Tag: Honor and shame

Deeper Waters Podcast 4/29/2017: Jayson Georges

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When we talk about doing missions work, one of the lessons we emphasize the most is learning the language. You have to learn the language to communicate. We learn about some aspects of culture, but often times we tend to assume a culture is very much like us. In the West, where many of us are modern individualists, this leads to a problem in reaching a culture that is largely honor and shame based.

Not only that, this causes us to misunderstand our Bibles. The Bible itself is written in a culture that is honor-shame as well. If we read our culture into it, we will badly misunderstand the text. In some cases, we could get a meaning very opposite to the one the ancient author intended. How are we then to reach people in these cultures?

If we want to minister to these people, why not have someone come on who understands this having done it and has co-written a book on it? As you can imagine, I have done just that. I am delighted to get to host Jayson Georges on the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast. Who is he?

 

Jayson Georges (M. Div., Talbot) is the founding editor and primary blogger of HonorShame.com.
headshot1(small) copyOur family served in Central Asia for nine years doing disciple-making, church-planting, and microenterprise development. Understanding honor-shame dynamics helped me to navigate relationships, share the gospel, seize Kingdom opportunities, and more deeply experience God’s grace. My current role is Missiologist-in-Residence at an evangelical mission organization, focusing on developing resources and leading practical training workshops.
We’ll be talking about his book that he co-wrote Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures. Some of you might not see any time in the future when you are going to another culture like that. Do you still need to listen to this podcast? Indeed you do.
As said earlier, the Bible is written in such a culture and if you understand the culture better, you can understand the Bible better. Not only that, but many of your neighbors are likely to be more honor-shame people. If you have neighbors who are more Eastern than Western, this is the way that they think and you want to avoid doing anything around them that could give the wrong impression about the Gospel. How do you confront them? How do you ask a favor? Is it proper to turn down a request? All of these are important skills to learn.
I have long been an advocate of this kind of understanding and consider it a great lack in our modern Western culture that we so often forget this and just assume that everyone is like us. It’s great to be able to have another guest on my show to talk about this kind of topic that can help us with reaching people in these cultures and better understanding the Bible. I hope you’ll be listening to the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast and please leave a positive review on ITunes.
In Christ,
Nick Peters