Robert E Rasmussen.com

Have you read about the contrast between people who are messy and those who are neat-freaks?  Messies don’t pick up after themselves; they are oblivious to standards of neatness. Cleanliness is not a high value. They do life without having to place everything in order. Their desks are a mess. Their shoes lie around the closet or house. Dishes in the kitchen. Workshops seemingly piled with tools yet they usually know where to start searching.

Neat-freaks are the opposite.

So recently I was in a meeting with other church leaders and we got to talking about sharing worship space. Usually (at least currently; in the future the “shoe” could be on the other foot)…usually, it is an Anglo congregation sharing space in THEIR church building with an ethnic congregation. I have heard the difficulty expressed many times, “They don’t clean up the rooms; they leave them messy.” Or, “They just let their kids run all over the place. It’s chaos!”  Or, “They cook in the church kitchen and the smell of their food doesn’t go away!”

Some of these issues stem from different cultural values. God must get a kick out of watching how we rub each other the wrong way sometimes. This got me to wondering if Jesus would fit in more naturally with the messies or the neat-freaks.

When opinions clash as to how to use a church building, whose culture is really the problem?

Powered By the Tweet This Plugin

Tweet This

People have varying kinds of friendships with documents. It may be because they are not confident with the local language (for me, English…well, American).  For others it may be a learning pattern, or an issue with eyesight.  Perhaps it stems from restlessness and distractability. But the reason may also be a cultural one.

To put it simply, some people prefer talking face to face rather than reading content on a page. They are strong on relationships. They excel at conversation. I remember many times in Kenya being embroiled in conversation with a Kenyan friend or even new acquaintance. The ability to recall details of an event, or to unfold a story, amazed me.

Such cultures are typically more community oriented. Time is taken to catch up on the extended family. Greetings often include a report on all the relatives and their well-being. If you walk into a meeting that is already in process, you will still quietly go around the table and shake hands with each person there.

I was raised in a different kind of culture, one that is more individualistic. This is more typical of Americans, at least those hailing from northern Europe stock. So when I introduce myself, I get right to the point. I don’t consider giving an update on my family. I give my title, my work, my city. Pretty soon, I’m getting to the point of the meeting –what I need or what I can offer. Communication is direct and speedy. Efficiency. That’s how I’m wired.

Bring these two cultural clusters into the context of a cross-cultural relationship, whether one-on-one or in an organizational setting. If I want to strengthen a relationship with the other person, I need to take a lot more time for relational updating than my internal time clock allows. If I’m conducting a meeting, a prompt start is not going to serve the group well. I need to hang loose and let people mingle and converse for a good 15 or 20 minutes (and not wear a scowl while checking my watch).

What else? Well, I need to be okay with the fact that some of the others do not feel comfortable with email communications. Maybe its the technology, or the language. Maybe its the impersonal nature of the method. Maybe its the cultural belief that if we’re friends we’ll make time to get together face to face and talk it through. Then the whole environment, the body language, the gestures, the emotion — everything adds to effective transmission of the message, and gives opportunity for exchange of ideas.

Sure, sending an email blast to the whole group is easier, but is it effective interculturally?  It gets more done but does more get accomplished? I tend to think that if I have put something in writing that it should be clear to all. But I may have distanced myself from my colleague of a more relational culture.