Understanding Culture

Welcome to the “Understanding Culture” course!

As followers of Christ engaged in global missions, we recognize the vital importance of cultural competency in our service to others. Throughout this course, we will explore the competency of “Recognizing Cultural Differences” to equip you for cross-cultural engagement.

By delving into the differences between “hot” and “cold” cultures, as explained in the insightful book Foreign to Familiar, we’ll gain valuable insights into navigating diverse cultural settings. We’ll also explore the cultural worldviews of “honour-shame,” “power-fear,” and “guilt-innocence” cultures, as highlighted in The 3D Gospel, enabling us to understand and relate to others from different perspectives. Furthermore, we’ll assess our personal Cultural Intelligence (CQ) through the CQ Pro Assessment tool, identifying potential blind spots and areas for growth.

In the second lesson, we will learn how servanthood is essential for cross-cultural missions, and we will explore the six-step progression from “openness” to “servanthood” outlined by Duane Elmer in his book Cross-Cultural Servanthood. We will seek to imitate Jesus as servant and follow him as Lord.

In the final lesson, we will learn about how the gospel is not culture-free, but it does transcend culture. When sharing the gospel with others, we should be careful not to impose our own cultural baggage onto it, but we should also be willing to adapt it to different cultures. This idea is called “Contextualizing the Gospel.” We will also discuss how to “incarnate the gospel” by drawing on Sherwood Lingenfelter’s book Ministering Cross-Culturally: A Model for Effective Personal Relationships, which describes what it means to become “150% persons,” who embrace their own culture while also being open to others. Finally, we will consider what sacrifices are necessary for the sake of the gospel by looking at the book We Died Before We Came Here: A True Story of Sacrifice and Hope by Emily Foreman.

Course Format and Assessment:

There are three lessons in the course and three topics within each lesson. Each topic contains a discussion question that is set up in forum format. Please respond to each question in paragraph format and respond to others where appropriate. We want to cultivate a communal learning environment and If you respond to other’s answers, it is more likely they will do the same for you later on.

Each lesson is followed by a short quiz that will help you review the material. The quizzes will then culminate with an exam at the end of each course, which will combine the quizzes into one comprehensive review of the material for the course.

Time Commitment:

The time investment for each course may vary from person to person, but we estimate that if you read/watch all of the assigned material it will take somewhere between 10-20 hours per lesson and 30-60 hours to complete the course.

Potential Costs for Resources:

We have done our best, where possible, to only include books from the Scribd library. Of course, Scribd may choose to change the selection in their library at any time. When we cannot link to a book in Scribd we link to it in Amazon or some other source. The following table outlines the main costs associated with this course (last updated August, 2023):

Welcome to Understanding Culture

Throughout this course, we will do our best to foster a heart of cultural humility and compassion, reflecting Christ’s love as we engage with diverse cultures around the world. Let this journey of discovery and growth ignite a passion for transformative cross-cultural ministry, informed by Jesus, the one who left his heavenly home to show us what God is like. Welcome to this exploration of understanding culture!