Willing to Adapt

Written by Andrew - Serving in Australia

My time in Australia was incredible. Incredibly life-changing, incredibly exciting, incredibly challenging, incredibly intentional, and incredibly relational in everything we did. The culture and people of Australia are very relational and love to hang out and just spend time together. They are also really keen to get to know more about Jesus, but there is also a major social cost to following Jesus in Australia. I met with an eighteen-year-old while I was in Australia who had been going to youth, and I asked him if he was involved in the church at all. He said no, but because he wanted to grow more in his faith, I asked if he wanted to go grab a coffee and study the Word. So he, his friend, and I went and studied the Bible, but when we got the Bibles out and some study books in public at a coffee shop, he shut down in our conversations, and expressed he did not want our time to look like that because he wasn’t comfortable being labeled a Christian. He just wanted to hang out and have a good conversation, which we continued to have. Eventually toward the end of our time in Australia, he was staying for an hour after church asking more people good questions and even asked the youth pastor for a Bible which he told me and his friend he didn’t want a few weeks earlier. 

This shows I had to insert myself into the highly relational and social culture of Australia to minister to this eighteen-year-old, and also how the social cost in Australia affected how I ministered. My most meaningful discipleship and gospel conversations didn’t happen at church on Sunday or at youth on Friday Nights, but at sunrises at 5am or at a pub at 5pm and at midnight during a board game because that's where the people felt relaxed and willing to open up. This student's story also shows why it’s important we have people in the church who are willing to go there because Australia may not be a third-world country, but spiritually it is poor. I learned that ministry also looks different in different places, and must adapt to a situation and culture. As the church, we must be willing to adapt with it to meet people where they are at.