Make Haste Slowly! Growing Effective Intercultural Communication

by Donald K. Smith

Sustainable growth happens gradually! Here you will find the resources to stimulate reproducible growth among the people you serve. The first edition of this book sold over 15,000 copies. It has had an impact on and through Christian workers world-wide. This newer edition offers a broader readership the insights and time-tested principles . . . refined over decades of teaching, research and interaction with people from around the globe. This book is available in both soft cover and eBook versions. Recent adoptions by institutions of higher education include: Trinity Western University and Warner Pacific College.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Donald K. Smith was for twenty-one years Distinguished Professor of Intercultural Communication and Missiology at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He is presently Dean of WorldView Institute (a graduate level international living-and-learning community). For 30 years a missionary evangelist, journalist and educator in Africa, based in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, Dr. Smith was founder of Daystar University in Nairobi. His experience includes teaching, editing, publishing, developing literacy materials in African languages, anthropological research, evangelism, preaching and supervising Bible translation programs in more than 40 languages. His books, Creating Understanding and Make Haste Slowly, are used widely in missions training. Through WorldView Institute he continues an extensive overseas ministry, focusing on emerging Third World mission societies and leadership of national churches.

Reviews

[Child960801 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fabulous. I first read this in college in a class about cross cultural mission work. That was the first edition of the book. I remember being blown away by the ideas presented. I had never heard of the idea of 'limited good' before and was astonished that people could believe that but also could see how that would directly impact trying to do development work in other parts of the world.

Since then, I have thought about this book often. An idea I have come back to many times, is the concept of making sure that what you are doing for someone to help them is something that they actually want/consider helpful. If someone gave me a set of golf clubs (because I don't have any) I would not consider it a good gift or use them, because I don't want or need golf clubs. This concept also applies to international aid. Starting an English language program in a place where no one wants to learn English isn't going to help anyone.

I was wanting to read this book again, but couldn't find my copy, so I looked it up on amazon and discovered that there was a new edition, which, of course, I bought. The new edition includes new information and addresses some of the changes in the world that have happened since the book was first written.

This is a book anyone who is wanting to work in a cross cultural setting should read. The author talks about why there can be problems in cross cultural work and how to address those problems. He does not give solutions -- indeed, he notes that there can't be one-size-fits-all solutions -- but he talks about the things that need to be considered and how to arrive at solutions yourself. The key: go slowly, make sure that you are communicating with the people you are trying to work with/help and that what you are doing is actually something that they consider helpful.