I remember the first time I ordered french fries after moving to Turkey. They came on a plate smothered in a huge pile of white yogurt. Yogurt?! As I grudgingly pulled these salty, oily sticks out from beneath the avalanche of yogurt and ate them, I couldn’t help but wish for some ketchup, like in my homeland. I asked the man why he had put yogurt on my french fries. “They are better that way,” he replied.

Now I think I understand why printed on every yogurt container in the States are the words “Live Cultures.” Yes, yogurt is a very cultural thing!

I watched the cook in that same restaurant come out from behind the counter to pick up and adore my one-year-old boy, pinching his cheeks. This scenario of cheek pinching had happened a dozen times since my arrival. I had not just moved to a place with different eating habits, but a place with a “living culture.”

In a living culture, it very much matters how people interact. How they sit, how they greet, and how they do things all convey meaning.

Moving into a living culture is like taking a walk through a living forest. If you are observant, oh, the wonders you will see! In a living forest there are bright ferns, flowers, fawns, the tracks of wild pigs, and beetles on tiny twigs. It’s all there to see, but only if you are looking and listening. Otherwise the forest is just a bunch of trees.

Similarly, there is much to see and hear in the Middle East and Asia, if you look carefully. To the non-observant, it’s just a crowded city with strange foods and different ways of doing things. However, every good tentmaker is part anthropologist, as their real objective is connecting with people. Remember, culture is about people, not things. Tourists go to see things. Tentmakers go for the people.

Because you must first understand people before you can impact their lives, I train tentmakers to be observant. “Don’t let your mind get so full of schedules and plans that you do not hear and profoundly reflect on all the cultural peculiarities happening around you. Each oddity of culture is a piece of the ecosystem that drives the prevailing worldview. That worldview is the thing that has kept your people group ignoring Christ, and understanding it will be your key to their hearts.”

Yes, you find culture on the bus and at business meetings, dinner appointments and parties. Living culture is everywhere. So I challenge our tentmakers: “When you go to a person’s home, do you notice where the men sit? Who greets whom and how? What do the guests bring with them? What is said? What is intentionally not said? In what order do things happen? What do the young people do? What do the elderly do? What is valued here? What is feared here? How do they understand death? What do they think of the unseen world? The who, what and where questions will lead you to discover the culture. The why questions will lead you to discover the worldview. The way people think is all wrapped up in these behaviors like noodles wound around a pair of chopsticks.”

All these cultural behaviors can be odd to a Westerner. Some expats may write them off, saying, “Well, it isn’t necessary for me to do thus and so because I am from a different culture.” That attitude is like the aluminum Coke can on the verdant forest floor. It is there, but it isn’t really contributing or appreciated.

A living culture is an ecosystem of traditions, ideas, attitudes and religious thought that works to some extent because everyone has a common appreciation of those values. Every missionary and tentmaker’s hope is to figure out how they can introduce people to Christ in this ecosystem while not treading roughshod over aspects that, though different, are not innately averse to the gospel.

Medical science tells us that the live cultures in yogurt are good for us. I have found living in a “live culture” society to be healthy for me, too. It enhanced my sense of wonder and helped me adjust my own worldview and better appreciate which parts of it belong to heaven’s culture and which were simply part of my upbringing.

Tentmakers are not given the long arduous training that AFM career missionaries receive over a long Michigan summer. Rather, their secular employers are focused on supplying their workers (our tentmakers) with job training. The employer isn’t thinking about helping their new foreign employee understand an Islamic or Communist worldview! No, the employer is more interested in their job performance. Certainly they don’t think of them as Adventist missionaries! For this reason, tentmakers value GoTential’s mentoring and coaching as they work and minister far from home.

Many thanks to those who are investing in GoTential’s efforts to raise up Adventist tentmakers. I wish I could take you out for a plate of french fries and yogurt and tell you all that God is doing through our tentmakers around the world!

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