{"id":444,"date":"2006-06-22T20:34:05","date_gmt":"2006-06-23T02:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cottrillcompass.com\/blog\/2006\/444.html"},"modified":"2007-02-11T09:41:15","modified_gmt":"2007-02-11T15:41:15","slug":"mcdonalds-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cottrillcompass.com\/blog\/2006\/mcdonalds-culture.html","title":{"rendered":"McJalape\u00c3\u00b1os and cultural sensitivity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"McDonald's<\/center><\/p>\n

McJalape\u00c3\u00b1os anyone?<\/strong> This is a little package from a McDonald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Restaurant in Mexico<\/a>. Did you know that in Mexico there are about 2 McDonald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for every million people? Of course, here in Canada there are 35. And in the USA, about 43 per million. Does this make Mexico deprived, or blessed?<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been reading lately about how we package the Gospel for different cultures.<\/strong> It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an interesting and complex topic. Of course, everyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s favourite villian is the missionary who is more concerned about importing his\/her culture than the Gospel. (Having studied missions history, I think missionaries have generally been a lot more culturally sensitive than the popular stereotype gives them credit for, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another story). The important thing, of course, is not what kind of cultural clothes the Gospel wears, but that the essentials of the Truth are clear. It just so happens that those truths are the clearest to us when we hear them in our own language, related to things we understand. But it could be that we can get too obsessed with the culture – to the point where we obscure the Truth itself.<\/p>\n

You can never just speak the same words in another language and hope they make sense – you have to understand what people are really thinking when they hear those words. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re excited that our language school incorporates cultural training along with language training. Hopefully the mix of new relationships and culture and language will get us started on the right road.<\/p>\n

Neither can you just throw in a few local illustrations and say the same thing. Adding a little package of jalape\u00c3\u00b1os did not make this McDonald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really Mexican, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face it. Sometimes you have to start at a different place, take a different path, as you explain the truth.<\/p>\n

Can or should a missionary ignore his\/her own<\/em> culture? Is that dishonest? Does it make them something they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not?<\/p>\n

In the early days of the Church, it seems that the Gospel really got wings when people discovered that they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to be Jewish to follow Jesus. At the same time, they drew from the rich culture of the Jewish people. A lot of that culture was simply from God – the culture from the law of Moses, the temple, the feasts. Today we would miss out if we set aside the rich traditions of thousands of years of godly women and men – the prayers, the songs, the symbols.<\/p>\n

Surely it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a living thing<\/strong> – something that should naturally grow as we learn about each other and seek the Lord together. But those individual decisions are never easy. They remind us to rely on the Lord for His wisdom. In the end, I hope those we worship with will have a real, living, relevant relationship with the Lord, full of the wisdom and creativity of today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s believers, and yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.<\/p>\n

May our faith be alive, and may we not end up thinking a package of salsa makes us culturally sensitive. Comments, anyone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McJalape\u00c3\u00b1os anyone? This is a little package from a McDonald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Restaurant in Mexico. Did you know that in Mexico there are about 2 McDonald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for every million people? Of course, here in Canada there are 35. And in the USA, about 43 per million. Does this make Mexico deprived, or blessed? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been reading lately […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mexico","category-missions","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"yoast_head":"\nMcJalape\u00c3\u00b1os and cultural sensitivity - Finding direction<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cottrillcompass.com\/blog\/2006\/mcdonalds-culture.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"McJalape\u00c3\u00b1os and cultural sensitivity - Finding direction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"McJalape\u00c3\u00b1os anyone? 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