In the animated fictitious movie \u201cCloudy with a Chance of Meatballs\u201d the tiny Island of Swallow Falls\u2019 entire culture and economy is based on sardines. The son of the local bait shop Flint Lockwood a wanna be inventor wanting to give the community more of a variety of food, so he designs a machine that uses water to make whatever food that is desired. Through a series of mishaps, the machine is launched into the sky and it begins to rain cheeseburgers. As the movie progresses the entire towns culture is changed, and their appetites get out of control. The more food the community programs into the machine the crazier things get. The size of the food gets larger and the more dangerous things become. Amidst the danger a father and son finally begin to understand one another, and a community grows and changes.<\/p>\n
When I read The Culture Map<\/em> by Erin Myers it didn\u2019t take long for the questions to start popping in my head. As I started to look at the rich diversity and challenges that come with each culture, I couldn\u2019t help but start plugging ideas into the process. Theological, coaching along with self-examining questions came to the fore front. As I began to digest the complexities of different cultures my thought process got bigger and broader. The more I fed it the more questions I discovered. Some may be of value to pursue where others may have little or no relevance whatsoever. In reality it is more of an adventure of trying to connect the dots than anything else.<\/p>\n When looking at Genesis 1 we are told that mankind is made in the image of God and humanity is commanded to be \u201cfruitful and multiply\u201d, to \u201cfill the earth and subdue it\u201d. Humanity is given the command to rule and reign. Many would call this narrative, as well as, the narrative of the \u201cTower of Babel\u201d a cultural mandate. How does each culture in all its diversity represent the image of God? Was this type of diversity what God had in mind all along when he created humanity and what park of it is tainted by sin? How does Meyers book shed light on my theological understanding of a cultural mandate? Should it? How does the book affect my understand of Theology and Culture? How does it affect my views on the Theology of Vacation? Would I have written the practical portions of my master\u2019s thesis on Eco-Theology differently if I would have looked at things through a broader cultural lens?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I look at the local churches and the complexities and challenges that each of the denominations face, along with the many issues that divide us I can\u2019t help but wonder if we truly understand what it means to be the body of Christ. Could Meyer\u2019s book help Christians unite and communicate their differences in a deeper way? How could the same denomination but from vastly different cultures gain a deeper understand of one another by first understanding the many differences and perceptions that exist? How much of our doctrinal disagreements are cultural? How has my understanding of theology been affected by my culture? Is the United States the only culture that makes superheroes out of mega church pastors?<\/p>\n As a certified coach I use many types of assessments to enable my clients to gain understanding on how God wired them for business and ministry. As Meyers began to unfold the differences between highly context versus low context along with the differences in leadership, persuasion, decision making, as well as, a few others I began to wonder how the different personalities effected each culture. As the author broke things into 4 quadrants I instantly started trying to over lay the 4 personality quadrants with it. Could it be that personality profiles aren\u2019t as universal as we think they are? Would someone with the same DiSC profile in an Asian culture be similar as someone from the Netherlands? How much does our culture affect our personality type? What about leadership assessments or strength finder assessments? \u00a0Since word usage and meaning is often different among different personality types how are these differences compared to word usage and meaning in different cultures?<\/p>\n Alan Powell in his book What Do They Hear Bridging the Gap Between Pulpit and Pew <\/em>tells about an experiment he did with seminary students from 3 different countries, the United States, Russian and Tanzania. With each group of students, he had them read and discuss the story of the prodigal son, then give their understanding of the story. The US students came to the conclusion the prodigal son ended up tending pigs because he had squandered his money. The students from Russia concluded that the prodigal son ended up tending pigs because of the famine that took place. Finally, the seminary students from Tanzania concluded that the reason the prodigal son ended up tending pigs was because there was no community help given to him. One culture focused on the individual choices that were made, another focused on the lack of preparation and the bad luck of a famine, while the other focused on community. We understand the bible wasn\u2019t written to us, but it was written for us. We know each author had a specific cultural community in mind when they wrote. Do we spend enough time when we prepare our sermons or our class lectures to consider how our audience is going to hear what we say?<\/p>\n As a coach, one of that things I am constantly reminding my clients is that messy is good. When things get messy learning begins. Learning never happens in our comfort zones. In order for us to learn we need to move beyond our comfort zone into the learning zone, the area where messy begins. In a multi-cultural settings thing will get messy. Hidden dangers lurk within. Questions will arise and problems can take on a life of their own. But when digging for gold one has to move a lot of dirt.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the animated fictitious movie \u201cCloudy with a Chance of Meatballs\u201d the tiny Island of Swallow Falls\u2019 entire culture and economy is based on sardines. The son of the local bait shop Flint Lockwood a wanna be inventor wanting to give the community more of a variety of food, so he designs a machine that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1602,1433,1434],"class_list":["post-24056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp10","tag-erin-meyer","tag-the-culture-map","cohort-lgp10"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24057,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24056\/revisions\/24057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}