It takes more than just a passionate love for God and a nudge from the Holy Spirit to successfully talk about Christianity in a culture alien to your own. It’s called mission work and adequate preparation for the task is akin to learning another language. Forty years ago Seventh-day Adventist cross-cultural missionaries had nowhere to go to learn the important cultural practices and nuances that would either sink or swim their presentation of the gospel to locals. Today, the Institute of World Mission (IWM), based at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, United States, provides that vital support for all missionaries sent out by the world church headquarters.

Lester Merklin, an experienced missionary who was appointed director of the Institute in 2005, illustrates how easily good intentions can go awry if a missionary is uninformed about the local culture.

“It’s only natural for an American to use an illustration of a beloved pet dog in a sermon,” he says. But “in Pakistan for a pastor to use an illustration like that would completely turn off the audience because of the low level of dogs in a Muslim society.”

“We all have cultural blinders and we inadvertently make mistakes, especially when we are trying to do the work of the church,” agreed Pat Gustin who, up until last year, was the director of the Institute. Gustin pointed out that as missionaries in a foreign culture, “you can’t do basic communication well unless you have a deep understanding of other people and how they think, reason and where they are coming from.”

This past August marked the 40th anniversary of the very first Mission Institute held at Andrews University. IWM came into existence because “the church felt for some time that sending out missionaries from West to East or North to South demanded better preparation,” said Gottfried Oosterwal, the first director of the Institute of World Mission. “We saw that the gospel needed to be translated into other people’s cultures.”

The training institutes were sometimes held once, twice or three times a year and soon became an independent organization, according to Oosterwal, who directed the Institute for 25 years. Today the Institute provides appropriate cross-cultural training for all full-time, short-term and volunteer workers, and facilitates their re-entry to their home countries.

Jon Dybdahl, who served as a missionary, taught mission classes at the Institute and is now retired and living in College Place, Washington says, “When I left the seminary there was no department of world mission. Now it is required that students at the seminary take a couple of classes in mission. Many don’t realize that a lot of how we share isn’t just Biblical but cultural.”

Two mission-training institutes are held at Andrews University each year while three are held in different places around the world. Just this past August the 115th institute was held in Nairobi, Kenya. “We don’t send individuals to the mission field, we send families,” said Gustin, so there is training for missionary children as well.

“We’re not saying that at the Institute we can take every culture and teach you all the things to do and don’t do and how to speak ... but hopefully we can raise awareness of the need to observe, listen and learn before [talking],” said Merklin. “It is a two-phase training on how to be an effective missionary and also how to survive.”