Red Twin and I have been talking about contextualisation: the necessity and complication of putting off your own culture to live in another. It’s always a compromise. Everyone draws the line somewhere different. But it’s more complex than simply working out what you’re comfortable with. What do those in your current country think? For […]
Most of my conversations these days centre around poos, sleep, milk and commenting on body parts (“Oh, look at your little hands!”). Sometimes I graduate to looking at what Elliot’s looking at – usually the lamp or the vertical blinds. Though there’s lots to learn, life with an infant isn’t […]
I believe in contextualisation, of putting off my own cultural baggage to take up another culture. I believe in it as an act of love, because it communicates the dignity of that culture and an act of humility, because it doesn’t assume that my culture is superior. People like Roberto […]
This weekend, The Australian Magazine ran a piece called JC and the Cool Gang. It’s about how Christianity, especially of the Pentecostal variety, might not be that daggy after all. The story features Erica and Jim Bartle: The almost impossibly beautiful 20-something couple live in Queensland’s Mt Tamborine, in the […]
In my last post, I highlighted one of the missiological issues that we will face if we go to Dodoma: language. Another issues is where we will live. In the past (and sometimes the present) missionaries have been notorious for living in big houses, separate from the people they’re trying […]
One of the most striking things about Tanzania is the incredible poverty of its people. Now, you expect that when you go to Africa – I’d seen enough World Vision appeals that the Tanzanian countryside didn’t shock me, sad though it was. Here’s what was surprising: the scorn expressed by […]
We recently had a look at contextualisation with David Williams (spotted here). In this post, I want to raise further questions about how we go about crossing cultures…
Meet Jesus at uni 