders from various organizations will be coming to receive training on issues of culture and mission. Our team at YWAM Amsterdam is hosting the training, and Becka and I are helping with the logistics. It’s been interesting because the resource team is scattered all over the planet, and we are the only ones actually in Amsterdam! So there have been emails flying all over and I’ve been learning the ropes of how everything works on the base here. I’ve been a little nervous about it since we are still new and all these leaders will be showing up in just a few weeks! But this week the “head honcho” came for a few days and we put together as much as we could, and thankfully things seem to be coming together nicely. I’m really excited about it; the speakers/organizers are all amazing people with A LOT of experience in issues of culture. I mean “written books on it” experience. So it should be good.

I think our year in Africa opened my eyes to the importance of this kind of training. We met so many western missionaries who were on the verge of calling it quits because of some basic cultural issues, and we also met many Africans who would be very happy if they did! It’s a big issue and with the rise of Christianity in the global south, it’s only going to get bigger. Most organizations, denominations, and agencies are finding that multicultural teams are becoming the norm, not the exception. This is certainly true in YWAM; 60% of our staff is non-western-including leadership. I’ve never been on a team that wasn’t multicultural. And let me tell you, without some basic understanding of how different cultures approach leadership, decision-making, authority, respect, power, food, relationship, clothing, family, etc; conflict is inevitable. Some very simple principles and training can go a long way in keeping teams on the field. Training like this. Ok just kidding-I don’t think Michael Scott will be making an appearance at the workshop!

In other news,”toot” as we’ve been calling him, turned five months. He’s been in fine form all week; we had to get our pictures take for immigration and this is the face he made:

In his jammers: