Each afternoon at the Pastor’s conference in Tanzania, Linda and I led a three-hour seminar on marriage and family issues. At each seminar, 20-40 pastors and wives would join us, sitting on plastic chairs on a covered walkway.
We wondered how things would go. We didn’t speak Swahili (we had a translator) and we were coming from a very different background than our Tanzanian friends. We had no desire to import Canadian ways or impose our cultural patterns of marriage on them.
So here’s what we did: we taught from the Bible. We began in Genesis 1-2 which speaks about leaving father and mother and cleaving to one another. In a culture where clans and families stay together, we had interesting discussions. We reminded ourselves that the most important human relationship we have is with our mate. Genesis 3 challenged us all to consider the ways we ‘blame others’ instead of taking responsibility, with the result of finding ourselves in conflict.
From Proverbs we considered our spoken words as well as the important subject of marital intimacy (Proverbs 5 and 6 – with suggestions to read the Song of Solomon). After a break (which sometimes included beautiful Swahili singing), we reviewed the concepts of love and respect from Ephesians 5 and closed with the loving reminders found in 1 Peter 3 to consider each other’s value and vulnerability.
Without a lot of illustrations or the fun DVD clips we had used before, we wondered how the Word of God would speak across cultures. At the final wrap up sharing session, we heard from many pastors and wives who had been deeply impacted by God’s Word.
For those who are willing, there’s a Word that trumps our words with a message that transcends our cultures.
On THE Way 