Why Us?

Why Us? Surely there is a better fit to do this ministry, right? Why would a couple moving half-way around the world, to a culture that they never been before, be ideal candidates? If we were moving to Germany, wouldn’t it make sense that a local German would have loads more qualifications and more of a reason to be there? How are we to share the Good News with people when we don’t even know what Good News sounds like to these people!?!

These are all good questions! There are parts of it that are true, I believe that the longer a person is in a community, the more authority that person has in that community. It can take years, perhaps decades to “win the right to be heard” in one’s community, especially in a transient city where people come and go every couple of months. Trust is hard to earn. It can seem like in order to be successful in a new area it will take many years.

However…

Because we are going to working alongside International Schools serving Third Culture Kids*, this logic gets turned upside down. By moving away from our own country, we are identifying with the people that we are serving. In fact, just our sheer action of living in a foreign place - just like most of the kids in these International Schools, gives us a way to relate to, empathize with, and endure along-side. Meg and I are putting ourselves in a position to become like the population we are trying to serve. This gives us a leg up on the local German as mentioned above. Although we are not third-culture kids and can’t completely put ourselves in the lives of third-culture teenagers, we believe that by becoming more like our community it will allow us to connect. To me it reminds me of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 9:20-23:

“Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!” The Message

This framework gives us great comfort, as soon as the plane touches down on the runway in Munich, we gain a way to relate to the students we are serving. Don’t worry though, we will still buy lederhosen to fit in with everyone else.

*“Third culture kids have a unique place in any society to which they belong. Theirs is a confusing and quite often debilitative condition. They are confronted with cultural walls or pitfalls at every turn. Unable to completely relate to their parent's culture and yet at the same time labelled as "different" from the mainstream culture they are encouraged to belong to, they are basically cut adrift and left to float in a sort of "twilight zone" state. They form a cultural hybrid, a blend of cultures that can be interesting, but also confusing and frustrating to them.” — Nick Voci, The Vancouver Sun, 22 Apr. 1994