Part 3

Sharpening Our Focus and Service with Cultural Intelligence (CQ)

What should we make of all this? Should we throw up our hands in despair, cut up our passports, and throw out every letter soliciting funds for short-term missions? Believe me, there have been times when I was ready to go there. Countless pages in my journals from the last several years contain entries like this one:

Is all the money and effort invested in short-term work paying off? As short-termers, we’re often ill-equipped to solve the real needs that exist in the places we visit. Locals are enduring our water bottles and weak stomachs, and we’re spending millions of dollars to do it. Is there a way to truly make short-term missions a win-win?

At the end of the day, I’m not convinced we’re without hope in seeing short-term missions as an effective tool for serving God’s church globally. If criticisms alone are enough reason to abandon the entire movement, then let’s be consistent. We’re not short on criticisms about long-term missions either. Just because there are some challenges and problems doesn’t mean we should abandon the whole thing. I’m committed to seeing us redeem short-term missions. How might we engage in short-term missions with eyes wide open and use it as a way to widen our perspective? How can the dollars we invest in short-term missions be stewarded toward long-term transformation of everyone involved? It’s time to strive for a more solution-oriented focus: short-term missions with cultural intelligence.

When I began researching short-term missions, I didn’t want to be a researcher who simply pointed out problems without offering any solutions. So I reviewed materials and programs that were developed to improve people’s cross-cultural effectiveness. I studied many of the training programs designed for missionaries, Peace Corps workers, and others who moved internationally for overseas assignments. I resonated with the emphasis on taking the time to learn the language, customs, and cultural values. But I knew these approaches wouldn’t work for most short-term missions teams. As much as I’d love to see every short-term missionary become fluent in the language and customs of the culture they visit, it’s simply unrealistic. That’s when a friend introduced me to Dr. Soon Ang, a fellow Christian who was pioneering the research on cultural intelligence, or CQ.

Don’t be alarmed by the academic sound of CQ. CQ is just a way of measuring and improving the way we interact in different cultures. The theory was developed using some of the same ideas used to develop IQ, EQ, and the theory of multiple intelligences. We’re all pretty familiar with the idea of IQ—a way to measure our intellectual capabilities. And many of us are familiar with the idea of EQ, or emotional intelligence—the ability to assess and regulate the emotions of ourselves and others. CQ picks up right where EQ leaves off. It’s the ability to adjust how we think and behave in various cultural situations.

CQ is a skill set that can be learned and developed over time, and the materials in this section are a way to begin that process. By the way, you’re already on your way. One of the biggest steps toward enhancing your CQ is simply to open your eyes to the realities of the world and to the challenges of cross-cultural interactions—that’s what we’ve spent the last several chapters exploring.

Don’t try to attain a perfect CQ score (which doesn’t really exist) by the time you go on your next trip. Our desire is simply to use the last section of this book to embark on a lifelong journey of growing in CQ as a way to more effectively love God and others in the twenty-first-century world. CQ will help us sharpen our focus and service in short-term missions, and it can enhance our ability to interact across cultures day in and day out as we move throughout the twenty-first-century world.

CQ consists of four capabilities, all of which are linked together. As demonstrated in figure 1 below, the four capabilities of CQ are:

CQ Drive: Your level of interest, drive, and motivation to adapt cross-culturally.

CQ Knowledge: Your understanding about how cultures are similar and different.

CQ Strategy: Your ability to interpret cues and plan in light of your cultural understanding.

CQ Action: Your ability to behave appropriately when relating and serving cross-culturally.

Most materials designed for short-term work emphasize two of these capabilities: CQ Knowledge (cultural understanding) and CQ Action (cross-cultural behavior). But all four capabilities are needed for effective short-term missions. The interdependence of these four capabilities is important, because having one without the others may actually be worse than having none of them.[99]

You can find information about how to assess your CQ at www.culturalQ.com. This tool is an academically proven way of measuring CQ in all four areas.

The next four chapters describe the four capabilities of CQ. We’ll look at a brief explanation of each capability, suggest some ways to nurture growth in each of them, and demonstrate what they look like in real life by going on a journey to Shanghai, China, with a group of college students.[100]