Most people don’t just leap directly into going overseas to live the rest of their lives in a foreign culture. They start with little stepping stones. You can take these steps intentionally, or you can help someone else do it, much like you would help a little child put their toe into the water, and then slowly wade out and learn to float. Here are some ideas:

Level 1 – Aquaintance with a foreign culture. It seems that much of what we think about a foreign culture is stereotyped. For example, when I say, “Iran,” most people will have an immediate image. They won’t catch the nuance that Iran is Persian whereas another nation – say, Egypt – is not. What images do we have of China? What images do we have of Vietnam or Korea? or Nigeria? The first step is to become deeply acquainted: to have more than a passing, stereotypical image. We can help people in this way by sharing links to things that are deeply introspective and perhaps shocking – not “man hit by bus” necessarily but rather short yet deep examinations of a culture. For example, consider:

• A short 1:59 video of a market in Shanghai, China. It’s not a documentary or anything, just someone’s short clips of what life is like.
• Children “Left Behind” in China. This is a 3-part documentary about Chinese children who are left with their grandparents in the villages while parents migrate to the cities in search of work. This is a massive trend.

Level 2 – Chance meetings with a foreign culture. In any city in the West there are likely some flavors of foreign cultures to be found. Keep your eyes open! For example, in Minnesota there were a large number of Somali Muslims as well as Russians in the local Costco. I almost felt back “abroad” as the Costco there much reminded me of the Tesco in Penang, Malaysia, with the many headscarves and full-length robes. Take a moment to talk with people: just naturally, not forced conversations (and no Four Spiritual Laws right now–this is observation!). Keep an eye open for someone you can help and exchange a bit of conversation with. How did they respond to you? What emotions do you think they displayed? Are you certain you read their emotions right? How did you feel when responding to them? How do you feel about all the “foreigners” around you, now that you’ve started noticing them? How do you think God feels about them? Re-read the story of Solomon: why did God bring foreigners to Israel, and to the Temple?

Level 3 – Intentional experience of a foreign culture. Find the pockets in your city where there are elements of foreign culture. Go to dinner at a Chinese take-out place: then, after you’ve gone there once or twice, ask the owner if they serve authentic Chinese (not the Americanized version), or where he would recommend. Or find a Chinese person in your circle of acquaintance and ask them. Try out authentic Chinese and see how it’s different. Find an Indian restaurant. Try German or Polish or Russian food. Find an authentic Mexican restaurant (not the Americanized version). See if there is a minority community in your city–a “Chinatown” for example. Go spend an afternoon there. See what the experience is like. Keep a journal of your feelings and of the people you meet and how they respond to you.

Level 4 – Begin making friends with foreigners. One possibility is ministry to exchange students. Many are visiting and feel alone, and would welcome a chance to have a meal with an American family, have someone befriend them, give them an opportunity to share. Another possibility is through business networks. Or, simply take the time to buy food in cross-cultural markets in your city (if they are present) and befriend people there. Are there foreigners in your church? Seek friendships that are not casual but are ongoing. Only time and shared experience brings depth. This is the stage where you have to commit to something intentional with a few people rather than a broad experience. Ask God to bring you people and then stick with them, warts and all.

Level 5 – Take an international trip. Now it’s time to go even deeper. Start thinking about an international short-term missions trip. Preferably this will be to a culture that you already resonate with. Expect that such a trip will have trials at every stage. Journal the trials. How do you respond to them? What do you learn from them? What do you learn from the culture, and your experience of it? What were the highs and the lows? Did it meet your expectations? Do you feel like you met the culture’s expectations? What does God have to say to the culture? What might he say through you? How can you serve the culture?

Level 6 – Preparation. (Parts of Level 6 might be done before Level 5). Now is the time to really deeply explore what God says about crossing cultures, and missions, and you. Take a Perspectives course, or a missions course at a Bible school. Read through the Bible hunting for all the instances where God talks about the world, foreigners, missions, etc.

Level 7 – Choose a destination to serve. If you’ve made it this far, you’re well on the track to becoming a missionary. Now is the time to begin examining your calling and the culture you feel called to serve. A few more short-term trips may be in order while you settle on a destination.

Level 8 – Agency selection. Again, parts of level 7 and 8 can be mixed in here. Generally, though, I recommend knowing where you are being called, and selecting an agency that will facilitate the calling, and not the other way around. I know there are authors who say missionaries should offer themselves sacrificially to an agency, but I think that’s the course to burnout. We should offer ourselves to God, who knows how He has designed us, and who has made our burden light. Knowing our calling is something between us and God. Anyway, once you’ve selected an agency, you’ll need to go through their candidate preparation.

Level 9 – Head out to the field. This is the end-point: but as Lewis said in the Last Battle, “This is Chapter One of the real story.” Every thing else is just preface. I won’t go into the real story here, as my aim is more to help you navigate the preface first. We tend to want to jump straight to the back of the book–but if you read the full story the ending is always more satisfying. And in order to decide which story you want to read, its best to read the preface first. I hope this guide helps you!

If you have comments, please post them below to help us all.

I have written of the need for 50,000 teams by 2050. This is based on the idea that each team (1 to 3 cross cultural pioneer workers) would raise up 100 local ministries, each of which would seek to evangelize 1,000 people. Thus, one cross-cultural team would lead to 100,000 being reached, and 50,000 teams would lead to 5 billion people being reached—e.g. the whole of the non-Christian world. This allows for significant team overlap, the obvious problems of attrition, some teams that won’t successfully mobilize 100 ministries, etc.

One initial feedback I received suggested more than 3 people would be needed to plant a church. I agree. Thus this short article was born, to better clarify some ideas I have about how this would work. My model is certainly flawed in many ways: which is why I am seeking case studies and feedback! Yet I offer it as something that can be critiqued and improved and eventually, perhaps, prove valuable to the missions community. For this model, I am primarily thinking of a swarmish, decentralized methodology.

Step 1: Segment the Country

We all know most cross-cultural pioneer workers cannot take on an entire country or even an entire people group (except perhaps those that are under 100,000 in population). So, the first step is to figure out what “part” of the country to take on, and how it might help make it easier to take on the rest of the country. You want to engage a part of the country that it’s realistic for you to make progress in, while also choosing a part that is strategic as a “gateway” to other parts—so others can build on the foundation you lay.

In the past I have experimented with segmenting countries by a cross between the Joshua Project list and YWAM’s Omega Zone project (see http://www.ywam4k.org). The Omega Zones are geographic zones with populations in the 3 million, 6 million, and 9 million range, divided up by the World A/B/C trichotomy, which for obvious reasons works for me. However, for our model of engaging a segment that is 100,000 in size, you need something smaller than an Omega Zone. Within each “Omega Zone” there could be 30, 60 or 90 subsets—I don’t have a nice snappy name for these right off the tip of my tongue, so we’ll just call them “Omega Segments” for the balance of this article.

How to decide “which” segment is the “right” segment is not particularly clear to me at the moment, and likely the “how” will vary by country. I’m guessing that, for less-reached countries, you’ll have to start in a more urban area with easy transportation and communication access—a hub you can settle in, since your first goal is not to plant a church but to begin building local ministries. In a more-reached country, you want to find a city “on the edge”—a kind of bridge between a more-reached area and a less-reached area. This is one of those topics that could use feedback. If you have ideas, why don’t you post them in the comments area or send them in an email to us?

Step 2: Inculturate

The kind of process I am talking about is not something that can be done—I think!—through a short-term trip or a short-term commitment. The purpose of the pioneer team is to find the evangelists, and finding them is going to take a while. You’ll have to learn the culture, you’ll have to learn the language, you’ll have to figure out who’s who. You will likely have to recruit workers and help mentor them. You’ll have to build relationships with whatever local churches are nearby. There’s a lot to be done. So, step 2 is to get yourself hooked up with an agency and 2 or 3 other people to create a team (perhaps more people if necessary), and get settled into the area.

Let me also mention at this point that members of a swarm need connectivity with others. Yes, you’re probably going to be with an agency, and hopefully the agency will provide you with plenty of resources, money and member care. I can hear the grim laughter now. More likely, you’ll have to do a lot of resource-raising and money-raising on your own, and you might as well begin building relationships with other field workers with other agencies who you might be able to share resources with. They’ll be able to commiserate with you, too, when the member care is a little low. (I’m just telling it like it is.)

Step 3: Raise up local ministries

No matter how much you inculturate, you—as an outsider—will never reach as many people as insiders will, as fast as they will. This is a simple fact of life. No matter how much we think the insiders just aren’t ready for the job, just don’t know enough, just can’t make the decisions—the simple fact is that they are just as able, have just as much of God’s grace, and have just as good an understanding of the people around them as you do. (Perhaps more, in some cases.) So it’s better, in my view, to go with a strategy of raising up locals than with a strategy where you do it all yourself.

In this model, you go with an eye to identifying 100 local ministries that will each evangelize 1,000 people. You’re not looking for the next Billy Graham (though if you find him, count yourself blessed). You’re looking for simple, earnest, committed, enduring men and women who wish to be obedient to the command of God and reach out with the Good News through word and deed to those around them.

How do you find them? You live in the area, learn the language, learn the culture, become friends with the people, find the believers, and find believers who are willing to reach out to others. In some places where there are no believers, you’ll have to do the initial evangelization and church planting, and there are plenty of other models out there for doing that (I have a personal preference for the Luke 10 method, which this is an extension of).
“Raising them up” does not mean that you are in charge of them, or that you are the one doing the raising. It’s just a “buzzphrase,” a slogan, a symbol for your role as one who challenges, recruits, encourages, facilitates training, helps find resources, etc. In other words, your job is to hang in the background and make sure the 100 people all have whatever they need (intellectual training, spiritual accountability, psychological encouragement, etc) to reach out to others.

You’ll also be the one encouraging connections between the 100. They shouldn’t be working in isolation. A band of 10 might group together, each with their own particular mode of ministry outreach, and between them plant several churches. They, in turn, will likely need to raise up other leaders—so it’s best if you are modeling the “raising up” process for them. In missionary lingo, this is Model-Assist-Watch-Leave—although I have a bit of a problem with the “Leave” idea, which I will talk about next.

Step 4: Step further back.

When I hear the phrase “Model-Assist-Watch-Leave,” I always have the mental picture of a missionary who comes in, trains locals, and then goes home, perhaps not interacting with the people any more. Personally, I don’t like this picture. I think missionaries need to commit to a particular segment, inculturate into it, and remain tied to it for a very long time—years, probably. However, I do think that a missionary’s role can (and should!) change in a much shorter period of time, and this is the best idea of “Leave.” The word “Leave” might be better stated “Step back.”

Once the 100 are reaching out to 100,000, you can become more of an informational hub. You connect these 100 to other 100s in the area, in the country. You can facilitate conferences. You can be a kind of “glue” that keeps things together. I was struck by the story I once heard of the founder of Kinko’s, a chain of photocopy shops. He was not a corporate type. Here is how he described what he did: “I go from store to store and find out what new ideas they have, and then I tell all the other stores I go to about the ideas.” In swarm terminology he was a “cross-pollinator,” taking a little bit from here and there and moving it on.

You can also take on the role of researcher. As the 100 people you’ve encouraged begin to saturate the area they are in, you can start looking for areas on the “fringes” that are equally unreached. Then, you can begin helping your 100 to start identifying people from within their own culture who can be cross-cultural pioneers to other areas—just as you were when you first came to this Segment. You may even get involved with those pioneers, helping to mentor them in the role. Thus it becomes a very cyclical movement. At this point, the movement has “broken out” and will begin spreading into other areas, perhaps throughout the people group and into other people groups (and maybe even into other countries).

Conclusion

So, that’s the basic idea behind a swarmish model on the ground. It doesn’t take a huge amount of resources, since it is more relational. By raising up 100 local ministries, you are encouraging them to reach out to those around them using local methods and local funds, in a way that is sustainable without outside money. The best thing (once again, I think!) would be to keep the outside money confined to your work and capitalizing training and recruiting events for the 100.

Now, here’s the interactivity part. If you’re doing this, or something like it, or you know where this model breaks down, why don’t you write us? We’re looking right now for case studies! We particularly want case studies either of “hubs” (the initial cross-cultural pioneering team) and evangelists (who reach out to 1,000 people). If you like, you can send a short article (just like this was short)—1 or 2 pages in Microsoft Word, perhaps—and we’ll see about publishing it. Or, just send us an email about a case you know, and we can do the legwork researching it and writing it up. Write to us via email to justinlong@gmail.com.

Bunches of sheets on composition, lighting placement, much more will help you bring the best photos back from your trips abroad. In Lifehacker.com.

Strategic Thinking vs. Strategic Planning is a useful little post that suggests 7 dimensions to strategic thinking and steps to building strategic thinking skills.

There is a lot of conversation that occurs, both on blogs and in the offline world, about being “missional.”

Not everyone agrees with everyone else about what being “missional” means. But, essentially, it usually means being more intentional about reaching out to the world around us.

Unfortunately, since “missional” and “missionary” both share all but three letters, it’s easy to confuse the two. Or at least it is for me.

“Missional” often seems to get confused with “being a missionary right here where you are.” It says “you don’t have to go to a different place” to “reach the unreached.”

Unfortunately we also often quickly slide into “let’s reach those surely-unsaved and therefore obviously unreached white college-educated English-speaking kids at Starbucks who don’t come to our church although we wish they did because then our church would be the cool place to be.”

So, if your heart is for missions to the unevangelized, let me suggest a differentiator: use the phrase “missionary” as sparingly as possible, and instead emphasize terms like “cross-cultural,” “language acquisition,” “poorest of the poor,” “absolute poverty,” “remote locations,” “persecuted,” “oppressed,” “hard to find,” “immigrant populations,” etc.

Think less about whether you are a missionary and more about who is being reached, and try to make sure who is being reached is an audience that absolutely no one else is reaching.

Here’s a new book, “Analyze This: a Nonprofit’s Guide to Event Fundraising Analytics.” Reviewed in Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog.

Here’s my 3 step process to finding loads of great articles.

1. Add bunches of subscriptions to Google Reader.
a) Create folders on various topics of interest to you
b) Spend time finding the 10 best blogs you can find on each topic.
c) subscribe those blogs’ RSS feeds and categorize them by folder.
d) Sort each subscription “by magic” – Reader will learn and bring you headlines it thinks you want.

2. Skim lots of headlines in Google Reader.
a) Spend time getting good at spotting potentially good headlines.
b) Skim fast, starring headlines that are potentially good.
c) Go back and spend time on the starred items.
d) “Like” the items that are indeed good, “Share”  those “really really” good.

3. Watch as Google Reader learns from your Likes/Shares.
a) Start reading in the “All Items” folder – and notice the vast majority of good headlines will, over time, bubble to the first few pages.

Once you’ve got this system going, you can add loads of subscriptions to Reader – I presently have over 300 or 400 – because “sort by magic” will tend to bring you good articles. I never worry about the unread count. Every so often I mark “as read” everything more than 2 weeks old. The more subscriptions you have, the more likely it is that a really important article will get picked up and reblogged, so you’ll catch it.

No one likes meetings. But what if you took out all the waste and left only the useful parts? Scott Berkun summarizes Nicole Steinbok’s 22 minute meeting concept.

We wrote before about 7 key ways to find a vision for your life. Here’s a simple way to get some forward motion.

First, figure out your SHAPE. I first heard the SHAPE acronym from Rick Warren’s ubiquitous Purpose Driven Life. It stands for: S)piritual giftings, H)eart/passion, A)bilities, P)ersonality, and E)xperiences. Grab a piece of paper, and make some simple lists under each category that help you figure out your SHAPE (or, read the book).

Second, read what God commands us to do for non-believers in the Bible. Read about care for widows, orphans, the oppressed, etc. Use a search engine like Biblegateway.com or my personal favorite, Blueletterbible.org.

Third, figure out the intersection between the two. Think about one of God’s commands, and ask yourself: how can you use your SHAPE to specifically obey this command? Under what circumstances would one of your spiritual giftings, your abilities, or your personality enable you to do something God has told you to do?

Once you figure out the circumstance–go there!

We all know about the explosion of information and its effect on us. More and more is being created on a daily basis: new articles, new books, new headlines, new videos, new music. We also know that more and more that is being created is either untrue, mindless drivel, evilly addictive, or simply not intended for you (e.g. Facebook postings or twitter posts which make no sense to you probably weren’t written for you—the nature of the medium simply makes it easy for you to see it).

One answer to information overload is better and better search engines. This is the problem Google, Yahoo, and Bing are each attempting to answer, with results of varying quality. (I personally use Google but have found Bing to be very good too.)

Another answer to information overload is social media: links that your friends and the people you “follow” online recommend. I get a substantial number of “leads” this way.

Yet another answer is to follow a very specific, selected set of feeds. (There is no one “best” set of RSS feeds to follow in your feed reader: it all depends on what you are trying to uncover. For example, I follow over 300 different feeds, but I have them grouped in different categories—news, recruitment, war, disease, social media, etc).

These three answers can be leveraged into a fourth answer—a service that missionary advocates can offer to others which would be of great value: the Digital Curator. Back in February 2008, Steve Rubel wrote an excellent short article, The Digital Curator in your future. He has written about it again today, identifying some case studies in The next big trend: it’s all about curation.

A digital curator is a “content specialist responsible for an institution’s collections and their associated collections catalog.” A digital curator, in a sense, separates the junk from the high-value pieces.

I suggest missionary advocates can serve a useful role for others in missions and in churches by being “digital curators” to high-value pieces of information related to missions and your specific niche in it. There’s enough information being created “out there” that you don’t necessarily need to create new things. What you need to do is uncover it, link to it, and tell us (briefly!) why it is important. Annotated links to original content elsewhere is a key value that is fairly simple to incorporate.

So here’s how to do it:

1. Get really good at following sources of information that are useful and of high-quality. You want to minimize your own personal noise, while increasing the amount of good stuff you find. I am constantly searching for new RSS feeds, but in each category I generally only maintain two folders: 1) the “top 10” sources and 2) the 10 feeds that are “on probation.” You can also try following primarily an Alltop feed (you can set up your own customized alltop page at my.alltop.com), or you can try following lots of folks on Twitter who send links your way (I get a lot of my persecuted church news this way).

2. Find the way that suits you best to share the links you discover. I balance “favoriting” entries in Twitter that have to do with missions (seehttp://www.twitter.com/nsmjustinlong/favorites for a running list, or the front page of http://www.strategicnetwork.org), and I retweet or post items that specifically have to do with missions and “swarming” (decentralized networks). I use a WordPress plugin (Twitter Tools) to aggregate my tweets into Aside links on strategicnetwork.org. I use a custom PHP script that I wrote to bring these links together (along with articles) and email them out to the momentum@strategicnetwork.org email list (join with an email tomomentum-join@strategicnetwork.org).

What are the “important links”? You’ll need to figure this out for yourself, based on your vision and plausible promise. It’s not always the stuff that gets retweeted. The question to ask yourself is how a particular resource or link is important to you in fulfilling your promise—and then figure it will likely be similarly valuable to those who share your vision. And tell us how it’s useful.

One last note: in order to do this, you need a strategy for how you are going to use the various services out there. Our blog at strategicnetwork.org is used as an aggregation point for all the material I link to and write. Twitter is used for real-time feeds of links. I use Facebook for notes about me, personally, so if you want to know more about Justin-the-guy-and-the-family you need to connect with me there. (I also repost all my Twitter stuff to Facebook so you get both.)

You can do this too. If you decide to be a digital curator, email me –justinlong@gmail.com – and let me know. I’ll probably want to follow you!