How Missionaries Dress is a Critical Choice!

I have been there as a former minister. You get to the mission field and are so delighted to be free from wear a suit and tie. However, there are often the equivalents in new cultures. More than that, there categories of deficiency we need to learn in the host culture. Like it or not we must adapt. Here is a great illustration

"I know a hard-working missionary who had some success in winning young college men to Christ in a small Muslim city. He is well aware of the need to apply biblical insight and sound theology to his goal of developing local leadership for the church he is planting. However, he seems completely unaware of the strange spectacle he makes of himself as he bicycles around this same town in a helmet and bright-colored spandex bike-wear. Furthermore, the sight of his mountain bike and culturally inappropriate clothing is just one facet of his lifestyle that screams of contemporary Western culture. Despite several years on the field, he seems completely unaware that his behavior is providing his Muslim neighbors with irrefutable evidence that the gospel and “offensive Western culture’ are one and the same. The real problem is not his choice of attire, but that he is unintentionally confirming the warning repeated in mosques across Central Asia that Christianity represents a horrible clash of cultures and must be avoided at all costs."
("Decoupling Missionary Advance From Western Culture",Gene Daniels, EMQ OCT 2009, pg422)