What Does it Mean to Think Like a Missionary?

Becoming a missionary requires one to become as fluent in the linguistic and cultural reality as possible. It means we know how to express a group’s hopes, objections, fears, and beliefs so well that they feel they couldn’t express it better themselves. A missionary adapts to a culture’s understanding of honor and shame, poverty and prosperity, laws and rules, peace and violence, good and evil, family structure, gestures, and body language, and the acceptance, understanding, and interpretation of Scripture. This means that he actively listens to the questions and gives an adequate answer in return. To think like a missionary means we must shed our personal preferences and be determined to live with a bit of discomfort. We must leave behind some of those things we hold dear to reach a community or a group of people we are learning to become familiar with. 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 becomes the missionary mantra.