In This Issue: Tell by the Smell – Connecting with Unreached People Locally
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Practical Mobilization by Shane Bennett is published once a month.
Tell by the Smell – Connecting with Unreached People Locally
By Shane Bennett
Smell, and this is probably a very good thing, is a localized sense. Aromas are difficult to communicate across any real distance. And when tried (think perfume in a magazine), it’s usually a bad idea. Or at least annoying. But smell connects us to a place, or a people, like little else. Think of the first time you were out of your own culture. Maybe it was decades ago. Still have smell associations? The scent of a certain cleaning solution instantly transports me back to my first hours in Tijuana. The right combination of dust, grilling meat, and something I can’t quite place my finger (or nose) on loudly announces, “The streets of Amman, Jordan.” If you’ve traveled much (or raised kids!), you can probably insert your own juicily icky example here.
But it’s the warm, “ahhhhh” sort of scents I have in mind. The sweet incense of a Thai home. The clingy smoke of a beach campfire. The delicious curry aroma filling the air around the house we had just rented in Bradford, England that knit us to our new Pakistani neighbors … “We love you. Your street smells like heaven.”
Neither the best PowerPoint in the world, nor the snazziest brochure, can really do justice to smell. Smell connects, and if you want smell, you’ve got to go to where it is! Depending on where you live, you may have to travel a long way to experience the smell of a Malaysian fruit market or a “made in Bethlehem” sandal wood bowl.
But maybe some of those smells, and the people associated with them, are in your own town, or the next one over, or the capital city an hour and a half away. If they were, how would you know? If, and this is where it gets interesting, you wanted to take a carload of pals from your church to experience such smells and hopefully connect in lasting ways with the people associated with those smells, how would you know where to go? How would you know where neighborhoods are in which you and your friends could wade in and have a reasonable expectation of several engaging conversations?
I have some thoughts about this. But I also have an article due shortly that will hopefully help thousands of people find unreached peoples represented in their cities. I’m humbly seeking your help. I tell you what I think. You tell me what you think. Then I’ll tell everyone who cares what we all think. Sound like a plan?
Ten Ways to Find Communities of Unreached People in Your Town (or one nearby!)
1. Look up ethnic restaurants in your yellow pages.
2. Visit or call ethnic churches and ask about their lesser-evangelized neighbor communities.
3. Attend international festivals or other cultural events at a university.
4. Call a church that has hosted “Perspectives” in your target city. Ask to speak to the missions pastor. Tell him or her you’ll pass on whatever you find out if they’ll get you going in the right direction.
5. To find an on-line starting point, search the phrase “refugee services” plus the name of the town you’re interested in. This will turn up Christian and governmental agencies and efforts to help refugees. Connecting with them can move you down the road to locating ethnic areas.
6. Check out Ethnic Harvest.
7. Consider posting a question in the appropriate state forum. For my current city of interest, Indianapolis, there seems to be an impressive amount of forum traffic, but I don’t have real-world experience in terms of response to my question … yet.
8. Check a guidebook. Granted, this works better if you live in Amsterdam or San Francisco, but it’s worth a look. Of course, if you’re checking out Indianapolis, this step won’t take very long!
9. Visit the library and glance through the free literature rack. Or if you’re really feeling adventurous, visit a high-traffic government office. Check the languages that literature is printed in, then go google that language and your city name.
10. Visit a large library and have a real-life conversation with a librarian. I tried this in Tempe, Arizona with less than stellar success, but your mileage might vary. And to her credit, the librarian at Tempe did point me in some helpful directions.
Please e-mail your thoughts to me on these 10 as well as the additional smart ideas that I know are rattling around in your mind! Together we can help people in our churches connect with the kaleidoscope of cultures God has brought to our cities.
Questions? Problems? Submissions? Contact publisher/managing editor Marti Smith.