When I told my friends and family that I was going to live in the country of Georgia to teach English for four months, I was sent off with many well-wishes and expectations: primarily, that I would “shine my light” in the foreign land. Truth be told, I had been more interested in gaining work experience and seeing the world than preaching the Gospel, but even so, I arrived in Georgia ready to answer the question, “Who is this Jesus person?”
What I didn’t expect was, “You’re a Christian? Oh, yeah, me too.”
But I soon discovered that though Georgians are familiar with Christianity, it doesn’t mean they’re familiar with Christ.
Georgia is home to one of the oldest national Christian churches in history. Taxi drivers in the city and local marshrutka — mini-bus drivers delivering produce from mountain villages — keep icons and crucifixes on their dashboards and fervently cross themselves whenever they pass one of Georgia’s many churches, no matter how crazy the traffic.
Unfortunately, there was no church in the village in which I lived; it seemed like the only distinguishing difference between my Christian and Muslim neighbours was the symbolic jewelry they wore.
One of my students, Amiko, practiced his English with me by explaining his prayer book: “If a person is Christian, he reads this book. And if he does not read this book, then he is not Christian.”
So how can evangelism happen in a place where Christianity is just another aspect of the culture?
I realized I would first have to actually enter the culture; my life had to take the shape of Georgian life. I needed to become ultra-spontaneous and even a bit chaotic.
And this started in the classroom.
I had been trained to create lesson plans and work with the local English teachers, but this training was based off of assumptions: supposing the students would bring their books to class, or would actually be in class instead of nearly half of them missing school to attend a wedding or help with the harvest.
My training assumed the local teachers would give me a timetable that would be accurate for more than one week, and that they wouldn’t inexplicably disappear or cancel class to put on a dance festival. That they could speak enough English for us to understand each other.
Needless to say, I soon learned to keep a deck of flashcards in my bag and a broad vocabulary of gestures at the ready. I may not have ever had the opportunity to explicitly explain English grammar, but my students at least had the chance to observe a native speaker and interact with the language in its full, fluent beauty.
Was that enough? Certainly not to equip them to understand an entire English movie. But one or two of the brightest students were definitely laughing at a few more jokes in the clips I showed them after school.
In my four months in Georgia, I never explicitly explained the Gospel. But I was able to take every opportunity to bypass language barriers and cultural trappings by attempting to show Christ through my actions.
Was that enough? I didn’t do any alter calls or lead anyone through the sinner’s prayer. In fact, I returned to the West feeling incredibly spiritually exhausted. My faith is small, but I certainly hope it’s genuine enough to be heard without being voiced.
So was I a missionary in Georgia? Maybe not. But I was a Christian in Georgia. And I’m now a Christian in the West — a culture that’s also in need of revival. And I pray that, one bit at a time, this will be enough.
