Cultural differences: Encouragement

I thought of another difference which showed up during our Vitality Training session in Paris.

The French approach to encouragement and learning styles versus the American way.

Our enthusiastic American friend with such a heart for France would punctuate our comments and questions with "Excellent question !" and "Thank you for that comment. I'm going to use it straight away." "What a great answer!"

Our highly intellectual pastors present, trained in being unemotional and logical, looked at him sideways wondering if he was taking the mickey out of them! Over the week, they realised he was genuine and that it was part of his way of encouraging. We are simply not used to being encouraged by each other. And we certainly don't practise it in our everyday lives nor in our churches. French people are more likely to find fault: they are trained to do it in their quest for perfection. That's why it's hard for them to accept criticism - they put so much effort into getting it right.

But while there's life, there's hope! One of our pastors reported back last week that his wife pointed out the number of times he said "Excellent, thank you!" while explaining Vitality to his church council. Mind you, he's Belgian and she's American so maybe that doesn't count ... Of course it does!!! Change is in the air.