Ministering Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships by Sherwood G. Lingenfelter & Marvin K. Mayers

Author:Sherwood G. Lingenfelter & Marvin K. Mayers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Missions, Christian Ministry
ISBN: 9781585580279
Publisher: Baker Books
Published: 2003-09-30T22:00:00+00:00

Crisis Orientation versus Noncrisis Orientation

The typhoon incident illustrates two different attitudes toward potential crises. The Coast Guard strategy exemplifies what Marvin Mayers calls a crisis orientation, and the Yapese strategy represents a noncrisis orientation. The mission of the Coast Guard is to look for potential problems and to solve them before they happen or to bring existing crises to a swift resolution. The Coast Guard has a manual of procedures that specifies the decision to be made in various situations. The manual is authoritative and limits the officers to specified steps they should follow for each type of crisis discussed. An officer who fails to follow the manual is reprimanded. Because of their crisis orientation, the men at the Coast Guard station were free to relax and wait out the typhoon in the security of their quarters.

The Yapese are familiar with precautionary procedures, since the district government has a similar manual regarding typhoons. Most Yapese, however, have a noncrisis orientation, and so they ignore these procedures. Like my neighbors who told me not to worry and continued their activities, most Yapese downplay the likelihood of a crisis and avoid taking action on an issue as long as possible. When a crisis is imminent, they derive their solutions from whatever alternatives they perceive in the situation. Whether to save the pickup truck and/or the sawmill engine or to chance losing both is a decision they make during the storm as they struggle against the wind, waves, and other dangers. All of this is not without a measure of humor; while we were carrying the sawmill engine, we stopped and laughed at the sight of a house floating down the road.

While the Coast Guard’s strategies seem more practical to the American mind, the Yapese also have sound reasons for their behavior. Although two or three storms have been known to strike the island in a single year, the last typhoon they had experienced was in 1967, twelve years earlier. Yet each year Yap receives warnings of at least twenty typhoons. Since these storms are so unpredictable, the Yapese are skeptical of weather bureau warnings and refuse to expend the effort necessary to clear everything from the shoreline and to get their homes and boathouses ready to withstand a possible storm. Their attitude is to wait until the typhoon is a reality, then do what they must to cope. Sometimes they are caught completely unprepared, and then it takes them about five days to clean up. However, if one considers the amount of labor saved by not responding to the warnings regarding the storms that ultimately veer away, over the long term the Yapese come out ahead. They may lose a few things in the process, but they are willing to accept that cost.

The Yapese extend this noncrisis orientation to many areas of life and typically ignore potential problems until they happen. For example, when a child is having difficulty in school, many parents do not admonish the child or inquire at the school until something happens to precipitate a crisis.

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