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The Missionary Family: Re-entry Realities for Third Culture Kids

By Russell E. Ebersole, Jr.

I have to go home? Really? For an eighteen–year-old MK who has lived most of his life in the throbbing metropolis of São Paulo, Brazil, or in the sparsely populated mountains of Papua New Guinea, returning to North America to begin college is hardly like coming home. He is a Third Culture Kid (TCK), and apart from several furlough years, he has never lived in this land. He is neither fish nor fowl—not fully a part of either country but a blending of the two.

Dr. Ruth Hill Useem, the social scientist who coined the term third culture, defined it as the lifestyle “created, shared, and learned” by those who are from one culture and are in the process of relating to another. The kinds of experiences and the way of life shared by missionaries and their children is the third culture.

When it is time to start college, a TCK says goodbye to all that is familiar to him—family, friends, culture, language—and confronts what can be so intimidating to any of us—the different, strange, and unknown. He experiences re-entry shock with all of its ramifications, and he will probably ask himself the question, where do I really belong?

Any change is difficult, especially when we are not expecting it. A TCK may assume that things will be the same as when he last visited four years ago when in reality, there have been multiple changes. Friends and relatives may have moved, and those who did not may be living different lifestyles. His sending church may have a new pastor and perhaps a different form of worship. Nothing seems familiar, and he doesn’t feel like he belongs. He misses his real home on the mission field and longs to be there.

A TCK often has trouble breaking into a new peer group and finding his niche in college. He wonders why no one seems interested in hearing of the exotic experiences that mean so much to him. His college friends couldn’t care less about the adventures he wants to share with them, and nobody seems to care; nobody really understands.

It was so different back “home.” There he was recognized, even looked up to and admired by many—a big fish in a little pond. Now the opposite is true, and the comparison is painful, hurting his ego and wounding his self-esteem.

This somber picture is certainly not true in every detail for all TCKs. But re-entry realities do present unique challenges and difficulties for every young person leaving the land they have come to love and accept as home.     

How important it is for each one to fix his eyes on Jesus who is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). When everything around them is changing, TCKs must be assured in their hearts that their sovereign God is the One who never changes (Malachi 3:6).      

In the next article, I’ll share some practical ways that God’s people can help and encourage TCKs in their times of special need.