Understanding Your East Asian Friends

The more we get to know someone, the deeper the conversation and sharing, yet it can be hard when we culturally do not know how someone might respond to an aspect of our own culture that may seem alien to them. Sometimes our East Asian friends will not feel comfortable in sharing with us some of the more personal aspects of their lives if we show no signs of understanding or experience.

In this Understanding Your East Asian Friends course, we unpack important aspects of the East Asian mindset and examine how they play out in everyday life.  We look at concepts like “face”, “politeness” and “relationship”, as well as “indirect communication” and working with people from “honor-shame” cultures.  We will also consider the Asian understanding of the “spirit world”.

Course Outline

Introduction to the facilitators and other participants.

Introduction to the concept of “face”

We will explore face, guilt and shame in some detail in this course. Face is a huge concept in much of the world, but the raw impact of it changes from culture to culture and certainly in East Asia, the concept of face is extremely significant. “Face” the social image and cultural concept that holds the respect others have for someone is coveted. You can give some face (respect) or you can cause someone to lose it. It is a critical, interpersonal skill to manage “face” well.

Relationships

Here we think about some aspects of relationships with our East Asian friends. For individuals to interact to save face, they will often engage in being ambiguous or indirect in their communication, we will look at the challenges of indirectness and sometimes the impact that can have on sharing the gospel. We will also explore Wa (Japanese) and Guanxi (Chinese), terms used for relational networking and favor.

Understanding the Spirit World

In this section we will explore what the Bible say about the Spirit World and the lessons we can learn. We will reflect on some Historical and Contemporary Thinking regarding our own response to this aspect of the Christian life and how this impacts our East Asian friends and their journey in coming to know Christ.