"Why is this American so disrespectful when he prays to God? How can he be a spiritual person if he does that?" whispered the distressed-looking woman to her pastor. During prayer the overseas guest preacher, instead of folding his hands, had put one hand to his chin, the other into one of his pockets and played with some loose change. The impact of the message had been severely diminished by an innocent gesture interpreted as irreverence in a culture where God is viewed as a sovereign ruler and prayer is considered an act of approaching a holy God.

Communication is the main missionary task. If you are not effective in your communication, your effectiveness is hampered. The basic model of cross-cultural communication in this chapter will help you to be better prepared for the task of sharing the gospel in different cultural settings.

How do you express reverence in your culture? Have you observed how people of other cultures express reverence? Have you ever noticed that one inoffensive behavior in one culture can be quite repulsive in another?

What Do You Mean?

Communication is the sharing of the same meaning with another person. When you are in a cross-cultural context, it is at first often difficult to understand the meanings that seem to be taken for granted. Meanings can be attached to any form such as a behavior pattern, a word or product. For example, the behavior of shaking your head can mean approval or disapproval. It is your culture which determines what the different kinds of shaking your head mean. In India people shake their heads approvingly in a way that can be misunderstood by Westerners as disapproval.

Communication is a process of sending and receiving meanings on different levels. They can be identified conceptually to help us understand the complexity of the communication process.

• Cognitive level: words and concepts and their explicit meaning
• Affective level: the feelings and relationships present in the process
• Evaluative level: the largely unconscious critical dimension

In real life these three levels affect the communication process holistically. Thus ineffectiveness in one dimension may impact the total process.

The Cognitive Level
In Western societies this level of communication is clearly of major importance. At this level we communicate words, explicit ideas, and concepts. But other cultures focus more attention on the context of the communication. Anthropologists distinguish therefore between low context cultures and high context cultures. This distinction may be quite helpful.

• Low context people pay attention to words, ideas, and concepts. They may remember the topic of a conversation, but not the names of the people who participated in the discussion. They focus on explicit words rather than on the implicit tone of voice. They enjoy analyzing and comparing ideas. And they prefer a signed contract to a handshake.
• High context people pay special attention to the concrete world around them. They notice subtle cues in the physical setting of a conversation which communicate important information: sounds, smells, expressions on people's faces, the body language, and the atmosphere of the room. They tend to remember names and details about events. They welcome your efforts to learn the local language as a sign of friendship.

The Affective Level
People's notions of beauty, style, and aesthetics influence their tastes and relationships. Missionaries must be sensitive to other people's feelings. There is no communication without identification. Even if you use the right words in a foreign language, people still want to feel you identify with them, share their feelings, and empathize with them as persons. In cross-cultural settings over 50% of all communication takes place on this level. You may not be able to speak their language very well. But by attempting to learn it you are communicating that you care about them.

The Evaluative Level
Cultures provide people with standards to make judgments, determining truth and error, likes and dislikes, and right and wrong. We always evaluate what we see, hear, and experience in terms of our own culture. When the messenger does not fit within the established standards, he is often perceived as untrustworthy and the message may be rejected.

Example: Western missionaries are often quick to judge what they perceive to be a lack of morality and values in other cultures. However, it may come as a surprise to them that they are judged by their hosts as immoral. Hiebert (1985) reports that people in India considered the dress of missionary women immoral. In their society, the sexiest parts of a woman's body are the calves of her legs. To be dressed properly women wear ankle-length saris. The missionary women wore knee-length skirts.

Form and Meaning
We are often not aware of the meanings behind customs and observable forms that greatly influence the affective and evaluative level of communication. We shake someone's hand to mean hello. In some circumstances it is appropriate to greet a person with a kiss. The custom of Sirano men (South America) of greeting by spitting on each other's chest would easily misunderstood in Western settings as an insult.

The association of a specific meaning (e.g., greeting), emotion (e.g., anger), or value with a certain form (e.g., behavior, product, sign) is called a symbol. The fact that people share a common set of symbols makes communication possible. Since these associations are culturally determined, cross-cultural communication is often difficult. Moreover, symbols not only have "plain" but also connotative meanings. "Plain" meanings of words are relatively easy to learn. Connotative meanings are often hard to discover and a fertile source of misunderstandings.

• Plain meanings point to certain things or events, and not to others of a different domain. "Red" means a certain color and not the color black.
• Connotative meanings come from different domains. "Red army," and "to be in the red" no longer refer to the color red, but have political or economic meanings.

So What!?

Culture has important implications for the preaching of the gospel:

• Missionaries need to approach a situation with the receptor in mind. The important element of communication is not simply the message delivered, but the message the receptor hears.

The Communication Process

Here is a simplified model to summarize several of the concepts discussed in this chapter.

People's feelings are influenced by their level of trust in the messenger. If the communicator lacks credibility in the eyes of the receivers, the message is often rejected. If they sense the missionary's sincerity and love, they are more open to the message.

Conversion involves not only changes in knowledge and feelings but the deepest decisions that people make, affecting their relationships and behavior. People evaluate how their decisions will affect their social support systems. If there is no support from social peers, the pressures of their community may be too great.

Moreover, symbols also reflect the worldview of people, the implicit and hidden assumptions they make about reality. Words for "God," "good," "evil," "salvation," and "sin" often have hidden meanings that are hard to discover because they are taken for granted and not talked about.

1. Images of Mission (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 1995) is an impressive pictorial record of the diversity of the Seventh-day Adventist church around the world. Pictures often reflect the cultural origin of the missionary who took them. On page 19 in Images you will find a photo showing a poster advertizing a Revelation Seminar in Shanghai, China. A lonely man in front of a monumental stone wall (the Ten Commandments) in a judgment hall full of angels dressed in white. How do you think Chinese persons feel about such a painting of the last judgment? You may want to find out if you can. How would you paint this picture differently to communicate culturally sensitive meaning?

2. In North America sexual immorality is seen as an enormous sin. Missionaries from that part of the world tend to stress proper sexual behavior. In South Asia, however, a cardinal sin is to lose one's temper. Too often Western missionaries are completely unaware of the implications of impatient behavior on the communication process (especially with their servants). How do you feel about this? Do you have a problem in this area? What will you do about it?

3. Take a look at the model of communication presented in this chapter. Do you agree with it? How would you modify it? How will you use it to become a more effective communicator?