Purpose: This book is an orientation manual on multicultural awareness. It could be used as a primer for people about to join a short-term mission team, as a college classroom reading supplement or as a training text for cross cultural field experiences. It is intended to help handle one's first exposure to a new culture and get the maximum impact out of a short term contact. Audience: The book is aimed at people anticipating contact with a new culture for the first time, particularly for the purpose of Christian ministry. This manual is espe-cially written with the short-term cross cultural prac-titioner in mind. Perspective: The author's perspective is that of a six-term evangel-ical missionary, looking back at his own initial cross cultural contact, and ahead at the growing queue of people interested in learning firsthand about the cross cultural ministry. Will recognizing the reality of the short-term phenomenon it is important to reaffirm the case for career engagement. The bottom line is that anyone wanting to engage in cross cultural ministry had better be ready for some bruises. Though the original title, Missions is a Contact Sport, has been changed, much of the material still communicates that tone.
About the Author: The author is a career cross cultural worker with a deep commitment to short term cross-cultural encounters. He himself is the product of a teen mission experience, and served in Latin America thirty years after that brief summer exposure. With more than thirty five years of cross cultural mileage behind him, he remains committed to the value of short term cross cultural experiences. Richard and his wife, Hope, have hosted a variety of internships, work teams, church tours and summer youth corps. These experiences, positive and negative, have served as the raw material for this book, and are shared with the hope that they will inspire many others to come and see for themselves. Richard Reichert is a Canadian missionary who served with the C&MA from 1980-2014. He and his wife Hope began in rural leadership in Loja, Ecuador, planted a church in the city of Guayaquil and served on the pastoral teams of the oldest evangelical church in Quito and one of its newest congregations, The Church of the Republic. He wrote Missions Is a Contact Sport as a training manual for short-term teams and coauthored Un Siglo de Avance (A Century of Advance) with César Mendoza in 1997. After cross cultural ministry in Cuba and Mexico they have sought to inspire the next generation of global servants to pursue their mission in the hard places of the planet.