5 Ways to Be a ‘Third-Culture’ Christian

Missions is cross-cultural, cross-geographic ministry. What such a statement implies is distance, a space individuals and families must traverse. Understanding this explains why we no longer refer to children of cross-cultural workers simply as “missionary kids.” Instead, the missionary community has largely adopted the terminology of “third-culture kid,” or TCK.

This new vocabulary has a good goal. It’s meant to be descriptive, even instructive, of the reality such children experience living in three cultures simultaneously. They’re expatriates living abroad in a host culture. Yet the culture they inhabit is neither fully American (or whatever their nationality) nor fully that of their host country. Instead, their world of experience is some mixture of the two cultures, creating a distinctly third realm of experience. Read More