Cross Cultural Considerations For Missionaries-Part Two

by Executive Director John David Smith

Previously, we looked at individualism as a cultural issue for missionaries going from the West to other cultures of the world. This month we will look at materialism/consumerism. 

Consumerism is the belief that “stuff” can ultimately mark our identity and measure our self-worth. In its practical outflow, consumerism can be a plan of salvation for people. Consumerism allows us to veil our real need and purposes while “stuff” and the endless pursuit of more stuff becomes the temporary anesthetic to the real source of our pain or the distraction from our purpose. 

We know this false friend from our own lives, but it can also deeply influence churches that have an unhealthy identity based on numbers and buildings. Upon arriving in West Africa as a missionary, I was amazed to learn that materialism/consumerism was not only a Western issue. In the West, we tend to worship the things we have and the next things we desire. In developing countries, they worship stuff they do not have believing that it will “save” them. 

Missionaries transitioning from an affluent reality to a survival context usually struggle mightily at first to simplify their lives and to redirect their object of worship from stuff to Christ. Our ChangeMakers remind us that the pain of people who need the gospel and our purposes demand that we not be consumed by our consumerism. 

May God grant us the clear understanding that we have been blessed to be a blessing!