Media Missionary Focus

Inside The Global Culture, But Outside The Box

The way that a “world culture” is increasingly emerging never ceases to amaze me.

I am writing from Manila in the Philippines. Having had such a close relationship with the United States, English is widely used. So despite not speaking the local dialect of Taglog, I am still able to easily get around and do pretty much anything I need to do. So yesterday and today (Saturday and Sunday), I pretty much spent my time walking around different areas of the city, going through malls and stores and things.

A few weeks ago I was doing something very similar in New York City. And aside from the make of cars and the type of plants around, things weren’t that terribly different. Many of the store chains are identical, the product brands are mostly the same, and what is popular, especially with young people is pretty much the same.

I grabbed a taxi back to the guest house I am staying at, and the taxi driver and I started talking. His daughter is in the process of moving to New Jersey to work as a nurse. People move from country to country almost as easily as they once moved from state to state.

I got back to the guest house and turned on the TV. Along with the BBC, CNN, ESPN, MTV, and HBO, they also have various Chinese, Japanese, German and Korean language channels. But I turned on a Hong Kong based channel that features programs from the major TV networks in the USA and Great Britain.

Conversely, with so much of culture spreading beyond borders to create a unified world culture of sorts, this has also led to people who would have been considered “fringe” linking together to form numerous niche’ cultures. There is the computer geek culture, the various music cultures (grunge, goth, heavy metal, alternative, country, etc.), and the various sports cultures (soccer, baseball, basketball, etc.), just to name a few. And members of each of these groups can be found in almost any country across the world.

So, how does an emerging global culture impact world missions? Really it’s more about how these world changes affect the church as a whole. It’s about change, and how we deal with it. The real key to being able to ride the waves of change, rather than being swamped and buried by them, is to be willing to think outside the box in terms of method, while holding to content that is firmly grounded in the good news of salvation and new life in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

Yeah, I know; it sounds like I am just regurgitating the latest spiritual catch phrases. But no matter how much lip service we give to these concepts, putting them into practice is a very difficult thing. I hear our leadership talking about having a vision for transformation, yet, by the time the various initiatives and ideas get through the various processes to implement them, they move from being outside the box to being indistinguishable from the box itself. Bureaucracy sucks the life out of these new ideas until they are still born as some new program that is sneered at from the rank and file and derided as another meaningless program or name change.

So how do we keep from being a part of the problem, and instead become a part of the solution? I don’t have all the answers. I wish I did. But what we are doing is trying to niche’ our ministry and our support base.

In terms of our ministry, we are helping to provide a very specialized skills and resources to the church and the missionary body. Specifically that means producing audio and video tools that help with evangelism, discipleship, fund raising and recruiting. In addition we work with the niche’ sub culture of creative people involved in audio and video production in Cambodia, to give leadership and personal discipleship to them.

In terms of our support base, we are trying to tie in more specifically with those who are at home with computers, iPods, and those who want a hands on, day to day connection with missionaries over seas. We are trying new things, like this blog, and will soon be adding podcasting and V-blogs to an redesigned web-page.

Ultimately we play inside the rules of Assemblies of God World Missions, but instead of sitting back and relying on those things that they have done for ministry and support over the years, we are looking for new opportunities for ministry and new ways to connect with our supporters in the States.

But we don’t have all the answers. Not even close. All these things are just IDEAS at this point. Will they work? I don’t know. Ultimately, it’s not about any of these ideas, it’s about God moving by His Spirit. We do what we can, but we trust God to supply for our needs, and to it is God who moves on peoples hearts and changes their lives, not because of what we do, but in spite of what we do.

If you have any outside the box ideas for ministry to the Cambodian people, or for connecting to our supporters, we would love to hear them!

posted by Troy In Cambodia @ 1:13 PM