Book Review - Leading Across Cultures by James Pluddemann

Leading Across Cultures by James Pluddemann
InterVarsity Press, 2009

Reviewed by Kevin Book-Satterlee

It is only the first few weeks of January, but I expect Pluddemann’s book to be one of the most helpful and fascinating books for missions that I will read all year. Leading Across Cultures is timely and recognizes the global shift in missions.

The face of missions is increasingly more multicultural and missionary teams are becoming more cross-cultural. With the dynamic change comes increasing complications as well. A missionary will not only need to adapt to the new mission context she finds herself in, but she will have to also adapt to differences with her missions team. Leadership styles may conflict, visions may look different and likely how to accomplish visions will be different in a multicultural team.

A missionary can avoid these problems by either ghettoizing himself in a unicultural missions team or avoiding mission altogether. If neither of these is an option for a missionary, Pluddemann wrote a valuable resource for addressing the multicultural missions challenges.

One of the most impacting aspects of Pluddemann’s book is that with the changing context of missions he shows that there must be a developing view of how to work together. The legacy of old missions, to set up outposts and colonize has long been dropped in missions. This legacy spurned a great sense of empowerment by the next generation of missionaries entering the field. There was an attempt to avoid dependency and to create indigenously sustainable ministries. This cautious and commendable approach to missions has also created a hyper-sensitivity to culture and sometimes impotence in ministry. Pluddemann suggests a shift to a more collaborative approach.

Paul is famously quoted in missions books for “becoming all things to all people.” But while he was willing to engage his context where he was at, he did not always shy away from being a Jew of the Jews in Gentile lands. He couldn’t. To do so would be lacking authenticity. One does not completely drive away the context from which he came, for he would lose a number of years that shaped who he indeed was in Christ. It is coming into the new context that the missionary must grow in sensitivity to the new context and let the new context shape the remainder of his life.

A Mexican friend of mine told a group of us missionaries that we ought not try so hard to be Mexican. I had just finished giving a devotional about how we need to become Mexican to the Mexicans, as a play on Paul’s words, and here my friend just denied it. But he did not completely wash out my devotion. He added to it. Rather, to become imbedded within a context for that context might mean a sense of fluidity for people, as contexts change. My friend was preaching adaptability, sensitivity and a willingness to learn, but also a willingness to share Godly aspects of my personal culture as long as I was seeking the first three qualities for his culture.

Pluddemann regularly goes through the high-context/low-context and high & low-power-distance cultural differences, almost too much, but the point sticks. When working on a multicultural team, understand the context of each person. Pluddemann gives grids and paradigms that can help define a person’s context and power-distance preferences. He talks regularly about the ability to function in ambiguity, which is a huge issue for multicultural teams. Most importantly, Pluddemann gives these paradigms and descriptors as filters for being able to understand another person, but cautions that not everybody fits the same box.

That same Mexican friend, while VERY Mexican has adapted his context some in his bicultural marriage. Some aspects of the way his people generally do things drives him crazy. He is thoroughly Mexican, with an incredible love and passion for his people, but he is an example of a missionary partner that fits only part way in the general constructs that Pluddemann provides for high context, high power-distance culture.

One of the most fun aspects to this book is the inclusion of multicultural leadership stories throughout the book by missionaries and leaders. These little articles at the end of chapters give a quick anecdote and helps to summarize in an enjoyable and instructive way, what Pluddemann communicates in the chapter.

Pluddemann writes a book that is useful, somewhat technical, but easy to read. It is a book that is valuable for any person working in a multicultural situation, but especially for those in mission teams, organizations and universities that are increasingly more multicultural. Pluddemann’s book will be a handy reference. I mark it as possibly one of the best books I’ve read in 2009, and will be one of the best I’ll review in 2010.