Learning & Understanding

[Taliya]

Duane Elmer is so right that if we try to serve in a different culture the way we understand servanthood in our own culture, it wont be effective and we’ll be “nice oppressors at best.” It is so important to learn and understand culture to inform how you should serve, and how servanthood is received. His list of the pilgrimage of servanthood makes a lot of sense backwards; you cannot serve someone you don’t understand, you cannot understand someone you haven’t learned about/from, and that learning doesn’t happen without trust which wont come unless theres openness and acceptance present in the relationship. Understanding someones culture must come from a place of teachability and humility, to know assume that you can learn about how to best serve people on your own, but you need to learn from the local people you want to serve. Having openness to understand their culture will help with that so much! I will be practicing this by asking questions and withholding judgment about why someone with a different cultural background does certain things differently. Rather than thinking and arguing that the way I do it makes more sense, I want to understand the reasons behind their behaviour/beliefs.