Learn A New World with Cheryl Boyd

First, Cheryl started out by sharing with us her obsession with the Olympics. In great detail. Because she loves the Olympics like crazy.


She started having a burden for Eastern Europe as she learned about Nadia... that she wanted her to be happy, that she wanted her to know Jesus.


*Defining Culture: The customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious or social group.

* Remember that there are good and bad parts of culture, but hesitate to label these things quickly. Some things are neutral, even, and make us uncomfortable so we want to label them as bad.

*Here's the Kwast model of culture.

* Being a servant. Philippians 2:1-16. What did Christ give up to "minister cross-culturally" to you? What things have you already given up or do you anticipate having to give up in order to serve the students in the culture where you are going? What do you anticipate being the hardest sacrifice to make?

* If culture is hard for you, that can be God's gift to stretch you and help you grow. Don't give in to the temptation to abandon learning the local language.

*Don't make "Little America" in your flat. "We'll let our culture ROAR in our flat tonight." Enter into the world of your students rather than trying to re-create America and bring your students into it.

*We are looking for a Biblical culture.

*Cultural Ministry Cycle:

Honeymoon is when you say, "I'm so glad to be eating roaches today! What a great story for my blog."

Pit of Despair is when you walk through the market and think, "This could be like a video game and I'll see how many people I can kick in the shins."

Normalization is when you start to balance these things out, and move to a good place of recognizing the good and bad things about your culture and your host culture.

*Cheryl shared the story of a student who came to Christ through a stinter who was used by God to enter into culture and get to know, love and share the gospel with her.