Six years ago this month, I made my first trip to China under the auspices of my non-profit ministry, Global Development, which has enabled me to continue teaching and training people around the world. As one former colleague wrote me yesterday, “You may be doing the best work of your life!”

I think he just might be right.

At the end of February, Crossing Cultures with the Gospel: Anthropological Wisdom for Effective Christian Witness, the book for which I had struggled to write for five years, was published by Baker Academic and released to the public. I’m now starting to read the positive reviews, including one that was just published in the online version of Christianity Today on April 19th, titled, “You can’t reach people for Christ while holding their culture at arm’s length.”

You can read the Christianity Today review here

Prior to the release of the book, Frontier Ventures in Pasadena, CA held the Ralph Winter Lectures around the theme of “Wisdom for Cross-Cultural Service: Journeys in Missiological Anthropology.” They brought together five of probably only 10-12 of the world’s missiological anthropologists for a three-day conference on the ways in which the field of cultural anthropology has been of service to God’s mission in the world.

A few days later I headed to the Caleb Institute near New Delhi, India where I have been teaching modular courses since 2019. The first week of my course titled, “Anthropology for Christian Mission,” nine pastors came from Punjab to attend, and loved it because they said it was so helpful to them. In addition to the students, two faculty members and the principal came to every session. I gave a copy of my book to the Principal, Dr. Richard Howell. It was so freshly off the press that you could still smell the ink on the pages. He quickly read the book and then said to me, “This is the book India has been waiting for. I want to reprint it here in India which will cost only one-tenth of the price to buy a copy printed in the US, and then have it translated into the four major languages of India.” Arrangements with Baker Academic have been made, and reprinting and translation are under way. I am thrilled with this turn of events for I never expected such a positive reception.

In April I went to Chiang Mai, Thailand to train 40 Chinese pastors in cross-cultural understanding. Many of them only knew their Han Chinese culture and so my teaching on relating the gospel to people from different cultures was at first very challenging, if not threatening. But as we know, “A person who knows only one culture, knows no culture at all,” meaning if a person has never experienced another culture, then they are unaware of the impact of culture on themselves. A proverb from Kenya captures this idea well, “He who does not travel thinks his mother is the world’s best cook.”

As the week went on, and I continued teaching on the relationship between the gospel and culture, resistance softened as these pastors began to see how a person can become a Christian and remain within their own culture, and do not have to adopt a Westernized version of Christianity in order to follow Jesus. Unfortunately, for many Chinese Christians, that’s all they know. So, in China, as in India, Christianity is often perceived as a foreign religion.

On the last day of the class, I invited participants to share what the course had meant to them and what they felt God had been saying to them during the week. The first participant to jump up was a prominent pastor from Beijing who had been pushing back most of the week. As he stood in front of the group, he said, “I have two PhD degrees, but I’ve never heard teaching like this before, and at first I was resistant, but my heart has been softened.”

I expected to hear from just a few, but person after person came to the front of the room and shared about how their hearts had been changed, how they now had a new perspective on what it meant to be a Chinese follower of Jesus, and many other words of gratitude for what they experienced in the course. It went on for nearly one and a half hours. I ended the week physically exhausted but feeling so alive, so empowered, so led by the Spirit. All I can say is, “Thank you Jesus.”

And thank you for your prayers which undergird this ministry and for your support that makes it possible. Blessings on you.

Cordially,

Darrell Whiteman