The Danger of Thinking You Already Understand
When cross-cultural missionaries move to a new place, they carry an unusual advantage, one most of us who feel called to stay don’t have. They don’t know the language, don’t understand the customs, and don’t yet know how things work.
And that ignorance carries an unexpected gift.
Because they have no choice but to approach people with openness. They must ask questions, listen carefully, and learn from those around them. They cannot arrive as experts. They can only begin as learners.
When my family and I moved to a megacity in South Asia, we experienced this firsthand. We had no choice but to become beginners. And it’s deeply disorienting to be a beginner again as an adult. To not know how to do basic things: how to get a SIM card, how to find the post office, how to pay the power bill.
But perhaps most humbling of all is having to ask for help all the time.
Toddlers don’t seem to mind dependency; they’ve never known anything else. But for adults, used to competence and independence, it feels like a loss. It’s a kind of forced dependency. And yet, ironically this posture- dependence, curiosity, and learning—is exactly what many of us lack. Especially those of us shaped by Western culture, where we’re often hurried, time-poor, and quietly convinced we already understand both problems and solutions.
While that ignorance can be painful for the missionary, it’s a gift for the local community. It’s empowering. Everyone loves being the expert. Being asked, listened to, and consulted communicates value and dignity.
The problem is, this isn’t usually how things have worked.
Both global mission and its secular cousin, international development, are littered with well-intentioned failures; projects launched with great enthusiasm and not enough listening. Some of these failures are even memorialised in what are known as ‘white elephants’: initiatives that nobody wanted or needed, left behind as awkward reminders of good intentions built on bad assumptions. Wells dug in the wrong places. Tractors donated without spare parts or mechanical support. Sometimes these failures are literal—rusting in fields.
You probably know the saying that assume ‘makes an ass of you and me.’ So what’s the cure for assumption and the white elephants it leaves behind?
It starts with getting to know people.
It’s learning the story of a place- what has shaped it, what people are proud of, what they worry about, what has already been tried. Every community, no matter how familiar it seems, has its own history, its own subculture, even its own language. There are heroes and villains, pioneers and misfits, successes and failures that still shape how people see the present.
The best cross-cultural workers understand this. Before they build anything, they learn. Learning the language, in particular, forces humility—it returns you to childlike dependence and reshapes you as a listener rather than an expert.
But this kind of learning can feel deeply counterintuitive. It takes time, more time than we think we can afford. Our task-oriented instincts kick in, and we feel the urge to start something, to build, to produce. And then there’s the quiet pressure of expectation: people back home praying, giving, hoping for stories of impact. It sounds far more compelling in a newsletter to say, “We’ve launched this exciting new project,” than, “We’ve spent months listening.”
And yet, that slow work is never wasted. Taking time to understand a community communicates value. It invites participation. And it means that whatever eventually emerges is far less likely to become a white elephant.
The church has its own version of the white elephant: a group of people who’s activity and intentions are seen as wildly irrelevant by its local community.
This is where Ray Bakke’s insights are so helpful. Reflecting on his years pastoring in inner-city Chicago, he argues that leaders must learn to interpret their community.
We already know how to do this with scripture. We don’t read a single verse in isolation, we pay attention to context, genre, author, history. We ask what’s going on beneath the surface. Bakke argues that we should approach our neighbourhoods in the same way: as something to be read carefully, patiently, and in context.
That kind of interpretation doesn’t happen quickly. It requires listening from multiple angles.
Bakke points to four key ‘voices’ worth paying attention to.
First, the big picture: local councils, community boards, polytechnics—places where you can begin to understand the history, demographics, politics, and key institutions shaping your area.
Second, are other pastors, from whom we can learn about the neighbourhood’s religious and spiritual terrain. Bakke appoached each pastor with the question “I'm new to this community and I wonder if you could tell me the most important lesson you've learned about being a pastor here.”
Third, public and voluntary agencies, the people already serving the community’s needs. Here we can ask questions like: “What have you discovered about this place? What are you doing? How could we work together?”
And fourth, local businesses - the everyday spaces where people work, spend, and gather. Shops, garages, cafés. These aren’t just services- they’re windows into a community’s rhythms and relationships.
Learning to ‘interpret’ your community in this way is slow work. It can feel counterintuitive, especially for those of us wired to get things done.
But this is precisely the work that prevents white elephants.
Because when people are listened to, they feel valued. When they are consulted, they become participants rather than recipients. And when we take the time to understand a place, whatever we eventually build is far less likely to be irrelevant—or worse, harmful.
Bakke concludes with a warning:
“The Church must discover, and relate to, all the other churches, agencies and businesses in its community and know how they function, or it will always be marginal to urban life; the pastors will always be reduced to rushing in with ill thought out programs which consume both personal and congregational energy.”
The challenge, of course, is that you don’t have to cross cultures to need this posture.
You may already speak the language of your community fluently. But do you know its story? Do you understand what people care about, what they fear, what they’ve already tried? Or have you quietly assumed that you do?
It’s always easier to assume than to ask. But in the long run, it’s far better to choose the posture of a learner than to assume you already have the answers.
Sources: The Urban Christian: Effective Minisitry in today’s Urban World, Ray Bakke.
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