Lesslie Newbiggin, the father of modern missiology, was a British man who lived much of his life as a missionary in India. He experienced firsthand the difficulties of missionaries who are trying to preach the gospel in a culture different from their own. He wrote about the interesting dance that takes place when the missionaries’ converts grow up and begin to notice that some habits they picked up from the missionaries are not mandated by the Bible but reflect the idiosyncracies of the missionaries’ own culture. Newbiggin suggested that when this occurs, it is not the task of the missionaries to change and adapt their ways to the mission field. Rather, it is the task of the *converts* to go beyond what they learned from the missionaries, to look at the Bible with fresh eyes, and to contextualize the gospel in their own native culture. And it is the task of the missionaries to allow the converts to do this without making them feel disloyal and disobedient.

The challenge that we face right now in UBF is how to change in appropriate ways without causing unnecessary conflict and disunity among our members. Some people don’t like to talk about cultural issues because they make us uncomfortable, because talking about it seems to pit Koreans and Americans against each other. I do not want to stir up disunity. Rather, I want to foster the kind of unity among us that is realistic about the differences between cultures yet allows us to be one because we are all in Christ.

We shouldn’t gloss over the fact that Korean and North American cultures are different. These differences are obvious and strongly felt by all of us whether we talk about them or not. Americans like myself who have remained in UBF for a long time (in my case, nearly 30 years) have done so by adapting ourselves to the cultural expectations and mannerisms of the missionaries. We allowed ourselves to become Koreanized, even as the missionaries were struggling to adapt to American ways. Now that this ministry has grown and matured, it is time for us to discuss this among ourselves and make some conscious, intentional decisions about which practices we will keep and which ones we will change. This is taking place in UBF chapters at the local level, some more than others, and this creates some tension and awkwardness when our chapters get together at conferences. By talking about these things on UBFriends and elsewhere, I hope that our members can learn from one another and gain new perspectives so that we can retain our unity while necessary changes occur.

*Great job with the website! I still consider myself new to UBF (I’ve been attending for about 2 years), but this will be a great tool to unite the body of Christ!

For instance when I got to grad school, I had to get used to words like theoretical framework, epistemology, unpacking concepts, seeing things through different lenses, paradigms, and so on. My advisor had to tell me about the culture I was entering and how I needed to learn the terms and speech patterns. Entering any established culture would be the same.

I liken our terms to this. While I think we need to drop many of them, it is not abnormal for each culture to contain very specific terms that only members understand. For some reason, however, ours just comes off a little weirder than others, not sure why…

I see where you’re coming from. The situation may be, “I can’t do ministry with this person anymore. I’m going to ‘pioneer’ a new one.” Being upfront about the split is healthier, I agree. That’s church history for you.

Ben, the word “pioneering” has unfortunately a very negative connotation for some people i know. This word has also been used in an unfortunate way when the reason of “pioneering” was in fact a church split. In my opinion, it would be healthier and more honest to say that there has been church division rather than saying that family XYZ went out to pioneer.

I enjoy having those kinds of conversations because I don’t have to take the time to explain every last detail, and there is a sense of belonging. But from an outside viewpoint, such conversations can be viewed as arrogant and exclusive. In a religious setting, an “ism”-filled conversation can be misinterpreted and misused, and often seems mysterious or even dangerous.

I think the area most sensitive to this is in ministry is in delivering a Sunday message (er.. I mean sogam… I mean sermon).