The first cultural practice I noticeis that it’s a very event oriented culture, whereas in the west, we are very time-oriented culture. This is poses many challenges for us. I myself also come from a mixture of both time oriented, and event oriented cultures. I think for me growing up event oriented time was implemented when we had guests, and time oriented moments implemented when it was more business like settings.
However, here everything move to the beat of a much slower drum. There are pros and cons of this. The pros are that I have come to observe is that overall the event oriented nature of the culture has I think made the culture more hospitable. So, it can feel like everyone, at bare minimum, likes each other, or is tolerable of one another. The cons are that you can never rely on anyone regarding time. It’s almost pointless trying to make a schedule with time ran to blocks because it will never get done. We’ve often found ourselves 2, 3 or sometimes even 4 or 5 hours behind schedule.
In my own experience, even being 30 minutes behind schedule, or being 25 minutes late is a big deal. What I’ve learned through this entire process is that culture can be something that can divide us. However, if you’re able to meet in the middle, and recognize that we’re all moving forward and some projectory towards Jesus, and those dividing walls that could be brought up by culture can be brought down. It’s been the theme of our intercept this year. our team versus come from first Peter 2:9 which talks about Jesus breaking down the dividing walls of hostility. I’ve seen this first come to life with our time oriented culture I suppose to their event orient culture.