A Year of Missions in Taiwan - Part 2

< PART 1
So in Part 1 of my reflection on this past year in Taiwan, I compared this year with my previous year spent doing missions here, almost 7 years ago, and outlined some of the significant differences.

In Part 2, I want to look at whether a few of the lessons I learned over the past year could be profitable for other new missionaries going onto the field or thinking about doing so.

One could argue that, as a new missionary myself, I'm hardly qualified to give out advice. Perhaps, but I would argue instead that someone has recently been through the struggles you are undertaking or about to undertake can be more helpful than someone who experienced them long ago. One of my best language teachers in seminary was a (comparatively) young adjunct professor. She had written no famous books, and had zero name recognition even in some other departments of the same seminary, but she'd learned Greek recently enough that she remembered how to teach it to students who hadn't studied it before. My much more venerable and revered Hebrew professor, despite being a gentleman and a noteworthy scholar, and wonderful man of God, was nearly unable to teach Hebrew to us, because he simply couldn't reach back 5 decades to remember what it was like to not know Hebrew.

So I do this not from the prideful assumption that I have insights others don't, but from the perspective of wanting to share things I wish I had known a year or two ago. It's not comprehensive by any means; most major missions organizations these days will give you a lot of helpful information and training.
These are just a few things I've learned along the way.

I. Preparing for the Field

1. Long-term Network Building

A. If possible, start with a firm foundation

I am not with a denominational organization, some of which will simply cover most or all of your financial needs directly. (Though I'm given to understand this is becoming less common) That meant I have been responsible for building and maintaining my own support network. Though at times that was socially exhausting to the point of literal sickness (not illness) for an introvert like me, it was a crucially important experience as well, and a blessed one. God taught me a lot through developing those relationships with people and churches.

A missions-minded sending church is a huge blessing...
From the missions conference last year

I was very grateful to have a sending church that had a focus on global missions in its very DNA from the beginning, and to have spent many years there. So when I made the decision to become a full-time missionary, I began with a financial and spiritual support base which many new missionaries do not have. Also, and I don't mean this cynically, large churches simply tend to have more resources. Don't treat them like cash cows, but as collaborative ministry opportunities. Asking whether your intended ministry fits within their mission vision never hurts, and they might even give you a few minutes to share so that individual people can hear your vision for ministry and decide if they want to find out more. Finding a big church who is excited about ministry in your particular target area is great: they want to send, and you want to go.


So if you feel a calling from God for international missions, and understand Him to be leading you towards Going, I advise you to get plugged into a church that prioritizes the Great Commission. Don't bang your head against the wall of a church that doesn't think missions is important, unless you feel burdened to focus on changing the climate of that church instead of going on the field. It's very unlikely that you can do both of those things at the same time, and very likely that attempting to do so will leave you stressed and burnt out. I don't mean you have to leave your home church; I have (last I checked) three churches and another fellowship supporting me, and have enjoyed my interactions with all of them. Some are more missionally-focused than others, and some have more to do with Taiwan than others, and the combination has worked out fairly well.


B. Network inside the culture before you leave

That leads me to my second point, which is if you already know the culture you're going to, if possible try to visit and make connections at some churches with fellow believers from that culture. And not just to say hi. Try to spend visit there a few times, explain your vision for ministry in their culture, and make some friends. That may be impossible if there are no churches of that culture in your area, but you'd be surprised. I certainly was- in 2012 I didn't know there were any Chinese churches in North Alabama at all, and by the time I left for Taiwan in 2013, I'd visited three and one was helping support me.

A Chinese church I didn't know was in Alabama

One Chinese supporting church in Texas sends mission trips every year to Taiwan, so I'm able to keep in touch with them and keep serving together with them even on the other side of the world. It may not work out that way for you, but it's not unlikely that contacts you make in the US in a culture will eventually help you make contacts in that culture on the field as well. It's a small world after all.

Note: One must be cautious when visiting a new church. Having not (I assume) spent a great deal of time in your destination culture yet, there may be things going on you don't understand. Immigrant churches sometimes end up being composed of a certain subculture within a given culture, and if you come in excited about reaching people group A from country Z, you may be surprised to get a fairly hostile reception and discover that these people are indeed from country Z but are all from people group B, who were oppressed by A historically and are still quite upset about it.

In my own networking, for example the Chinese churches I visited in the US tended to be divided into Cantonese speaking, Chinese mainlanders, and Taiwanese, larger churches often having combinations of these groups, often with their own services and fellowships. So going into a Chinese church of Taiwanese people and explaining that I love Taiwan is an almost guaranteed enthusiastic welcome. Going into a Chinese mainlander church or fellowship and saying you love Taiwan and want to do missions there can get you a rather frosty reception, or people trying to convince you to go to China instead, both of which have happened to me. I also agreed to share at one church only to find that it had split from another church that was discussing whether to support me, due to disagreements, and there were still some bad feelings there. But I still shared in all of those situations, and most people were gracious and willing to listen even if they weren't interested in supporting me. Just be aware of the possibility you're not communicating what you think you are.


C. Some net-working is appropriate for fishers of men

Bad pun, sorry, but perhaps an appropriate one.
Global Missions today is an increasingly complicated venture, which I personally think is good and appropriate. The world is a complicated place, and one can't keep approaching world missions with one or two traditional paradigms and expect them to work in every situation. But even if your situation is different from mine, if you plan on tent-making on the field or already receive your support from some other source, you still need a network. Missions is not a one-way street; you can enrich and encourage the body of Christ in one place by communicating what God is doing in other places, and they can encourage and support you with prayer in your current ministry. They might even come and visit you, and get more interested in the needs of your field.

Missions is also impossible alone; missionaries are sent, and they are received. (that's true both cross-cultural missionary efforts both internationally and locally) Sending is a blessing, going is a blessing, and receiving is a blessing, and all three are necessary parts of the missionary task. Don't try to put all of it on yourself- Jesus didn't, and Paul didn't, both because the work was designed to be accomplished by many people working together to the glory of God, and also because working solo means you miss out on the chances to bless, inspire, and teach other people, let alone learning from and being inspired by them.

My final advice regarding networking is: delegate. Build a core team of people who trust you and are excited about what God is doing in your life, and ask them to help. Some people are really good at networking. They can access to other people and churches you don't, and might come up with ideas you wouldn't have thought of on your own. They'll also be informed about your plans, so if people have questions and you're not around, they can share your vision and also connect you with those people.

2. Visa Issues

And now for something completely different: the frustrating task of acquiring a travel visa.

"Were notarization procedures properly followed on the authorization form we need to begin the process
of applying for permission to begin the application permission approval process?"

I have had basically nothing but stress, trouble, and frustration in acquiring my visas for Taiwan. Others have related similar experiences, while others have expressed surprise, as their process went smoothly. And Taiwan is a very easy country to visit, it's just living here that can be tough to get permission for, partially because the stated requirements ultimately aren't the important thing. If the visa office (or someone with influence) decides you're ok, then you're good to go, even if you don't meet the stated requirements somehow. If they are suspicious about something (or want to reject your application for other reasons they aren't required to tell you, quotas or religious discrimination by the one person looking at your form or any other reason), they can simply say no and not explain. That's pretty normal for visa offices around the world; America doesn't exactly make the process easy either, because so many people want to come in legally and then stay illegally. (Yes there's lots I could say regarding that topic, but no, I'm not going there)

However, some of my missionary friends were trying to get into countries where it was not at all clear whether they'd be issued any kind of permission to enter the country whatsoever. Your target ministry area may be that kind of place, and your ability to remain there will be heavily dependent on political conditions and travel permissions for foreigners.

Some people understand this clearly. Having a paperwork disability, I confess I did not expect this portion of the process to be so troublesome or important. I was entirely focused on network building and getting ready to leave the country, when suddenly the entire process came to a crashing halt when the office decided that though I met every requirement for the visa for which I was applying, they weren't going to let me apply for it. I then spent two or three months in limbo while we figured out what to do. Well-meaning friends kept asking why I was still in America, people on the Taiwan side were confused why I hadn't arrived yet, etc. The psychological stress was considerable. I prayed a lot, and can only conclude that God had His own reasons for not allowing me to leave yet, because I missed several important events in Taiwan due to the delay.

All I want to say here is this: your visa/legal status is important and can't be taken for granted.
So my advice is simply to be aware of this, and start educating yourself early. Maybe the process will be handled by your organization, but it never hurts to understand it yourself anyway, you may find it necessary to do some things yourself, or your situation on the ground may change too abruptly for your organization to make those decisions for you. After running into all the problems, I did some googling and found other people were sharing their experience regarding visa acquisition problems (some of them because they'd been trying to do illegal things on purpose, making it more difficult for all of us...). You might find it helpful to do the same, though obviously you can't trust everything people randomly share online.

Also, make very sure the information you have is up to date. Forms can change or be updated without much notice, and using the wrong form can torpedo the whole process for these excessively bureaucratic procedures. Doing it right the first time is always safer, if possible. But our God is sovereign even over the mysterious inner workings of bureaucracies.

3. Expectations

I've written on this in previous posts, but I think it's important enough to mention here again. Expectations are impossible to entirely avoid, but they can be the source of much frustration and heartache on the field.

"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits."
   All's Well That Ends Well - William Shakespeare

My culture shock was a lot less severe my first time coming to Taiwan because I decided ahead of time I wasn't going to try to guess what things would be like, and would certainly not expect them to be like America and then complain when they weren't. I would just prepare a blank space in my mind and fill it in once I got to Taiwan. (So not "oh, that's weird," but "I see... noted.") It's impossible to prepare a totally blank space, of course; we're deeply and subtly influenced by our birth cultures and worldviews, but I believe it's a worthwhile effort.

But other expectations can be even more dangerous. Will you necessarily get along with your coworkers well? Will locals understand your unusual situation and take it into account? Will you have ways of spiritually nourishing yourself and your family without a church like you had back home?

And the most potentially upsetting expectations are the ones we don't know we have, the ones we're blind to. I wrote about "life shock" in Part 1, and that experience revealed to me some expectations I hadn't realized I'd been carrying with me this time.

In the end, I don't think it's possibly to track down and neutralize all our expectations. But I believe what we can do as believers is set our expectations instead on God's promises and truth in scripture. He who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it. In this world we will have trouble, but Christ will give us His peace. God will redeem for Himself some of every tribe, tongue, nation and people. He will never leave us nor forsake us. Those are things we can expect, that are good and right to take as given and set up as a foundation from which to live and work.

II. Arriving on the Field

1. Riding out Culture Shock

Culture shock will happen, whether you try to get used to your new culture and surroundings by the 'dip your foot in the pool' method or the cannon ball method. (If the latter, be careful you don't accidentally mess things up with people you'll later be trying to minister to and/or share the gospel with)

I think most missionaries going onto the field are aware of culture shock these days, so I will just quickly suggest a few strategies for more successfully coping with it.

Culture shock? Shockingly delicious, I say.

A. Set yourself up to profit from it - turn upsetting or off-putting experiences into learning opportunities. "Why" is always a good question, even when coming out of frustration, because you're recognizing something happened for a reason. Ask yourself what God was teaching you through that experience, how it will equip you to deal with future problems. Don't imagine you can avoid it like an obstacle, think of it as an annoying but necessary set of steps that you are climbing, so you can see a little more clearly from the top.

B. React into the culture - One thing I figured out last time I lived here was that, when tired, overwhelmed, or upset from cultural stress, I could choose to retreat from the culture, doing something familiar that dispelled the cognitive weirdness, or I could react into it, purposefully doing something I enjoyed about Taiwan to make myself feel better that I couldn't have done in America. It's like the difference between reacting to tiredness during a workout by taking a break vs. shifting to a different muscle group instead. Neither is wrong, and rest is crucially important too, but the latter will build your endurance and strength much more quickly the more often you can do it. It will also help the new place start feeling a little more like home.

C. Give yourself time and grace - This is tricky, because there really are missionaries who need a little pushing at first, a little motivation to put themselves out there more and try harder. Sometimes I'm like that too. (Other times I feel like quoting Shakespeare: "Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more.") But just in learning the language you are literally changing neuron connections in your brain, reprogramming it. That simply takes time. The longer it takes, the less you're able to do in the mean time, but at the same time burning yourself out at the onset puts you on shakier psychological ground for the duration. (That doesn't mean you're being a bad Christian. You can fully believe and take refuge in the truth that God is good and you must love your enemies while the dangerous, stress-induced idea is slowly growing in your mind that these people might sort of be your enemies. That's not sin, it probably just means you need rest and some encouraging experiences to offset the stressful ones)

You also need to give yourself grace, because God does, but sometimes other people won't. Local people are sometimes very understanding and helpful, but not always. Sometimes your inability to speak their language makes them think you're just dumb. ("Why can't you talk like we do? Even our little kids can")
Again, that's not a culture specific problem. A family friend of some of my cousins adopted a Korean girl years ago, and a cashier asked her how they would talk to the girl when she grew up. There's a huge difference between growing up aware of multiple languages and growing up totally monolingual.

And sometimes people will be impatient with you not knowing things there's no possible way you could know. America is a low-context culture, things are usually expressed explicitly and there are fewer 'hidden rules' that everyone knows without having to say, behaviorally speaking. Other places are high-context, and you're just going to have to spend a lot of time figuring things out. Sometimes other missionaries can help you with this, sometimes well-traveled locals can, sometimes neither option is available. Sometimes there's basically no way to know how to react to a situation until it happens and you see how other people react to it, or until you make a mistake and someone finally loses their temper and says "don't you know you're supposed to..." and you think "aha, now I do!" Compliments will come in their time as well.


2. Eating Weird Things...

Where You lead me, I will follow;
What You feed me, I will swallow.
(Commonly cited "missionary's prayer")

I have a slight advantage here in that our parents made us eat things we thought were weird growing up (canned sardines, carob, etc), so the idea was instilled at an early age that one -can- eat the strange thing, you just have to see how far away you can push that part of your brain that cares about what you're eating. I'm also pretty curious, so I typically want to know what the strange thing tastes like.

Taiwanese culture is a food culture. Everyone will encourage you to try their favorite things and local delicacies, and most locales really do have their own special delicacies. I've eaten things like pig intestine, goat stomach, snake, brains (can't remember of what, but I made sure it wasn't a cow or deer), wood fungus, the infamous 'stinky tofu', duck tongue, rooster comb, pig spinal cord, (cooked-)blood rice cakes, bird's nest soup, jellyfish, sea cucumber, squid on a stick, river shrimp, fish eyes, and a kind of little salt water snail. Probably lots of other things people would think are weird too, like buddha-head fruit or pitaya/dragon fruit, coffee jello, or bitter melon (tastes like an aspirin) but at this point my weird meter is kind of skewed. Basically if other people are happily eating it, I will too. (Of the above list, the least tasty were the rooster combs, which were too greasy, and the sea cucumbers, which were not cooked with enough seasoning according to another person at the dinner party)

Some of our short-termers from a great group we had this Spring, trying Stinky Tofu,
an "aromatic" local snack. Not everyone hated it, just most everyone did.

If you really have trouble with culinary curiosity, or came from a background where even fish was suspect, you might try making a list of local dishes or types of food, and crossing them off the list. Especially for families with children, you could have a reward system worked out for being willing to try to new things. Some might unexpectedly become new favorites, but of course probably not if you've already decided you're not going to like them.

Being willing to try local food is often a quick way to connect with people, especially if you'll try things that most outsiders don't want to eat. It's sort of a little rite of passage to see how serious you are about adapting to local ways. Just be aware that in poorer areas people may be giving you their best and keeping little for themselves. Sometimes there's not much you can do about that except pay it forward when it's your turn.

Finally, on a very practical level, some of the weird food is also highly nutritious, and provides the local diet with nutrients it doesn't get from other foods. And you may need those nutrients too, living there.

3. Spiritual Warfare

If you are from certain church backgrounds, you may be quite familiar with this, or even wary of it due to people overdoing it. But at least in my experience, coming out of conservative evangelical churches, this wasn't really discussed. The truth is, though, that making a decision to serve God full time is putting a target on your back for the enemy, and in many parts of the world, especially the 10/40 window and 'global south,' spiritual darkness doesn't bother to hide itself like it does in the US (though it's increasingly obvious there) and some other places.

The reason for this is, I believe, that inside cultures considered Christian, seeing weird or frightening stuff, glimpsing some kind of supernatural reality, is more likely to drive people to church, to ask a pastor or priest what on earth is going on. That's counterproductive to the enemy's purposes, and so in those places he uses deception and distraction, seeking to steer people away from spiritual things into the bondage of the world instead. Out in the idolatrous and/or 'folk religious' areas of the world, there is no need to sneak around, and the darkness is much more obvious, from Mexico's Day of the Dead to Taiwan's Ghost Month.

For missionaries, your presence in an area considered enemy territory is noted and not welcomed. (I think of the chilling passage in Acts with the Sons of Sceva where the demons already knew who Paul was) In certain places, that may translate into oppression. Things go wrong more often than they should, you and your team feel stressed, anxious, or argumentative, temptation starts feeling less like a shoulder-devil whispering in your ear and more like he's calling for artillery strikes on your areas of weakness, etc. You may get sick more often than just a new environment or unfamiliar weather would suggest. Local people in spiritual captivity may be very unfriendly to you, even hostile. And specific incidents can sometimes get more intense than all that, but I think that's unlikely to happen to most new missionaries. Although someone did ask me a several months ago whether I wanted to go upstairs and help the church we were visiting do an exorcism. (I prayed while remaining downstairs, since the pastor hadn't asked me to join them, but the guy ended up saying he didn't need them to do it. I'm not sure if he was actually possessed or just a little mentally addled, though we were taught that's often not an either-or but a both-and situation) More recently, a student asked me if I wanted to go his house to witness his father call spirits into himself and do miracles. The darkness here is real.

Now, I'm not saying you might be under a voodoo hex and need holy water. You don't need a crucifix over your door on idolatrous holidays; we don't fight spiritual darkness with superstitious/folk religious ways of thinking, that would only enable it by playing into the fear the enemy seeks to instill in us. Scripture is clear, we have an enemy, that is not merely metaphysical or representative of our own internal struggle but a host of real entities, that desire to wreck God's plan to the furthest extent they are allowed. For reasons I do not entirely understand, but I suspect have to do with His greater glory and our own sanctification and reliance on Him and sharing in the victory of Christ, He has chosen to not restrain them entirely, but let us call on Him for help to overcome the enemy.

I think the two easiest mistakes here to make are a) to dismiss it all as make-believe (scripture is quite clear we live in a supernatural world) or b) to be unhealthily interested/attracted. (the deceiver is so-named for a reason; those who think they can intentionally interact with darkness and not take harm need a pride check)

In general, the solution to spiritual attacks/warfare is actually straightforward:
A. Pray, and confess any unconfessed sin.
B. Pray, and remember your identity in Christ.
C. Pray, and fill your mind with scriptural truth, not the enemy's lies.
D. Pray, and covered in Christ's protection and authority, rebuke the enemy in His name.


That's not a magical formula, it's just the basic points I was taught, based on scriptural principles, and it works. It's a testimony to our faith too. If Jesus is not who He claimed to be, why does darkness hate and flee from His name?

Let us never forget; the name of Christ has been exalted above every other name in heaven and on earth and under the earth. That name has authority over all evil. Let us neither misuse it, nor fear to use it appropriately.

On a more long-term level, we need to be continually praying for God's protection over ourselves, our ministry, our coworkers, our families back home and supporting churches (another way to get at us), and for those people to whom we minister that the chains of darkness on them be broken and God deliver them from bondage to the enemy in which they have lived their lives. He can do it and He will; it's been happening for thousands of years, and continues today all around the world.

The Light of the world has already come.

In Conclusion...

There are usually always things you can do to make your adjustment to the field easier, but often it's just a case of learning to live in a less comfortable environment than you're used to. Just keep finding joy in our God and the good work He has given us to do, love and pray for your coworkers, and you'll find a lot of shorter-term problems resolve themselves.

And I think that's enough for one post. Next up, a picture post, with some highlights from this past year and some of the interesting places I went and things we did.

A Year of Missions in Taiwan - Part 1

In a few days, I'll have been in Taiwan a year, again. The experience of my first year here -seven years ago now- and this one have been radically different. In this post, Part 1 of my look back over the past year, I want to outline some of the differences between that first year, a 'long short-term' trip, and this one, my first of many years here as a long-term missionary, Lord willing. It's been harder than I expected, in many ways, but He is good, and we see Him at work in our midst every week.

My previous year in Taiwan vs. This Year:

1. The Sense of Distance

Thanksgiving 2007... An unknown sea lies ahead

That year: Last time I lived in Taiwan, I had the fascinating experience of a whole year in which I felt the "coolness" of living overseas, in a culture very different from my own. Tolkien once described someone as having wandered into the remote distance of a certain place, yet retaining that enjoyable feeling of remoteness even after what had been distant was now his surroundings. That's how the first year felt, even after the initial adjustment. It never stopped feeling exciting; there was a little thrill every time I went outside, like someone had put a filter on reality that upped the contrast on everything, or caffeinated the air.

Early 2014...  A mountain has been climbed... but there are more

This year: This time has been exactly the opposite, so consistently that I was quite surprised. I haven't gotten the deeply excited, travel-y feeling even when it would make sense to have it (visiting little towns up in the mountains and pounding rice to make mochi, watching the World Cup with a bunch of other people at 3AM in a McDonalds in Kaohsiung, painting a paper lantern with Chinese characters and sending it up during the lantern festival, etc). I even wanted to make it happen sometimes, trying to close my eyes and get the feeling back, to help with the cultural adjustment. But other than a few brief moments (a dusty, late summer sunset over Taichung, a lone dragon kite on a rain-misting afternoon by the sea, white egrets in an emerald rice field glimpsed from a train window...), Taiwan has refused to seem anything but a perfectly normal place on planet earth in which I currently happen to be, which is in many ways much stranger than the opposite feeling. I don't have a good explanation for it, but I'd love to hear from anyone with a similar experience. (For some reason, I have the strong impression that passing the one year mark will make a difference, perhaps by making it undeniable that I'm moving into new territory in my Taiwan experience, despite the fact that this is already constantly true. The mind is a tricky thing.)

But when those moments do happen...

2. The Human Element

That year: My organization had an office in Taipei, I lived in my organization's housing in the middle of Taipei, and participated in a few different ministries with other missionaries, both long-term with my organization and other foreign teachers there for the medium or shorter term. I hung out with mostly expats in Taipei (foreign teachers and missionaries), but spent a great summer with my local friends down in Taichung doing evangelical summer camps, and by the time I left had a number of local friends in Taipei as well. It was pretty awesome.

This year: This has been the hardest thing, hands down. Both the organizational office and housing got sold a couple years back for reasons unnecessary to delve into, and no one else in my organization is up here anymore. Of the fun cross-organizational church-planting team that was here when I arrived a year ago, all the non-Taiwanese members have returned to America for varying reasons, and I'm the only foreigner left. (I'm single, so it's just me here) I definitely am blessed to have Taiwanese coworkers with whom I share "one heart and mind" in the Lord, but they are of my parents' generation and also not able to understand what it's like to live and adjust cross-culturally. I also discovered my friends in Taipei were 6 years further along in their lives, a few had moved abroad, and most didn't see each other often anymore. On the other hand, I have been very encouraged to find a few Taipei friends from before were excited to see me again, and to have made a few new friends here as well. But as it happens, all those friends, both old and new, are non-believers. It seems that, once we have a social circle at church, we stay inside it. I've been pondering this phenomenon and thinking it might be a crucial part of the reason we find it so hard to evangelize. (I could, of course, go to a church to meet Christians, but since I'm working on planting one, I don't have Sundays available to do that.)

So having lost both the expat and local relationship networks this time, working missionary hours (because when your work involves people attending optional activities, you are busiest when people are free and most free when they are busiest), and investing most of my time in lower-income community outreach and ministries that involve mostly young children and retired/elderly people, it's been a rough slog, relationally speaking. It's easy to say "go get plugged into new social groups, find churches that meet on other days than Sunday, etc." but hard to do so when you're an introvert and have invested most of your social energy in your outreach ministries, and also when you don't know at least one person in that group who can introduce you to the others, or even one person to go there with you. "Hey tonight let's go check out that group..." is very different than "Hm, do I want to be the random new guy tonight?" Not when I'm exhausted, no. Some coffee and a book, please, so recovery can start... not for socializing, but for the next day of ministry.

(If this section sounds like complaining, it's not meant to be; especially I want to emphasize that it's no one's fault. A wide range of factors all contributed to my current situation, and it will improve over time. It's just been especially difficult for this ending-of-the-beginning stage.)

3. The Work

That Year: Having quit my job as a computer engineer for the year of ministry in Taiwan, I still found a use for my skills in doing some work on the office computers. I participated in several English club programs, helped out at a local church, did a summer and winter VBS and eventually started an English Bible study there, and spent the entire summer working at evangelical summer camps.


This Year: Having recently graduated from a fairly well-known seminary, I receive a certain amount of respect here for having those credentials but I have not yet been able to use most of what I learned there. (It's ok, those kinds of opportunities will steadily increase if God chooses to prosper our church planting efforts here.) But we've done summer camps and VBSs and Bible studies, and we teach English in after-school classes and Bible stories and music classes to community kids and parents. I continue to meet with friends and students fairly often for English/Mandarin practice (with those conversations tending to be fruitful ones), and we've recently started a weekly house church meeting.

Being able to speak some Mandarin makes a huge difference this time, letting me jump into ministry right away. I still can't preach in it (I could "share," or spend a very long time writing a sermon and then read it from the pulpit, but I can't preach a full length sermon off of main points yet), but I can pray in Chinese now, and my current level lets me have lots of conversations (sometimes fairly deep ones) and be able to teach people who need everything except the exact English phrase or word being studied to be in Chinese, which is really helpful.

To use the common analogy, we've done lots and lots of seed-planting and lately some watering, and we trust that God will do with that as He wills, and we'll be able to see more fruit in time. The mission field is a long-term game, really a multi-generational one (whether you realize it or not, which is the scary part; everything you do has long-term consequences one way or another). We've also received a couple of short term teams who had great servant-minded attitudes and worked hard, which was as always very tiring for us as the receiving missionaries but fruitful as well, and our endeavor was blessed by the good work they did.


4. The Ministry Struggles


That Year: Language was a big struggle then, because without a translator I couldn't talk to anyone who didn't have at least some English, and definitely had to stick to English for any actual teaching or ministry. This meant I often struggled just to understand what was going on (A language barrier can be surprisingly easy to overcome when communicating one-on-one, but is more like a language cliff when lots of things are going on around you at the same time and you need to know what some of them are). Sometimes I struggled to understand what the Taiwanese people I worked with were thinking and expecting, and experienced some frustration both when I met with unexpected difficulties and when people seemed to expect me to know what they were thinking. It took time to learn that local people and even coworkers, unless they have spent some time as a cultural outsider in a new place themselves, can't really empathize with your difficulties in acting "normal" and communicating effectively. We might laugh at the unenlightened soul back home who says "why can't they just speak English like normal people," but people in other cultures don't necessarily think much differently. (This time in Taiwan I've had a number of people express surprise that I was a different kind of person than they thought I was. It turns out some of them hadn't realized I didn't talk about certain things because I didn't know how to do so in Chinese; they just assumed I never thought about those things or wasn't interested in them.)

This Year: Being on a church-plant opportunity, we continually seek to figure out the needs in our community and meet them as a testimony to the gospel and a demonstration of God's love. This area has barely been touched by the gospel, and while a few small churches exist on its outskirts, once you leave the main road it's only shrines and little temples inside the neighborhoods. There is poverty, not desperate but real. We recently discovered some kids that attend our community English class hadn't been eating lunch before doing so. One girl's parents are a man who lost an arm in an accident and now sorts trash for a living, and the wife he got from Vietnam. The daughter has a serious learning disability. She always sweetly shares her food with the other kids. Some of these people are just barely getting by. Some are not so badly off, by comparison, and comment that our English classes are too easy for them/their kids. Our classes are a mix of white and blue collar, working and middle class, kids who attend specialty school after school to get a headstart on their college exam, 12 years early, and kids who run around the neighborhood unattended after school because their single parents can't be away from work to watch them.

I have years of education in logic and apologetics, and a mind that is naturally equipped for critical and analytical thinking. I am not being boastful but simply stating a fact when I say that most of my friends and family would advise against trying to argue a point with me. And, those abilities don't go very far in this community, in this kind of work. That's not to say that logic and apologetics are not valuable, they certainly are, and have been helpful when I've had the chance to share the gospel with college students. But it's become clear that in a sense I've been trained as a world class sniper when what's wanted here is hand-to-hand combat in the trenches. A lot of humility comes with the realization those loving, but odd, and not very bright people that you once struggled not to look down on as an immature young Christian might run circles around you when it comes to being Christ to struggling people.

After grad school/seminary I could parse New Testament passages in the original Greek and explain the difference between nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive languages. In some of our outreach ministry, I am inclined to think someone who was good at hand puppets and doing silly voices would be vastly more useful. Yet God works through our weaknesses, even weakness we had in other contexts pridefully assumed was strength.


5. The Cultural Adjustment

2007... What -is- this?
Trying a new food with my Taiwanese friend Carol
('a-gae', in Danshui)

That Year: I'd done three short-term trips to Taiwan, so it wasn't a totally new experience coming to Taiwan, but living here certainly was. I still remember my first trip to the drugstore, my exploratory trips to local restaurants, etc. (I get a bit nostalgic thinking about how everything was an exciting adventure.)

I had a bit of culture shock, and was a bit homesick for the holidays (though I haven't ever experienced the really severe homesickness that some people do; we moved a lot growing up so I don't have any one particular place that is obviously home, and missing my family tends to be heavily mixed with gratitude for having a loving family to miss), but Taiwan is a fun and interesting place for a young person to live, and I enjoyed the process more than I got stressed out from it. It was the reverse culture shock that hit me going home that came as a real surprise and took some time to get over.


This Year: I had sort of assumed that, having lived here a year before, I wouldn't have culture shock this time. In general that was actually true. I wasn't surprised by much I encountered, was actually looking forward to the food that scares a lot of short-termers, etc. What I've found though, is that what we call culture shock is really a combination of a number of things. Some of it is displacement shock, which you get moving to any new place, and some of it is what I call "life" shock. Things happen to make you realize your life isn't how it used to be, and those kinds of changes can be unpleasant. Now I did have some culture shock this time too, mostly having to do with being immersed in the culture to a much greater extent than I was last time, and being in a different community. I can't recall getting a lot of frowning stares living in the middle of Taipei city, near a major university, but I get them in this community fairly often, that sort of thing.

But, for example, as I mentioned above, it wasn't that my friends spoke a different language from me (I could muddle along in it reasonably well by the time I got back here), and I already knew they'd use different -ways- of communicating (a deeper difference than simply using different-sounding words), but I wasn't thinking of the fact that 6 years for me had passed for them too. Upon arriving, I spent a confused month or two before rapidly discovering, to my disappointment but begrudging understanding, that things were "different now," "not like before," etc. (I don't believe any human being enjoys that realization, but denial only hurts yourself. In this world we will have trouble, but Christ has given us His peace, and not as the world gives.)

2014... I think I know what this is...
Trying a new flavor with the same friend Carol...
in the brownie shop she's now opened 7 years later

So here I can offer a bit of advice* to outgoing/new missionaries, which is: don't confuse all the 'shock' you experience for culture shock. That can lead to resenting the culture, which can cause all kinds of problems in both the short and long term, and greatly inhibit the depth of your ministry. So much of the discomfort is simply displacement shock- moving to an unfamiliar place, losing your relationship networks, encountering weird people (it's hard when you don't know the culture yet, but sometimes it really isn't your lack of cultural flexibility, they're just an odd person), going through legal processes that are hard no matter where you are, etc. And sometimes, as I found, life can shock us all on its own.

(*- Offering advice is always a risky business, but I'll try to do my best at providing some for new missionaries in the second part of my reflections on this year in Taiwan, coming soon.)
PART 2 >

What I Learned During a Week in Taiwan without My Phone

Not just a Phone...

The other day, my smartphone usb/charger port decided that instead of letting electrons go in, it was going to let smoke come out. The next day, the company came and picked it up. A couple days later, I had to make a trip down to another city for my organization's annual Thanksgiving retreat. It was a week before I had a working phone again.

Now if, perchance, you belong to a generation older than the millennials, you may be thinking something like "Whatever, a week is not very long," or "we used to live our whole lives without cellphones," or even "you kids these days are so fragile; take away your fancy phones and you have a nervous breakdown." (if you said that last one, I hope you wear tweed and smoke a pipe, they make statements like that not only acceptable but cool)

Perhaps all of those are right. But first let me rephrase the blog title:


What I learned during a week without my...
Alarm clock,
Wristwatch,
Notebook/scratchpad,
Bible*,
Nearly all the books I own in Taiwan,
E-reader,
Internet (including personal email, work email, search engines, news, online encyclopedias, etc),
Text messaging,
Digital camera,
Video camera,
Chinese dictionary,
Magic Chinese dictionary that knew the characters when I sketched them with my finger,
Magic Chinese dictionary that knew the characters after it looked at them through my camera,
Calendar,
Planner,
Reminder notes,
Telephone,
Video phone,
Local calling,
International calling (and it was Thanksgiving)*,
Address book,
Contact list,
Maps,
GPS/navigator,
Train and bus schedules,
3G internet,
Music,
Music library,
Music player,
Portable speaker,
TV,
Movie library,
Flashlight,
Weather forecasting,
Radio,
Emergency Alert System,
Digital storage device,
Various... (Games, Language Learning Tools, Sound recording, Photo and Video editing tools, handwarmer, etc.)

(*- In case you're worried, yes I do have other Bibles, not just the one on my phone. Also, I borrowed someone's phone to skype-call my family on Thanksgiving. And, we had a great time at Thanksgiving retreat. Wish I could post some pictures, but, no phone, so...)

That list should be an eye-opener. It was for me. Now, I had noticed that as each phone over the past decade got smarter, it was more capable and could handle more different things in my life. What I hadn't especially done is considered things from the opposite point of view: just how many eggs I was putting into one basket, technologically speaking? I consider that the first thing I learned. Here's the list of things:

What I learned during my week in Taiwan without a phone:

1. I am not redundant enough yet

Living in a Chinese-speaking country is fascinating in various ways, and I'm very grateful for the chance to have already learned enough Chinese to get around. At the same time, it adds a couple layers of difficulty to everything. I can't simply breeze into a store and query them about their products, for example. I either have to do a lot of online research first (a good idea anyway), or think about my vocabulary, what I know how to ask about, and maybe memorize some new words in order to have that discussion. That adds a layer of unwillingness to go shopping even beyond my male dislike of shopping to begin with. I want to know what I'm getting, go in and buy it, and leave. In Taiwan, something that simple can range from equally simple to rather complicated, depending on what I'm trying to buy. (and I'm not even talking about cars or furniture) This means that if I had something that met a need, like google maps on my phone, I didn't go looking for a place that sold maps to buy lots of paper maps too.

Redundancy got a bad rap in the 20th century. We were all about efficiency, not wasting anything, maximum productivity, etc. But efficiency has a downside: it's fragile. It doesn't leave room for error. Why should I have both a wristwatch and a phone that tells the time? Because it's important enough in modern daily life to know what time it is (to the minute, in this city with subways and trains where I don't have a car) that I need a backup in case one isn't working. It's true that I had saved money by not buying a wristwatch when I had always had a phone with the time on me, but in the end I found that the watch would be a good investment, like buying candles in case of a power outage. If the power never goes out, you can have a nice candlelit dinner anyway.

So now, smartphone restored, I have a much better sense of which few sensible purchases could make my Taiwan life much less prone to paralysis should my phone feel inclined to blow smoke rings again. (I will be careful not to download The Hobbit)

2. My smartphone is the cause of a lot of stress in my life, but I can reduce that

By about day 3, when the twitching had subsided (just kidding... mostly), I suddenly felt a wave of calm descend. The ability to communicate with anyone around the world more or less instantly is nigh-miraculous, and we don't marvel at it enough, I think, but it also means that I'm basically on call 24 hours a day. The knowledge that no one could reach me, even if I wanted them to, caused something inside my brain, some kind of unconscious awareness or connectedness, which apparently had been getting pretty exhausted, to utter a grateful sigh and take a nap. I slept really well those nights, and the effect has most continued even with the smartphone back now.

Related back to the first point, I think I can partially remedy my recurrent insomnia by taking steps to make my bedroom entirely smartphone free (it was already laptop free): keeping a physical Bible and notebook in there so I don't need my phone for either purpose, using my bluetooth speaker instead of the phone and headphones for music, etc.

3. Speaking of music - I listen to too much music

I don't think my generation, having never lacked portable music literally from birth (the Sony Walkman came out in 1980, usually the earliest chosen starting birth year for the millennial cohort), is even cognizant of this possibility. But when my brain is full of music, it goes into a certain mode (of many wonderful different flavors, depending on the genre and even certain specific songs), which overlays itself on the rest of my perceptions. It would be like spending most of every day with various kinds of strong-flavored gum in your mouth.

Being musically-oriented and very abstractly-minded, I take advantage of this, choosing music that fits the day and weather and ambiance of wherever I happen to be. Cold night and mostly empty streets? I have albums saved for that. Downtown and full of energy? I have them for that. Warm sunshine on a country train platform? That too. But this portable music enabled "reality enhancement" means I don't observe what is going on around me in the same way; it's like putting an instagram filter on it, and the popularity of the nofilter hashtag demonstrates that people still value unaltered beauty.

I also tend not to think the same kind of thoughts, and some thoughts only come with the comparative silence of only background noise (usually not at all silent in a Taiwanese city). There is also a kind of mental fortitude which comes with not relying on music to make boring waits and tasks go faster. It's not fun, it may not even be necessary, but it seems worth cultivating.

4. Reliance on technology diminishes life by removing uncertainty

That might sound weird. What I mean is, for example, back before you could -know- where someone was, you had to trust they were going to be there. Sometimes they weren't, then it was problematic, and cellphones are great for resolving that kind of situation. But go back just a couple decades, let alone previous centuries, and it was quite common to make an agreement to meet someone somewhere, then not be able to contact them until that time.

I did that in a small way this past weekend, taking the train down to Taichung and then up to the little station near our Thanksgiving retreat location. "Ah, you made it," someone said when I arrived, and I realized I hadn't heard that phrase in a long time, because now that everyone has cellphones there usually isn't any question about whether we will make it or not, and if there's a question one has half a dozen different channels of communication with which to ask. (And "I don't know, he's not answering his phone," is not the same situation as not having any phone to answer.)

So imagine telling someone "I'll see you next year when I'm back in these parts" and then having no way, short of perhaps mailing a physical letter, of knowing where that person was in the mean time. It was a different world, one in which two lovers trying to reunite could miss each other by 30 seconds and maybe thus never see each other again. Which makes cellphones seem like a really great thing. Except now, they'd just text... "im here, dont see u? :(" "lol me 2 in the bathroom wait a min"
For every gain, there is a loss...

5. I don't know how to not do anything

I was never very good at this, actually. My brain has always wanted something to engage it. Smartphones came along and did so very thoroughly, and with much freedom, so that I can turn a 10min subway ride into a mini language-learning session, or another chapter of the latest novel I'm working through.

Not having my phone for a week meant standing or sitting there, staring into space, or looking awkwardly at all the other people staring at their phones. Phones are what you do when you're waiting, now, that's pretty clear. (at least in Taiwan, where a really high percentage of the population have mobile phones)

I should mention at this point, I do tire of those people who want to joyfully smack all the phones out of everyone's hands and get back to the supposed good old days when everyone riding mass transit or standing in line happily engaged in witty banter and were the models of cheerful and socially outgoing people, like those lard commercials from the 50's, not like the downward-staring-drones of today. I am informed, by sources I trust, that the past was not actually like this. People just read, or stared into space, or were bored. Sometimes they talked to each other. Lots and lots of them smoked to pass time, or read newspapers.
Shall I go back in time to smack the cigarettes and newspapers from their hands and encourage them to socialize?

Conclusion

In the end, I can't say whether a lot of these things are good or bad; they are how life is, now. Phones are everywhere. One thinks perhaps they will become smartwatches, but that will require some display innovation to let one practically read or surf the web or check email. Then they'll shrink out of sight and we'll have some new way of interacting with technology that doesn't involve staring at one small screen all the time but is even more mentally absorbing, and certain people and elements of society will warn us that this self-imposed isolation will be our doom, and long for the good old days when the tech was in the palm of our hands and could be sat aside, not inside our heads 24/7.

In the mean time, I don't think smartphones are evil. I'm not going on a smartphone fast; that would make my ministry impractical in the mean time (working with Taiwanese students without a smartphone is like cooking without anything that can stir), and this week of no phone suggests that actually in the end, it would be more inconvenient for everyone else than it would be relaxing for me.

That's not to say I won't be changing a few things, though. They're incredibly powerful tools, affect our lives in increasingly influential ways, both obvious and subtle, and from now on I will be a little more intentional in how I use, and refrain from using, mine. And that is the best advice I can give you as well.

An INTP on the Mission Field: The Thin-skinned Shall Not Inherit the Mission Field...

As I approach a year on the mission field (two years of experience, counting the previous year that was a short-term trip, and quite different from this year), I increasingly encounter the need for thicker skin.

To elaborate upon the old schoolyard retort: sticks and stones can break my bones, but insulting words which I consider to bear no legitimate correspondence to reality are, despite being unable to cause me physical harm*, yet at times frustratingly able to send me into unproductive introspection.

(*- No, despite living in Taiwan I have yet to encounter the legendary Lion's Roar kung fu ability. Actually my experience thus far is that Americans are both more excited about and more likely to be training in Asian martial arts than Asian people are. A friend explained the reason, but it will have to wait for a relevant post.)

INTPs can be a bit thin-skinned. This comes partly from our tendency towards polite and reasonable social behavior. We would not randomly insult someone out of anger, and if we do, it tends to be sarcastic, methodical, and cutting, a katana strike at some real flaw which really does hurt the person. To simply toss unspecific insults at someone because we're angry with them would be worse than wrong, it would be inelegant. Unfortunately, other people may perceive our analytical comments as insults, something to which we are often oblivious; sometimes, ironically, because those people aren't thin-skinned and simply take it in stride. (If they know us well, they may be used to it and realize we don't mean it that way)

Thank God for the Mrs. Hudsons of the world...

Still, that preference for politeness and reasonableness (as we perceive them) leads us to typically avoid insults and provoking language in general, as they lead to angry emotional reactions, confrontational behavior, and escalations of stressful social situations, all of which INTPs prefer to avoid if possible. So -irrationally, I must admit- we often expect other people to play by the same rules. But many people don't. They've had hard lives, they're stressed today, they simply don't think much before they speak, they don't view you as a peer and thus don't feel it necessary to extend courtesy towards you... there are lots of reasons why someone doesn't think twice about shooting an insult. They have a headache and aren't even the slightest bit interested in how that relates to something you read about plate tectonics the other day, and can't you get out of their way already?

Perhaps you are an INTP reading this, and you can simply shrug or chuckle and let the insult slide like water off a duck's back. This could theoretically be based in pride ("Did a worm speak just now? Amusing..."), but if your reaction is of that kind, stop reading this and repent before God graciously cuts you off at the knees and lets you hobble around on the stumps for a while to learn humility. If not, then it's a valuable quality. I suspect, however, that many are like me. I catch the insult in a little bubble, a protective mechanism to limit its hurtful potential, and began peering inside and analyzing it, beginning to dissect the contents, introspectively. Is this true of me? Is this a fault which others perceive which I've been blind to? Is this an area in which I have a natural weakness, or is it due to laziness or other misconduct? Do I have responsibility for making sure this is an insult which will be inapplicable the next time someone offers it? Et cetera, ad nauseum. I've lost many hours of my life to these kind of depressing ruminations. (Some introspection is good, but for INTPs it's like our Fortress of Solitude where we can hide for ages)

Mission Field Insults

Despite inheriting the Chinese cultural indirectness, Taiwanese can be quite forthright with insults. This is especially true of physical appearance, which is not taboo like it is in America, where one has to be very careful even with positive comments on someone's appearance. In Taiwan, "wow, you got fat," is a totally normal comment, one I've heard several times upon returning from living in America (truly is the Standard American Diet called "SAD"), and heard directed at other people as well. I personally am not especially bothered by this kind of insult, since being an INTP, I have a tendency to view my body as simply a physical shell. I do prefer to be in shape, and so if I let my body get so out of shape that people begin to remark on it, then I deserve whatever comments I receive, and typically they will motivate me to do something about it. But for INTPs ultimately it is the mind that matters.

That means insulting my lack of knowledge in an area in which I considered myself fairly well-versed will get you a lot farther than a physical insult. At the same time, prizing rationality as I do, I may give you a 'touche,' and resolve to further my knowledge in that area. "Correct a wise man and he will love you" (Prov 9:8b) applies to INTPs, even those of us who would claim to be far from wise, depending on how the correction is administered. I may even upgrade my opinion of you, since someone who can be my teacher even in a small way is someone who can help me in my relentless task to forge order from the chaos of existence and a comprehensive theory which encompasses all of my experiences, as I have explained in a previous post.

Questioning my judgement or thought processes will get you a reaction, however, as you're trying to undermine my most important tool for making my way in the world. It would be like telling a fashion designer not that a particular outfit of theirs was a failure, but that they were going colorblind. And questioning my motives might get you a fairly hostile reaction, though that's probably of most people regardless of personality.

My basic premise is this:

On the mission field, the thin-skinned may not last long.
You are in a culture that doesn't understand yours, among coworkers you didn't choose and who inevitably will sometimes rub you the wrong way, and often looking like an idiot to the locals as you try to make sense of a new language and lifestyle. People will insult you, it will happen. It may happen quite frequently.

Some favorite insults I've received in Taiwan:
(in Mandarin from local people)

"Wow, you got fat." (Me: "Haha, yeah") "No, I mean, really. You really got fat."
"I had thought your Chinese was impressive, but it's actually not that good"
"You foreigner teaching these children is an educational failure"
"Young man, I can tell from your face that you're ignorant"

Those are just a few of many more. The first one didn't bother me overmuch (I always gain weight in America and lose it in Taiwan), but the others rankled quite a bit; I don't try to remember insults or cultivate resentment (I attempt to actively avoid doing so) but I still very clearly remember the situation in which each of those were given (The third one was from an angry hobo! I kid you not).

The insults are not only cross-cultural, however. I've heard stories of some cringeworthy public encounters, with missionaries saying things to other missionaries that are just short of nose-punching territory. The mission field is a stressful place, and tempers flare. Teamwork takes constant active effort to maintain, and if not, can fall apart quickly with disastrous effects for the ministries and gospel effort in that location. Even if in our generation such dramatic personality clashes are less common, one is no less likely to encounter passive-aggressive sniping, which is in many ways worse. (Speaking generally, and not of my specific team. I feel blessed in my fellow missionaries)

So it's basically inevitable that if you let those insults simmer, and develop into resentment, cracks will develop rapidly in the "one heart and mind" that we should have as fellow missionaries. If things really get bad, people will leave the field. And if they're from local people, then you will find your motivation and willingness to embrace and learn local culture begins to drop and turn into a desire to separate yourself from it, retreat from it, to return home, or into a bubble of fellow expats who understand you, or at least insult you for reasons you both understand.


For INTPs, the solution is not to endlessly mull over these insults, trying to explain them away; that's an effort inevitably doomed to failure. If you do succeed in explaining it away, then you begin to resent the person who offered the insult, and might still harbor doubts about whether it might not be true after all; INTPs are masters of self-doubt and insecurity. And if you don't succeed in explaining it away, you are left with the conclusion that you really are deficient in that area. You've taken a further step towards judging yourself based on other people's opinions, and not God's opinion of you.

There is not even much profit in defending one's self at the time. That is my natural reaction, wanting the record to be straight one way or another. In cross-cultural situations, it often feels (rightly or wrongly) that the insult is stemming from a cultural clash, and explaining your reasoning or how things were different in your home culture will clarify the misunderstanding, leading to the retraction of the insult. This has basically never worked, even with otherwise fairly nice people. You are merely looking like someone who can't handle insults, which in many cultural and subcultural contexts matters much more than whether or not the particular insult is true.

This, of course, is common knowledge for many people. I am not pretending that everyone suffers from the same thin skin problem. But I suspect many INTPs are going through a similar internal process, even if they're good at hiding it on the outside.

The solution, I submit, is simply to grow thicker skin. If a fishing hook gets caught in your finger, trying to jerk it out will often cause a lot more bleeding than pushing it through and out the other side and cutting the barbed end off. The "tougher" solution is actually quicker, less painful, and heals more quickly. An insult can be dealt with similarly. Just accept it and move on. A tactic I've observed in Taiwan is to simply agree and thank the person, and I'm working on adopting it.

Also, INTPs are especially good at the clever sort of humor or wordplay which can defuse an insult or even turn it around. Instead of an angry retort, self-deprecating humor or some other response might carry the day. But that's all based on being able to "take" the insult. Just take it. A winsome response can then be used if appropriate, but not out of defensiveness.

Turning the Other Cheek

I mentioned martial arts at the beginning, and it provides a helpful analogy here. A lot of martial arts styles observe that while one can meet force with force, that can be problematic and cause injury. Of course, Muay Thai goes the other way; after beating down a few banana trees kick by kick, meeting force with force causes injury to the other guy. But as followers of Christ we are more or less specifically commanded not to use the Muay Thai style of insult resolution. (That "turn the other cheek" verse that people argue about is talking about taking an insult, not an actual dangerous blow.)

This is not what Jesus meant

Many styles, wanting to avoid things like dying young from brain trauma, have techniques which redirect the force of a blow or intended blow, moving with it and using the fighter's own momentum against him. In the end, one has exerted much less energy, to much greater effect. Sometimes the fight can be entirely ended in this way, and at least one fighter is keeping a clear head, something that appeals strongly to an INTP; coolly parrying a blow with efficiency and technique. It's how we like to see ourselves, at least. Yet the natural INTP way of dealing with insults, by contrast, might be more akin to an untrained man, who upon being struck is either mainly concerned with trying to establish that he is in the right and the other party is in the wrong, or if sufficiently hurt, lashes out instinctively to hurt back.

But the well-trained martial artist not only knows how to defend himself well, he realizes that he may not need to strike back at all. The knowledge that he can defend himself easily allows him to take blows if he wishes, not having an inferiority complex to defend. He is not concerned with others' accusations, because he knows himself.

If we are secure in our identity in Christ, knowing who we are, and have trained ourselves in the art of graciously dealing with insults and harsh comments or criticism, we need not be taken aback by them, nor need they develop into divisive resentment. We can turn the other cheek; we can take it.

As in all things, Christ is our model. When attacked by the Pharisees, Jesus never sunk to their level, He never "hit back." Sometimes He replied with piercing insight, sometimes with winsome wordplay, and during His mock trial and humiliation He simply did not open His mouth.

So in the end, if all else fails, and the insult hits home, and we can't respond appropriately, we only have one response: to forgive as we have been forgiven. Not forgiving doesn't exact any kind of revenge on the other person, it only hurts us, and we have that command, that as Christ forgave us of a multitude of sins, so we must forgive one another.

May we be strong to do so, by the grace that is in Him.

An INTP on the Mission Field: Another look at "Teamwork"

I remember engineering school quite distinctly (despite seeming in some ways like a previous life, I suppose it wasn't actually that many years ago). They were fond of giving us "group projects," ostensibly to teach us ornery engineers (real engineers are born, not graduated) how to play well with others. The most important lesson we learned through these was perhaps unintentional on the part of the school:

Observable Principle 1. Teamwork is the enemy of productivity
Observable Principle 2. Teamwork is the enemy of efficiency
Observable Principle 3. Teamwork is the enemy of adaptability
Observable Principle 4. Coordinating schedules with others is like herding cats
Conclusion for the maintenance of sanity: Avoid group projects whenever possible

My experience of team work until graduating college was pretty much this.

Thankfully, workplace experience demonstrated to me that this may not always be the case; it largely depends on the people on your team. It can be both worse (a team in which certain members are literally destroying the project through a combination of incompetency and obliviousness and harming your career prospects), or, in the rare case you get a bunch of qualified and competent people on your team, it can be a pretty amazing thing that results in stuff like, you know, getting a satellite to rendezvous with a comet after 10 years and dropping a lander on it. Of course in that kind of situation, teamwork gets a boost from the endeavor that unites them. More on that anon.

A Task Too Immense for Solo Work

Not being a people person, I definitely spent some time in prayer before deciding to become a missionary. "God, if I'm going to do this, if my job is going to be 100% people focused, you're going to have to change my heart towards people." I was pretty happy as a computer programmer; I had a few friends I trusted and family members that I loved, and didn't bother with people much outside of that.

(Contrary to what most people think, computers are quite simple. It's all 1's and 0's, they never get their feelings hurt, and they do what you tell them unless something is broken. And if so, it's usually easy to tell what's broken. People are tremendously complicated, get hurt from all sorts of accidental issues, let alone intentional ones, and actively hide their broken parts from you.)

God answered that prayer, and though at times I long for a nice, simple, straightforward task like several dozen pages of broken source code to debug, I have changed very greatly in how I relate to other people, not to mention in how I come across to them.

In missions, working with a team of one sort or another is basically necessary. Being a "lone wolf" missionary might sound attractive to a lot of INTP's and others too, but practically speaking it tends to not work out very well at all. If anyone could have worked alone (in the human sense), it would have been Christ, but He instead chose to surround himself with men to disciple, who would go forth and build the church after His departure. So at very least, if one is so competent that they do not to be taught or trained by anyone, they should work together with other people, to disciple them. But Jesus is obviously a unique example. What if we want a merely mortal example, the kind of person who is competent enough to rely on themselves?

We could then look at Paul, a stubborn genius who quickly got impatient with those less motivated than he. He seems like a good candidate for a lone wolf type, but it turns out he hated working alone, and always went out with a team when possible (my next blog post will mention this more). Later we see him sending his team members away to address issues in other areas only reluctantly, even when there was no one else who could go, and pleading with others to come join him.

The nature of modern cross-cultural missions work is typically such that one has a team to send you, and a team on the field. For new arrivals, one of the first things a team does (or should do! I've heard horror stories...) is help them get settled in. One is often not capable of surviving (let alone thriving) on one's own in the new language and cultural environment, and at very least requires help in getting started.

Settling in is not really the main issue, however. One could theoretically hire locals or expats to help you do all that, and some people are nice enough to do it for free. So my point is not that you couldn't survive the settling in process without a team; perhaps you could. That's a personal challenge that leads stubborn and/or confident people to think "hmm, I'll bet I could manage it."That kind of confidence or even stubbornness can be a useful character trait on the mission field, helping you "stick it out," though of course overconfidence or false expectations can torpedo the whole thing.

But the point of a team and the cruciality of teamwork is related to what I mentioned about great endeavors. That is, you need a team because the Great Commission is too massive a task for any one person to pursue alone, even in a local context. The team is not for you, the team is united for a common purpose, a gospel vision. Now, you've probably heard something like this before. In the secular sense, one could say "fine, that's not my vision," and walk away. For believers in Christ, the overarching goal, the meta-vision, has been provided for us, in the command from and example of our King. We are to make disciples of all nations, and though that responsibility extends to each of us individually, it's not a task any individual can tackle alone, at least not in any long-term sense; for something like planting a church, or taking the gospel into new territory, if Paul needed a team, you do too.

A Team Not of Your Choosing

Missionaries cannot typically choose their coworkers. A new missionary might arrive on the field and find, in the words of C.S.Lewis, "just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided." (from The Screwtape Letters) The guy with the annoying laugh who tries to joke about everything; the old guy who can't see why everything can't just be done the way they did it back in the day, when people were sincere and hard-working; the lady who feels the need to play devil's advocate in every discussion... (Note: these are "archetypal" examples and don't describe any past or present coworkers)
So the challenge then becomes working for the most important cause of all, with people who you would never choose as coworkers. Thrust into similar circumstances with a different task, perhaps it would be more manageable. But when your goal is to do something highly complicated and difficult- bring the gospel across cultural and other divides, plant reproducing churches, etc.- and there is no clear-cut way of achieving your goals, meaning you might have to "fail" a few times before seeing progress, then you have a recipe for teamwork disaster. (And if your team is multicultural, there are even more potential pitfalls to avoid.)

Add to this the INTP propensity for critical thinking and quickly seeing flaws in a strategy, and team discussions can be minefields for us. We feel very strongly that not pointing out flaws in the plan early on (obvious to us, who constantly run scenarios in our minds to see how they'd play out, and also file away any real-life experiences to improve the accuracy of this ability) out would mean failure of the plan is our fault; something many people don't realize... we are not attacking you! We are trying to help your plan succeed. This is our oft misunderstood attempt to prosper everyone and bless our efforts by making our plan foolproof. It just gets taken the wrong way when people begin to feel they're the fool we're trying to proof it against.

And please do not say, good missionaries wouldn't or shouldn't struggle with this kind of thing. There are no "good missionaries," there are only redeemed sinners learning to walk with God and how to obey His commands. (among them the Great Commission) Sinners argue, hold grudges, sometimes fight. At very least, they disagree about proper approaches to problems. Those differences of opinion are hard to let go of when you feel strongly that the wrong approach might not only cause this effort to fail, but make subsequent efforts more difficult. If it was a new marketing strategy for hybrid cars, that would be bad enough, but this is the gospel.

Example: What is the balance between a gradual and long-term approach that seems quite slow to bear any fruit but allows the cultivation of deeper relationships with local people and respect in the community, versus a bold and active approach that is willing to let a few people be offended and possibly wear out your welcome but results in more people hearing the gospel with the possibility of a breakthrough?

There is no right answer to this question! But everyone will have an opinion on it. We trust God, but we observe from scripture that He's given all believers work to do, and we've got to figure out how to do it, one way or another.

So under stress from living in a culture that is not our own, speaking a language that is not our own, making decisions we often don't have enough information to make (an especially stressful factor for INTPs, who might prefer to balk in those situations and wait for more data before making a decision), working with people we might not always respect or see eye-to-eye with, teamwork is a tenuous thing, easily fractured. And that's not even going into how the enemy is constantly trying to fragment our fellowship and set us against each other; discord is one of his works. So much intentional effort must be put into maintaining "one heart and one mind."

Substitute satan for management (no doubt easy for some of you), and this is pretty much
what is always happening on this mission field. This is one reason we need prayer!

One of the best ways to build and maintain a strong team is praying together! Coming together into God's presence not to talk to each other, but to Him, lets the Spirit do some direct work on people's hearts. This is something my team does intentionally, and I think it's incredibly important.

Summary: INTPs and Teamwork on the Mission Field

Basically, as INTPs we must be wise to avoid the following scenario:

Strategy Discussion for a Particular Ministry:

Person A: Maybe we could try [plan that was tried last year and failed]
INTP: I think we've seen that doesn't work well, unless you think the situation has changed in a fundamental way since we tried it last that would make it a good plan now?
Person A: Uh.. I'm just throwing out ideas!
INTP: *thinks* "Why waste time by talking about obviously useless plans?"

Person B: How about [plan that flies in the face of how local culture does things]
Team Leader: (Fully intending to discard this idea): Ok, maybe that's something we can think about.
Person B: (Feels appreciated, doesn't care if the plan is not actually used because their goal was to participate in the discussion in a meaningful way)
INTP: (Doesn't understand this^) "But what about [x] culture factor? Wouldn't they have [a] and [b] objections?"
Team Leader: (trying to salvage Person B's having contributed) "Not necessarily, maybe it's worth trying to see what happens."
INTP: (Feels slightly embarrassed that the team leader has rejected their assessment, and thus defensive:) Presents a 5-min, airtight logical case, with multiple failing scenarios, demonstrating that this approach is totally at odds with the local culture and could cause any number of problems. Provides an unlikely scenario in which it might succeed, wanting to be diplomatic. Some people nod in agreement or chime in, wanting to demonstrate they also have been culturally observant and understand this issue. 
Team Leader: *Sighs* Cannot disagree because the statement was clearly accurate.
Person B: (Feels foolish and under attack) Strikes back defensively insisting it could work.
INTP: (Unfortunately B's statement, born out of hurt feelings, is more an emotional expression than a rational counter) Warming to the debate, has no trouble picking B's defense apart. Noticing that B is flustered, they reassure him that they are not taking any of this personally. The INTP is confused when this only makes things worse.
Team Leader: (Resigning to the inevitable) Well, INTP, what would you suggest?
INTP: Provides a very long and well-thought out plan, taking into account both abstract methodology and practical and cultural considerations. Talks too long because they answer all questions about the plan as if the person is suggesting they didn't think through a particular issue, which they did, and feel compelled to make sure that person is aware, not wanting to appear incompetent for having missed such an obvious point.
Person B: (Upset, criticizes the INTP's plan because if theirs got criticized it's only fair that the INTP's plan gets criticized too)
INTP: Explains why their criticism of B's plan was valid, whereas B's criticism of their plan was invalid. It's not about getting equal time, it's about the validity of one's thought processes.
Team Leader: Uh, let's wrap this up and move on to the next subject.

As they leave the meeting:

INTP - Thinks the meeting went well, though B is too sensitive. Talks animatedly with a few people about the cultural issues that got raised during the meeting. Later, goes back and reflects on B's comments, making sure any potentially valid criticism is taken into account so the INTP's own arguments can be that much more solid next time.

A - Thinks INTP was a little mean to B, needs to lighten up

B - Feels upset, and possibly has begun to regard the INTP as an opponent. Concludes they can't actively oppose the INTP in a meeting without being made to look stupid; begins to think of ways to counter their influence. The beginnings of a crack in the team are possible. If they struggle with self-confidence, they may be less inclined to strike back, but hesitate to share in future meetings, for fear of their ideas being shot down.

Team Leader - Tired. Wishes INTP would not subvert his attempts to keep the team happy, through probably is aware that it isn't on purpose, and may just feel the INTP has an overbearing personality without realizing why he acted as he did. (Doing a meeting with personality tests to understand where each person on your team is coming from might be helpful. Sometimes it doesn't matter that you understand why someone could think that way, so long as you know it's a personality difference and not intentionally directed at you)

An INTP can bring extremely useful skills to a team, if they will learn and always keep in mind those rules which don't come with our personality, as I mentioned in a previous INTP post. You must take into account that most people won't have your motives, or dwell so entirely in the world of ideas, or think that the person with the most logical or well-tested thoughts should be the one to talk the most. It also helps to be self-aware, and explain your own motives for speaking up if you have a comment on what someone else is saying. They might still not appreciate it, but at least you can move from being "that INTP" to "our INTP."
As I mentioned earlier, prayer is a key here. It's harder to criticize your teammates in a potentially abrasive way when one has been praying for them! Prayer will shift one's thinking away from only their ideas or contributions and towards them as people, sons and daughters of God, which is always important for us.

Finally, a truly servant-hearted INTP who has learned when not to speak, may find people are quite willing to listen when he does. We yearn for people to benefit from our insight; to communicate that insight we must first clearly communicate the love of Christ.