Marty and Denise Shaw – WorldVenture
Adjusting to cross-cultural living is a key part of effective mission work. Denise and I have been certified with a tool called the Cerny-Smith Assessments (CSA). It is a tool that helps people living overseas understand how they are adjusting to cross-cultural living. If you can adjust to living in another culture it is one of the first steps to effective ministry in that culture. It was and is one of the many things we do as part of our role in global missions.
We not only use the CSA in our work, but we have trained close to 40 other people so that they too, can use this tool. Many of the people we have trained have been WorldVenture regional leaders. More recently we have had the opportunity to training Asian missionary member-care leaders as well. About 15 of the 40 people we have trained fall into this grouping. The picture below is from a training we held in Hong Kong with mission member-care leaders from Asian missions.
Missions from Asia is growing and just like American missionaries, Asian missionaries face cross-cultural stress when moving to a new country and this in turn impacts their ability to develop and carry out ministry. From these trainings we have been invited to train other non-Westerners to use this tool.
We feel it is a great privilege to be able to encourage the work of global missions in this small way. Your partnership and prayers are so critical to our work.