“You can’t work with the Thai church.”
“They’re lazy, they don’t show up on time, and they lie to you by saying they’ll do something and then not do it.”
This was the repeated sentiment we heard from experienced missionaries during our early years in Thailand. We had learned that most CPMs are started by in/near culture believers, so we wanted to find Thai believers with a vision for multiplying disciples.
We sought out long-time workers in Thailand to learn how to approach this. But over and over, we heard: don’t even try. It won’t work. It’s too hard. Just do it yourself.
At the same time, we began visiting local Thai churches that seemed to carry a vision for disciple-making and church planting. We met vibrant, growing, Thai-led churches with goals like planting 100 churches or starting groups in every province in their region. And to our surprise, they warmly welcomed us to learn from them and partner together.
Over the last 12 years on the field, we’ve continued to hear that working with the local church is too difficult for cross-cultural missionaries — not just in Thailand, but in many places around the world. Yet by God’s grace, our experience has been marked by deep partnership and friendship with our Thai brothers and sisters. We also know many CPM practitioners who feel the same way, some even brought to tears when speaking about their local partners and friends.
So why is there such a massive gap between these experiences? Why do some cross-cultural workers grow skeptical or even bitter toward local believers, while others develop rich, life-giving relationships?
We believe one big reason lies with ethnocentrism. It’s one of the most sinister and destructive barriers for cross-cultural workers that sabotages their desire to have an impact among the fields they’re called to.
It affects not only their relationship with local believers, but their relationship with the local culture, their thriving on the field, and ultimately their long-term perseverance in their calling.
In this post, we’ll look at what ethnocentrism is, how the Bible addresses it, and ways we can reflect on our own ethnocentrism. In our next post, we’ll discuss how ethnocentrism affects your vision and practical ways you can combat it.
What is Ethnocentrism?
Ethnocentrism is defined as “the tendency to evaluate other cultures based on the standards and values of one’s own culture, often leading to perceptions of superiority.”
When a goer moves overseas, it’s an extremely jarring experience. The language, climate, foods, traditions, expectations, and social dynamics can be completely different from the place you grew up. For many goers, there can be an initial honeymoon phase where they’re excited to learn and experience many new things. But after a few months, the ongoing feelings of confusion, of homesickness, of not fitting in can start to impact you. You get tired of being stared at on the street, being laughed at when you try to speak the local language, and you just want a dang burger instead of this funky tasting mystery meat.
Thoughts of judgment and criticism start creeping in:
“Why can’t they just do it the way we do it at home? It’s so much better that way.”
“Why are people here so dishonest? Why can’t they just tell it to me straight?”
“Why is this thing so weird? Why can’t it just be normal?”
All missionaries have had thoughts like these, including myself and those on our team. Naturally, in an attempt to assuage the confusion we experience, we begin to measure things in our host culture against our home culture. The criticisms that we heard from experienced missionaries in Thailand assumed that certain cultural values in the West, like being hard-working, punctual, and communicating directly, are the cultural standards in Thailand. They aren’t! But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Without an understanding of ethnocentrism, cross-cultural workers can become frustrated, bitter, and judgmental against the very culture and people they came to serve. And unfortunately, it’s not just an early season culture shock thing for many people. We’ve met several decade-plus missionaries who still say things like, “I honestly hate everything about this country but I guess we’re supposed to be here.”
Dr. Craig Ott in Teaching and Learning Across Cultures writes that “ethnocentrism not only can blind one to the beauty of other cultures but can also lead to condescending attitudes that block meaningful relationships with others and the ability to learn from them. In the worst case, it can foster racism and prejudice.”
The Lawnmower
In a pre-field cultural training that Jenn and I attended, the facilitator explained that the different places we were going to would have different cultural values and to be wary of ethnocentrism. To illustrate this, he told a story of his time in Indonesia where a neighbor asked to borrow a lawnmower. But after the neighbor used it, he kept the lawnmower in his own garage. After a couple of weeks, the facilitator, somewhat annoyed, finally asked the neighbor for his lawnmower back.
The neighbor said, “Of course!” When the facilitator asked the neighbor why he had not returned his lawnmower several weeks after using it, the neighbor explained, “In our culture, since we are part of the same neighborhood, it means we are part of the same community. What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine! I was just keeping the lawnmower in my garage until you needed it back, but you could have asked for it anytime!”
The facilitator posed a question to the group of future missionaries: did my neighbor steal my lawnmower? Jenn and I looked at each other and both thought – “of course not, the neighbor was just explaining communal culture. The facilitator even just explicitly said so.”
But the entire class answered in an uproar: “Yes! He stole it! He should’ve given it back immediately because it’s your personal property!” Some even aggressively contended that the facilitator should have called the police on the neighbor for theft.
We were shocked. Not only that the explicitly explained difference in cultural values went over everyone’s head, but also at the anger and disbelief that was in the response.
As we’ve reflected on this interaction, we’ve realized that the angry energy in the class’ response was because they had made a cultural misunderstanding into a moral issue. It was morally wrong that the neighbor did not return the lawnmower because of Americans’ high value of individuality and personal ownership. But the neighbor did not see it that way at all because of his own more collectivist cultural lens.
The lawnmower is a somewhat trivial example, but still such a small issue resulted in such a strong response from the group. We have seen missionaries, including ourselves, make this ethnocentric mistake in much higher stakes situations. We do this in how we train and model expressions of church, how we discuss theology, how we choose leaders, how we evaluate moral and discipleship issues. We measure local believers against our cultural interpretation of Scripture, instead of looking at how Scripture speaks into the local context.
Ethnocentrism and Paternalism in Missions History
There are countless examples of ethnocentrism, paternalism, and even cultural imperialism throughout missions history. Entire books, courses, and degree programs have been devoted to these topics, so we won’t try to cover them in depth here.
But we do want to briefly acknowledge how the painful parts of missions history can compound the problems that come with ethnocentrism today. We’re also troubled by how many workers are unaware of the historical dynamics in the places they serve, and how often the same mistakes continue to be repeated.
Paternalism “occurs when missionaries and their sending churches and agencies consciously or unconsciously assume that they possess superior knowledge, experience, and skills and, consequently, exert control over local Christians and their leaders. This control is almost always exerted through financial arrangements and the implicit authority of money.”
Missions history is littered with examples of paternalism, racism, and cultural imperialism (the imposition by a dominant community of its own culture onto another community) that led to destructive consequences for the name of Jesus around the world. In the most extreme cases, some missionaries had a view that they were not only bringing the gospel, but Western civilization to the “savage” or “heathens” in other parts of the world. They viewed non-Western cultures and peoples as inferior, and thought that planting churches meant dismantling the local culture. Is it any wonder that in many unreached places in the world, Christianity has a negative reputation and is seen as a Western, foreign religion?
Missionaries today need to be aware of what previous generations of workers have done, both good and bad, and in some cases, explicitly acknowledge the negative impact that has come with paternalism and imperialism. It’s especially important for those of us from the West to guard against a “Western savior complex” – the assumption that we are coming to rescue people who are helpless without us. Jesus is the Savior, not us. We should be aware of where he is working and join in that, which often is through the existing local church!
How the Bible Addresses Ethnocentrism
One of my favorite Bible studies is comparing and contrasting Jesus’ interactions with Gentiles and with Jewish religious leaders. I might post a blog on this topic in the future but I’d encourage you to study this if you haven’t!
The story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 is the clearest example of how Jesus addresses ethnocentrism. When challenged by a lawyer about how to inherit eternal life, Jesus answers with the Great Commandment: love God and love your neighbor. And the lawyer, perhaps looking for a loophole to focus his “love” on those he prefers, replies, “who is my neighbor?”
And Jesus tells of a man beaten and left for dead, passed on by supposedly holy leaders, a priest and a Levite. But a Samaritan – avoided, judged, hated by the Jews – showed compassion to the man, cared for him, sacrificed his own resources, and showed mercy. The ultimate example of obedience to the Great Commandment was a person not just from a different culture, but a culture that the Jews hated.
Jesus’ example is love, humility, and compassion towards those from different cultures. He left heaven’s culture to walk on the earth as a Jewish man and make a way for all cultures to receive grace through the Cross. He condemns and rejects ethnocentrism by declaring God’s heart for all nations and explicitly showing his love towards non-Jewish people. The gospels are full of examples of this: the salvation for the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), the grace for the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7), the faith of the Roman centurion to name just a few.
Paul also embodies an anti-ethnocentric posture: “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings” (1 Cor. 9:22-23). He is willing to lay down his own values, preferences, and even rights to be a minister to the Gentiles.
Scripture culminates in Revelation 7, perhaps the most anti-ethnocentric passage in the Bible, where the multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language is worshipping around the throne of God. There is no higher or lower culture, no better or worse cultural values – there are only the people rescued by Jesus clothed in white robes. And yet, the peoples still preserve their cultural identity – representatives from every culture are in the new heaven and the new earth but redeemed perfectly.
Reflection: Have I Been Ethnocentric?
If we are honest with ourselves for a moment, whether from our upbringing, personal experiences, or plain ignorance, there are people from other cultures that we instinctively judge, feel superior to, dislike, or even hate. We know missionaries that will travel half the world away to serve another culture but speak disparagingly and condescendingly about people of another skin color in a different part of their own hometown.
I was brought up to ignorantly fear black people and hate Japanese people for what they did historically in China, and believe that ethnic Chinese people were somehow superior to all others. I’ve had bitterness in my heart from racist experiences with white people. It took years of seeing God’s heart in Scripture and repenting, befriending people from different cultures, learning different perspectives, and even living in another country to unlearn these prejudices from my upbringing and my sinful heart.
Reflecting on our own ethnocentrism can be challenging because our cultural values are deeply tied to our cultural identity and therefore our personal identity. It also requires us to be honest with our own motivations in serving overseas. It can be overwhelming to discover and admit pride, sin, or a sense of superiority towards other cultures, perhaps even the people God has called us to serve.
Our encouragement is this – honest reflection about our ethnocentrism is necessary and it is worth doing. At best, we have some blind spots that can be removed to help us be more loving and effective in our calling. At worst, there are some deeply rooted and sinful perspectives that we didn’t even know we had and they are directly sabotaging what we are trying to accomplish in serving across cultures.
The good news of the gospel is that Jesus knows our hearts and loves us, even if we aren’t aware of these sins or haven’t reconciled them yet.
As you reflect on the questions below, try to come before God with openness, honesty, and humility. Come in a posture of surrender and repentance. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal hidden assumptions, pride, fear, or bitterness in your heart. Allow God to heal and change your heart! From that, we believe you will not only become a greater servant to the people you’re called to, but become more like Christ in his love for all peoples.
Reflection Questions
- What kinds of people or behaviors are you quickest to judge? What standards are you using to judge them?
- Are there ways you subtly view local believers as less capable, less mature, or less trustworthy than believers from your own culture? How do you react when local believers do something differently than you would?
- Have past wounds, stereotypes, or experiences shaped the way you see certain cultures or ethnicities?
- In what ways might pride, superiority, control, or a “savior mentality” be affecting your ministry?
- Where are you failing to have the Philippians 2 posture of considering others more significant than yourself?