TCKs and Faith Communities

Faith as a Constant and a Complication

For many TCKs, particularly but not only missionary kids, faith community has been a central part of the internationally mobile experience. Church or religious community often provides an immediate social structure in a new posting, a sense of continuity across countries, and a framework for making sense of the mobile life.

It can also create complications. TCKs who grew up in strongly religious environments sometimes find that their globally comparative perspective makes it harder to hold the certainties of the community they grew up in. And the faith community itself can sometimes suppress honest processing of the harder aspects of the mobile life.

• What role did faith community play in your mobile childhood, and how do you evaluate it now?
• Were there aspects of your TCK experience that your faith community helped you process, and others that it made harder to talk about?
• How has growing up between cultures affected your relationship with the religious tradition you were raised in?
• What do you need from a faith community now, given what you know about your own history?