OCI 2014 Leadership Retreat: One Thing

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Outpost Centers International

Ministry Workshops

Steven Grabiner

One Thing: Focus vs. Fog

Cheryl Doss

Training for Mission Effectiveness

Craig Harding

One Word: Communicate

Nurturing Missionary Kids

Mark Guild

One Accord: Team Building

Tim McKinley

Vision/Mission

Steve Dickman

Strategic Planning

This is where I get to have some fun with you because I get to show you pictures of my family.

Because we're a family of missionary kids.

In 1934, my mother-in-law was 11 years old when her parents went to Trinidad as missionaries.

5 years later, they came back to the U.S.

And 3 months after they arrived back in the U.S., her parents were both killed in a train car accident on their way to a Bible study.

She was called out of her English class at Adelphian Academy and give him the news.

She went on to take nursing and to marry and went to the mission field with my husband when he was 3 years old.

And they were there for some 21 years in Africa.

Later, I met my husband at Helderberg College when we were in high school.

That was the school of the day for missionary kids in Southern Africa.

And we married after we finished college and went back to the country of Malawi, and both of our children were born there.

And this is a picture of our daughter, Christy.

Christy, This picture was taken a few years ago.

My mother-in-law has since passed away, but when Christie had her first son.

Zachary is now 8 years old and has lived in 5 countries.

And they currently live in the Philippines.

First of all, you know, missionary kids are a little weird, and if we're a little weird, you know why, we kind of jerk or switch, whatever.

You don't grow out of being a missionary kid because your childhood is built into you, right?

So we're maybe adult missionary kids, but we're always missionary kids.

We're a family of missionary kids, first of all.

And The second thing, so maybe we're a little different for that reason, but on the other hand I want to assure you as we begin this, that it is possible to raise healthy missionary kids who can then become missionaries themselves, generation after generation.

We do hope that this ends soon, don't we?

That there won't need to be more missionary kids soon, because Jesus has come.

However, it is possible, and I want to assure you that right now, because we'll be talking about both the benefits and the challenges of being raised as a missionary kid.

In the past, missionaries tended to have the attitude that God will take care of our kids, kids adjust, we just move, We don't worry too much about it, about them.

And this began to change in the 60s, 70s, 80s as many of the missionary kids that had gone out in the post-war years grew up.

And some people began to find out there were problems that lasted all one's life because of being raised as a missionary kid.

And then we kind of had the pendulum then kind of began to swing to the other side.

And now we hear people saying, I would never take my children to the mission field because it really messes them up.

And the point we would like to have here is that neither of these attitudes are correct.

We can trust God to care for our children.

But we also need to be wise, knowledgeable, and as careful as we can to raise them in the best possible way.

So our discussion today will be to try to find a balance between these 2 extremes.

Now, in the 1980s, there were 3 missionary kid conferences that were held, 1 in Ecuador, 1 in the Philippines, 1 in Kenya, out of which a lot of research, a lot of books have come.

And we know much more about missionary kids and the raising of missionary children than we knew before.

A lot of research is ongoing and continues.

And if you're interested in the subject, there will be much that you can find on it.

1 thing was said at the last of these conferences by Ted Ward, and I think this is a very important statement for us.

Neglect of family is not part of a bargain 1 strikes with God.

And as we go as missionaries, we need to bear that in mind at wherever we work, we need to bear that in mind.

Now it doesn't mean our family is our total focus of our mission either.

We still have a responsibility to do the work God calls us to.

But it should be a balance and it should be incorporated together.

Okay, missionary kids are part of a larger group called third culture kids.

First culture is the parent's home culture.

We had 1 missionary family that came through Mission Institute with 3 children, and every 1 of them had a passport from a different country.

But the parents' home culture is what we consider the first culture.

And for, like, my family, that first culture is the U.S.

The second culture, or a combination of cultures, is the cultures in which the child is being raised.

So for our grandson, Zachary, He has been raised now in a Portuguese-speaking culture.

That was 3 years of his life, 2 years of his life in a French-speaking culture in Madagascar.

He's the kind of kid that grew up asking for the word, if you learned a new word in English, then what is it in Portuguese, what is it in French?

But anyway, that is the second culture, the culture that surrounds the child.

Right now for their family it is a Filipino culture.

And the third culture is the culture that results from that mixture of cultures.

It is whatever the mixture of the home culture and the host cultures are becomes the third culture and what's very interesting about the research that's been done is that kids that are raised in this between world of cultures share similar characteristics.

It doesn't matter which cultures they are.

They still share very similar characteristics.

And that's what we'll be focusing on this afternoon.

So here's a definition that Dave Pollack came up with.

It's in the book, Third Culture Kids, which, by the way, if you're interested, is the definitive book on the subject.

It says an individual who having spent a significant part of the developmental years.

Kids are still developing at 25 now, right?

At least those years we consider as developmental years.

They have different kinds of development as we go through.

So a significant part of one's childhood, let's say, in a culture other than the parent's culture, so it's not the parent's home culture, develops a sense of relationship to all of the cultures while not having full ownership in any.

This is different than an immigrant child who moves to a new culture and becomes part of the immigrant community in a new culture.

This child is living between these cultures without having full ownership in any.

At the time, and I don't know that it's changed yet, you cannot become a citizen of Malawi unless you have 1 parent who is Malawian.

So they will never be able to have citizenship there or residency.

If they go, they will go in the same way anybody else would with a visitor's visa or a temporary work permit.

They don't have full ownership in that culture even though they were born there and grew up there entirely.

However, because they grew up in Malawi, they don't have full ownership in the American culture either.

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Come Home - Transforming Your Family in Christ

05 Home: The Disciple Center

43m

GYC 2012 Seminar: Mission - The Unmistakable Mandate

Cast Down But Unconquered

49m

Teach Them Diligently

Teach Them Diligently - Part 5: Changing the Selfish Heart

1h 7m

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50m

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1h 13m

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58m

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Raising Children to be ‘Missionaries’ with a Mission

1h 20m

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