Experiences and perspectives of Japanese serving as culture brokers for Short-Term Missions in Japan

Every year, over 1.5 million church goers from North America join the global flows of people that result in cross-cultural encounters. They do so in order to server as Short-Term Missionaries (STM). They are enabled in their mission by global connections to fellow Christians who "host" these "guests" and cooperate with their ministry in various ways. Most of these encounters are less than two weeks and most of the participants are volunteers rather than professional missionaries. This approach raises missiological questions about cross-cultural ministry, evangelism and the global church.;The purpose of this research is to understand how the Japanese, specifically those culture brokers who facilitate and guide the STM during their visit, experience the flow of Christians from North America into their churches and ministries. So my research question is: What are the perspectives of Japanese who work with North American STM on the STM's ministry and sojourn in the Japanese context?;To address this question, I conducted twenty-four ethnographic interviews of culture brokers using a questionnaire with ten open-ended questions that covered the following areas of interest: What kind of things are STM doing in Japan; What hopes do Japanese have concerning STM; How do Japanese facilitate these STM; How do Japanese present Japan to their STM guests?;The fields of globalization and the anthropology of tourism provided the conceptual framework for understanding, locating and categorizing the encounters between culture brokers and the STM. I also reviewed the recent research on STM hosts.;Analysis of the interviews revealed the key role culture brokers have in interpreting Japan to the guests and mediating cultural differences. It also highlighted how the encounters influence both Japanese and STM in their understanding of evangelism and the body of Christ as they shared people and financial resources. As a result, I address the appropriateness of STM and suggest four elements of a host-directed approach to STM.