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Pioneering Cross-cultural Curriculum

John Taylor, Ukraine

One of the greatest challenges the North American missionary faces is to avoid transplanting Western methods and assumptions onto his adopted culture. Different cultures require different approaches, and this is no less true with leadership training.

Most ABWE theological educators are stretched for time, doubling as church planters or engaged in other local church ministries. Little time is left for such time-consuming tasks as curriculum development and writing courses. For many, the temptation exists to simply “cut and paste” a curriculum from one of the many good theological schools in North America. After all, why “reinvent the wheel”?

This approach to leadership training on the mission field results in nationals who are well prepared to serve in the missionary’s culture, but who lack the knowledge, skills, and character necessary to be effective in their own culture. The missionary’s goal is to develop workers for the national church, and yet the students return to their churches ill-prepared, and some are even rejected by their home churches.

How can we ensure that our theolo­gical schools are addressing the real needs of local churches in our adopted cultures? One approach is to ask the national church leaders what they need.

Over the past three years, God has given ABWE missionaries around the world the privilege of holding roundtable meetings, sitting down with our partners to get their input. From South America to South Africa, the Philippines to Portugal, and Bangladesh to West Africa, national partners have been invited to roundtables to address one important question: what do Christian workers need to know and be able to do well to be effective in ministry in their cultures?

The answers were as varied as the cultures represented. South Africans stressed the need for a broad liberal arts education, while West Africans recognized the need to deal with initiation rites and taboos. Ukrainian pastors are expected to meet the material needs of the congregation while working to support themselves.

Doug Kreeger organized a roundtable in Chile in December 2003. He writes that all of the seventeen partners who gathered “tremendously appreciated being involved in the process.” They also provided helpful input in understanding the challenges of serving in Latin America, such as the need to dialogue with educated people and to participate in social activities within the community.

Leaders in Lima, Peru, gather around the
table to choose core competencies
and culture-specific competencies.

Leaders from various church associations in Russia, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine met in Kiev, Ukraine for two days in September 2003 to develop a list of competencies for their church workers, based on their understanding of Scripture, history, and post-Soviet culture. That list has served as the building block for the curriculum of the Church Ministries Institute in Odessa, Ukraine, which develops church leaders across Eurasia.

Although each roundtable recognized needs unique to each particular culture, there were some competencies that were cross-cultural. For example, church leaders around the world recognize the need to integrate Bible knowledge with life and ministry, to practice evangelism, to model a godly life, and to communicate effectively. ABWE educators are in the process of converting these cross-cultural competencies into a “core” curriculum, which can be used as a starting point to develop international programs, to identify culturally-neutral courses that can be shared by schools in different countries, and to serve as a springboard for new schools beginning the process of curriculum development.

Because different cultures require different approaches, facilitating global church planting and missions movements requires a cross-cultural approach to curriculum design. As one missionary in Romania commented, “This roundtable was the most profitable event I have ever planned with national partners, because they felt they were being listened to, and that they were playing a vital role in determining the way future Romanian church leaders were going to be trained.”

We thank God for the valuable input of our national partners across the globe in this ongoing project, as together we seek to better prepare a new wave of church leaders for His glory. 

John Taylor is the president of the Church Ministries Institute in Odessa, Ukraine.