Reaching least reached communities in God’s mission is evolving and has changed over many generations. Places that were unreached with the Gospel in the past are now becoming more ‘reached.’ Previously unreached places are now sending mission workers, whilst least reached communities are becoming increasingly difficult to access with the Gospel. To engage these least reached communities, mission workers from the ‘Global South’ - Africa, Asia, and Latin America – are joining teams with Australian workers to serve in these challenging places.

This has meant that on the mission field, there is an increase in multicultural teams. This could look like Australian mission workers serving alongside Guatemalan workers or Brazilian workers with Ethiopian workers and so on.

Because of this shift, the nature of missions is now moving from here to there, to anywhere to everywhere.

SIM’s diverse teams serve together and display the beauty and unity of God’s people across many nations. As they seek to share Jesus with those yet to know Him, they bring different leadership expectations, conflict resolution approaches and prayer & evangelism styles. All this means cultural differences exist within a mission team and affects how teams serve and function together.

Steve Early, SIM Australia’s Mission Training Lead, explains, “SIM works hard to prepare our workers well to reach the least reached. We are also working very intentionally to prepare our workers to collaborate within very diverse cultural teams and environments.”  

As Steve helps prepare SIM workers to understand the cultural differences of people groups in their places of service, he also helps grow their cultural awareness within their teams. Steve shares, “It is important that we equip our works to serve together with a heart of humility and unity.”

Sent from SIM Australia is Bethany who now serves in West Africa. She is an example of one of our workers who has gone through cross-cultural preparation in Australia before entering her field of service. In preparation for serving in a multicultural team, Bethany completed a 6-week course called ‘SIL’, a course that teaches cross-cultural workers to know how to communicate the Gospel in anyone’s language.

Bethany now leads and serves in a multicultural team in West Africa. When she first arrived on the field 8 years ago, she joined an all-American US team. The team has grown and is now made up of Australians, Ethiopians, Nigerians and a local believer.

“The growing cultural diversity in our team is a lot of change in eight years, however we now have better representation of the global church today,” Bethany said.

In leading a diverse and multicultural team, Bethany shared how different team members have different heart languages. Communication is much slower. Views on expectations of leadership are also different according to each member. For example, Bethany shared that some expect leaders to make small decisions and others expect them to provide more structure. This can provide joys and also challenges on the field.

“As we develop multicultural teams, we really start to reap the benefits of different experiences and perspectives, as we share the Gospel together as one,” Bethany said.

Through equipping our workers, SIM creates ways to help diverse mission teams on the field serve well together. As SIM teams bring the Gospel to least reached communities all around the world, our diversity brings strength and unity around our purpose in making Christ known.

PRAY

Pray for the many multicultural teams we have serving in challenging places around the world that God would give them joy in the unity they represent as God’s global church.

GIVE

Our Mission Global Fund is one way you can support the raising of new skills-based workers to have a global impact in least reached communities. To give, visit sim.org.au/gospelneeds

GO

Would you like to be equipped for cross-cultural ministry? You can learn to communicate in anyone's language through SILA. Go to sim.org.au/sila-courses to find out more. You can also begin a conversation today by visiting sim.org.au/talktous.