Partnership has been a keyword in missions for several years.  Partnership with people from a variety of cultural backgrounds is challenging.  And sometimes even people from the same country come from different cultural backgrounds.  For example, Cameroonian colleagues may belong to different people groups with very different customs.   American missionaries coming from the Midwest, the East Coast, African American or Hispanic American backgrounds are culturally diverse.  So while we have the same goals and mission, we will not approach the work, make decisions or deal with conflict the same way. 

Wycliffe and their linguistic organization SIL here in Yaounde offered a seminar on multicultural team training last week.  For 4 days we discussed a different topic each day, along with corresponding Bible Study and Case Study from real life. Topics included:  kindom work, communication & conflict, leadership, and the challenge of resources. 

Each day the seminar began with a lecture on DVD by anthropoligist Sherwood Lingenfelter in which he brought out the biblical perspective on day’s the topic.  Then we read case studies and discussed questions in groups or in pairs.

Interestingly the number of participants allowed each missionary to be paired off with a Cameroonian who is working in ministry here with the Cameroonian Bible Translation & Literacy Association (CABTAL).  It made for great discussions!  Hopefully, just knowing the types of misunderstandings that can happen among team members with varied cultural backgrounds will help us to be more effective in our ministry partnerships here.