Religious tourism is on the rise. A Princeton University study found that in one year (2005) 1.6 million church members took mission trips—an average of eight days each at a cost of $2.4 billion. If you have spent any time in an American church, you have probably seen many in your congregation leave on a short-term missions trip with curiosity, fear, and anxiety only to come back to share glowing stories about how God used them and that their lives have been changed forever. Enter David Livermore, who wants you to open your eyes to see the complexity of short-term missions and cross-cultural engagement in general.

Part One of the book looks at globalization and the church. Livermore provides brief snapshots of what he believes are important trends in the world and the church. So, for example, “Snapshot 2” of the world is “Poverty and Wealth,” where he provides statistics that show the seemingly wide gap in wealth around the world. The snapshots of the church rely mostly on Philip Jenkins’s works and introduce the reader to some issues such as to the explosive growth of Christianity in the global south, the persecution Christians are facing, and the need for leadership-training just about everywhere.

Some readers may be frustrated that major topics are glossed over in these snapshots, but they are not the main point of the book. For example, the issue of the poverty-and-wealth divide is not as simple as “we are rich and you are poor.” However, at least on this topic there is a more nuanced approach taken later in the book. One may wonder whether some of the sources Livermore uses are just another example of Christians behaving poorly with statistics. When there is a report that there are 480 million believers in Latin America, one wonders how the word believer is defined? Are there really 20,000 conversions in Africa a day?

Part Two details a few short-term missions trips and looks at the perspectives from American and National leaders on the topics of motivation, urgency, common ground, the Bible, money, and simplicity. Each chapter is a critique (though gracious) of the Americans providing the short-term trip. The reader begins (at least should) to cringe reading some of the comments that are often heard on the field or back home when the short-termers return, as if the Americans are sweeping in to rescue those poor Christians in x country.

The chapters on motivation and teaching the Bible are provoking. Are participants in short-term missions going to serve for an adventure? Why do short-term agencies sell their trips as adventures and worse, vacations? Have you ever heard your pastor say, “Culture doesn’t matter; we just taught them the Bible”? While not descending into relativism, Livermore points out that it is not that easy: “when we make our interpretation of the Bible the almighty trump card by proof-texting our models for ministry, we’re in danger of heresy” (p. 81). Of course, this is always true whether or not you are teaching in another culture, but it becomes more pronounced when trying to take our models that have been informed by our own cultural presuppositions into a culture that is much different from our own.

Part Three is meant to rebuild the reader’s cultural intelligence (CQ) after they have been broken down by the previous two sections. Livermore breaks cultural intelligence into four parts to help the reader interact with other cultures in an effective way.

Knowledge CQ is the ability to understand cultural differences. Of course, the danger of trying to understand cultural differences before traveling to another culture is that you can become more of an “expert” on the culture than the people who live there! Still, the author calls us to pay attention to our presuppositions. Interpretive CQ is the degree in which we are mindful that we are interacting in different cultures. Livermore offers basic advice on how to get your mind off of cruise control in order to observe what is going on around you. Perseverance CQ is just as it sounds—the motivation to adapt cross-culturally. Again suggestions abound. Behavioral CQ is the ability to adapt verbal and non-verbal actions as we interact with other cultures. Here he tells us that the “biggest problems for most short-term missions teams are not technical or administrative. The biggest challenge lies in communication, misunderstanding, personality conflicts, poor leadership and bad teamwork” (p. 155). One wonders why there is no interaction with 1 Cor 9:19–23. There is a curious omission to note: while there is a great deal of emphasis on what we should do to blend in, there is very little practical advice on how to critique another culture (or if it is even possible).

The goal of building cultural intelligence extends the mission of God (p. 163). The final chapter’s ten helpful tips to start thinking about how to engage cross-culturally are worth the price of the book. There is however something missing in his final chapter where he tells us that what matters most is to love God and to love others. Following (I think) Scot McKnight’s thoughts on the Shema, Livermore relates to us that the centrality of the Shema is Jesus’ life and Paul’s writings. While it is no doubt true that Shema is important, to mention it as the most important part of mission and completely leave out any mention of the cross is to miss what is most central.

As a matter of fact there is very little mention of the gospel and its impact on how we view short-term missions. Maybe the gospel is just assumed, but most of what has been suggested is not primarily about Shema, but about the cross. The implications of that event is what drives our mission and should shape how we view and interact with different cultures. Certainly, we can learn to serve our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world by thinking of the implications of Philippians 2.

While there is a lot of good wisdom packed into this book, there is very little interaction with the Bible. While I understand that the point of the book is to gain a level of competency in cultural and theological hermeneutics, it would have been helpful to point us to Scripture.

That being said, if you have served long-term in another culture, you may feel this book has put into words what you have been feeling for years. So pastors, put this book in the hands of your people. If you are a youth pastor, read this with your leaders, and then use it in your preparations with your students. Before you head overseas, read this book.

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