Known. Chosen. Redeemed. Favored. Loved. Secure. Beautiful. Image-Bearer.
Evocative words. What stirs in you when you read them? Can you own them? Do they describe your life experience? I don’t mean your cognitive experience; I’m talking about your gut. Deep down have these words come to the place of defining you?
I was glad to see your [Jan/Feb 2025] issue that dealt with the migration issue and the expansion of the Christian movement. I have long felt this was an area overlooked by missiologists. I would like to add that internal migration within a people group or country is often very important to the expansion of the Christian movement. I would like to share about this in Thailand. I served in Thailand with OMF International from 1985 until 2017. When I arrived, it seemed to me that most missionaries were very concerned that the overall Christian movement was not growing in Thailand. In fact, it was growing but hard to see.
These pages include statistics, survey results, and resources to help you better understand TCKs in general. Also, MKs are children whose parents served cross-culturally in Christian ministry and are a subset of TCKs.
Growing up overseas as a missionary kid (MK) has become one of my greatest joys deeply touching nearly every part of my adult life in profound ways. But like every coin, there’s a flipside. Getting to joy didn’t come quickly or easily. While I loved the adventures and the uniqueness of my globally mobile experiences, more often than not, being an MK felt like a job—one for which I was constantly receiving a poor performance review.
Don’t ask me (or most TCKs) where I’m from unless you want a very long-winded answer in English or Arabic. I have managed to get my answer down to “I’m Lebanese American, but I grew up in Jordan.” If the person looks surprised or confused, I add, “My dad is from Lebanon, my mom is from America, but I lived most of my life in Jordan.” Nowadays I must remember to add, “My family recently moved to Spain” somewhere in there.
Where are you from?
Some people see it as another way to say hello, but I dread the question. For as long as I can remember, I have turned conversational cartwheels to avoid it. Once people hear my answer, they usually don’t know what to do. Either they brush it aside or it dominates the conversation.
I was not prepared for college.
I certainly thought I was. I arrived in America two weeks before the first day of school, ready to buy dorm supplies and start my new life. In my head, I was more than adequately prepared in every area that mattered. Academically, I had a banger SAT score. Financially, I wasn’t going to be hungry. Socially, I had the confident friendliness of an outgoing homeschooler who doesn’t realize he’s coming off as awkward instead of eccentric. Spiritually, I naively felt confident in my faith, and even though I didn’t engage with God much through reading the Word or praying, I felt that I was doing good enough.
When I was six months old, my born-and-raised American parents moved themselves and their young kids to Turkey, settling into a neighborhood where most had never met a foreigner, much less spoke English.
Growing up as a Free Methodist missionary kid in the Republic of South Africa between 1975 and 1988 was an experience that shaped my worldview in profound ways. My childhood unfolded during the height of apartheid, a period defined by systemic racial segregation and social injustice. While my upbringing came with unique privileges and opportunities, it also exposed me to the harsh realities of inequality, instilling in me a deep sense of purpose and a lifelong commitment to education and inclusion.
How grateful I am for the rich heritage I have as a TCK. The more life stories I hear from American and cross- cultural friends, the more I realize that each of us has a unique set of life experiences that shapes our attitudes, values, hopes, and choices. In the insecurities of my changes and losses, God gave me insights along the way that anchored my heart.
TCKs understand the true meaning of “home” better than most of the world—they just don’t realize it while they are young.
I was raised as an MK in the mountains of Papua New Guinea (PNG). For a boy who loved exploring the jungle and climbing trees, this was paradise. Leaving PNG at age 15 to move to Missouri farmlands felt like losing my home.
Do you ever have imaginary conversations with people? Maybe somebody says something that ruffles your feathers the wrong way, and you lie awake in bed hours later, imagining all the things you might have said in response, if you hadn’t been raised to be as polite as you were.
I am a TCK, born in 1940 of missionary parents in Costa Rica, as are my three children, born in Guatemala to missionary parents. In truth, we TCKs are a “multitude,” born or raised in countries different from our parents' origin. We have studied in other cultures, learned other languages, been misunderstood and confused, experienced culture shock, and cross-cultural, international life. We are “global nomads,” a category including children of diplomats and military, international businesspeople, wandering hippies, and a host of others who share parallel lives. I very recently captured a new insight: Refugees, migrants, and immigrants are also TCKs. Their first generation will battle more with these issues, but it will have a long-term impact on these family systems.
I was born to American missionary parents in 1980 in a small Baptist hospital in Côte d’Ivoire, where I spent my childhood. I was a city missionary kid (MK) who, for some reason, envied village MKs for their exotic multilingual, real deal experience off the beaten path.
I was six (and my sister was five) when my parents sat us down in the living room of our Swedish eighth-story apartment. It would be an evening of decision-making as our family considered our first major move. Popcorn popped in the kitchen as my dad laid out an atlas book on the coffee table, opening to the pages on North America. My mom and dad told us they were thinking and praying about moving our family to a foreign country—the United States of America.
On my first day in the Middle East, I watched the late morning sun warm a bowl of cherries on a glass table, while below the balcony, a boy selling pastries called out his wares. Peering into the street below, I saw him easily balancing sesame bagels piled a meter high on a tray atop his head. Busses whirred past in the distance.
As a child and teen, I wanted to be a pilot when I grew up. Like most TCKs, I traveled a lot, and airports and airplanes fascinated me! I was raised in Bali, Indonesia. At one end of the runway of Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport was a public road. I remember my dad parking the car at the side of that road. Stepping outside the car, I watched as jets passed directly over us just moments before touching down on the runway. It felt like I could reach up and touch the massive fuselage underbelly as these planes swooped down from the sky, engines roaring. Later in my adult life, I realized that I didn’t really want to be a pilot. But international travel still brings a surge of excitement and anticipation.
“Where are you from?” This question, and the unease that it brings, is something that third culture kids (TCKs) know well. No matter how many times I get this question, I still feel like a decision needs to be made, since who they are will impact what and how much I tell them. Each time I wonder, “What version of myself do I share with this person? What part of who I am are they looking for?”
My siblings and I were each born three years apart, like clockwork: 1981, 1984, 1987, 1990. In 1993, when I was three, we moved to Bandung, Indonesia. We furloughed back to the United States every third summer—1996, 1999, 2002, 2005—and beginning with furlough Number Two, an older sibling remained in the U.S. to start college….
For the last six weeks, I had a major change in my routine that caused me to reflect on what’s important in life. What are my priorities?
I'm American
I'm Chinese
Three paintings capturing a TCK's perspective.
TCK Life: Children playing in Africa
A poem about facing our biases.