Stories and reflections on Christian service in China and among Chinese communities worldwide, highlighting ministry practices, local needs, and collaboration across churches and organizations.
Facing a medical crisis is difficult at any time. When it happens far from home, family, and familiar medical facilities it can be devastating. Having good, accessible insurance can relieve some of the concern and the financial burden of medical care overseas. One insurance provider that has been serving cross-cultural workers in Asia for years is Talent Trust Consultants (TTc).
It is a very tricky thing to assess when it is time to leave a particular field of service or line of ministry.
Since 2002, I have had the privilege of compiling the ZGBriefs Newsletter each week. I travel a lot, which means that I have to pull it together wherever I happen to be on a Wednesday or Thursday. As I was putting it together last week, I got to thinking about all the different places that I have worked on ZGBriefs.
What I learned on my Thai Spring Festival holiday...
Our upcoming spring edition of the ChinaSource Quarterly deals with cults in China and we are looking for appropriate photos to illustrate this topic.
One of ChinaSource’s core values is to be a learning organization. Centuries of Christian involvement in the Middle Kingdom provide a wealth of lessons on what has – and has not – served to advance the gospel in China.
Crossing a cultural boundary inevitably leads to cultural clashes. Sometimes the clashes occur at the point of behaviors and customs, such as eating, drinking, or even how to cross a street. More often, however, the clashes occur at the deeper level of cultural values — beliefs about what is right and wrong or how how the world ought to be ordered.
Last week, on my way home from giving two days of lectures at Taylor University, I had the opportunity to visit the Center on Religion and Chinese Society, at Purdue University in Lafayette, IN.
Cross-cultural workers have long debated the merits of devoting more or less time and energy to relations with other expatriates.
The first time I crossed a cultural boundary; I was but 1 year old! And no, it wasn't my parents whisking me off to some far-off tropical land; it was my family returning to the US after a term of service in Pakistan.
I have done a lot of cross-cultural training over the years for people heading off to work in China, and one of the resources that I turn to again and again is Turning Bricks into Jade: Critical Incidents for Mutual Understanding among Chinese and Americans. Edited by Mary Wong and others, this book is a collection of "critical incidents" or stories of cross-cultural conflict and misunderstanding between Chinese and Americans.
First it was Chinese graduate students and scholars going overseas to study. Then undergraduates joined the ranks of international students from China. Now there are thousands of young Chinese students arriving in the US for high school.