Overview

This qualitative study explores intercultural social dynamics among international Christian workers who are part of multicultural teams engaged in Christian ministries in a North African country. It seeks to understand these workers' lived realities at intersections of multiple cultural flows. Ethnographic methods were used to collect and analyze data, and forty-nine international Christian workers were interviewed. The findings of this study indicate that intercultural Christian workers go through complex intercultural social processes interwoven in the fabric of their everyday life. These processes are mediated by their social experiences in the local North African context and their multicultural teams, resulting in significant changes in their personal dispositions and social behaviors. Based on these findings, a working concept of diasporic habitus is developed, and the practice of double discourses of culture is further examined. This research suggests that some existing missiological concepts need to be revisited and recommends further interdisciplinary conversations involving cultural anthropology and sub-fields in psychology about the changes that happen to people in intercultural missions. It also calls for a reflexive approach to missiological research that incorporates awareness of one's situatedness and the lasting impact of historical entanglements on contemporary intercultural relations.

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9781666797527

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Reviews

As Asian, African, and South American churches send more missionaries into the world, the cultural landscape for missionaries becomes more complex and the challenge of negotiating cultural differences more multilayered. Lee has conducted a careful ethnographic research project to explore the challenges and tensions within multicultural mission teams in a limited-access country. . . . There is much to learn here, and much work yet to do before multicultural mission teams are as effective as Christian missionaries should be. --Michael A. Rynkiewich, Asbury Theological Seminary, retired Peter T. Lee challenges outmoded anthropological concepts ingrained in mission-agency thinking and underlying much missionary training. Hybridizing Mission reminds us that 'people are not something or someone to be scrutinized, ' helping us move beyond current fashions of 'shallow multiculturalism or an increasingly ethnicized hybridism.' Important reading as we consider the complex mixtures of ideas and settings global messengers of Jesus face. --David Greenlee, Operation Mobilization Peter Lee ingeniously weaves the theory of cultural hybridization into the narratives of the missionaries' lived experiences in the field among the local people and with their multicultural teams. Lee also provided an exceptional literature review from leading scholars on cultural hybridity that will help readers further understand the concept. This is a must-read for missiologists and missionaries as globalization accelerates cultural mixing. Cultural hybridity is among us and within us. --Juliet Lee Uytanlet, Asia Graduate School of Theology As mission becomes increasingly multinational and intercultural, Christian workers from around the world mix with each other as well as the people in the ministry context, and the complexities multiply. Drawing on current global trending, Peter Lee uses data from North Africa to develop the concept of 'diasporic habitus' to highlight the impact of complex social contexts which create hybridizing experiences. Such blending energizes all who occupy the missional space. I affirm this conceptualization. --R. Daniel Shaw, Fuller Graduate School of Mission & Theology In a world of rapid globalization, cultural hybridization, and internationalization of mission teams, fresh approaches are needed to understand the dynamics of cross-cultural kingdom work. In exemplary manner, Peter Lee's work does just that, demonstrating how new models can be applied in examining intercultural social processes and personal changes experienced by international Christian workers. --Craig Ott, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School In Hybridizing Mission, Peter Lee brings his hybridized self to scrutinize and apply a cultural-hybridity lens to multicultural ministry teams in a third space of a North African country. He breaks fresh ground and develops new insights that are highly pertinent for the emerging realities of polycentric diasporic Christianity of the twenty-first century. A timely and substantial contribution to global missiology. --Sam George, Wheaton College Hybridizing Mission brings deep sensitivity and a disciplined eye to the nuanced and complex textures of the human beings engaged in mission in a particular North African context. Pushing beyond our facile reliance on essentialism to understand difference, Lee significantly advances hybridity theory in this well-researched volume on the complex interactions of a multicultural mission team in a Muslim context. --Hunter Farrell, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Author Information

Peter T. Lee serves as Associate Director of DMin Korea, Associate Director of the Paul G. Hiebert Center for World Christianity and Global Theology, and Affiliate Professor of Intercultural Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. He also works with Operation Mobilization (OM) in missiological research.

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