by Kevin Jones (pseudonym) and Sunny Hong
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami was one of the deadliest and far-reaching natural disasters in recorded history. Disaster relief efforts poured in from many places—locally all the way to the international level—bringing assistance to the many affected areas. One such area was an Asian seaside village inhabited by a minority indigenous people group. The purpose of this article is to show how disaster relief efforts in this case created a dynamic in which the church of the country’s majority people group became a rival to the church of the minority indigenous people group—because of an apparent lack of sensitivity to certain cultural issues—so that the lessons learned from this case study could be useful for future cross-cultural ministry opportunities.
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