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People in Park

About

Our Mission

We train Jesus followers to skillfully and joyfully learn, adapt to, and serve within unfamiliar languages and cultures.

Our Vision

We see a world filled with Jesus followers in:

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  • Churches

  • Missions

  • Non-profits

  • Schools and

  • Businesses

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who skillfully and relationally engage the very heart and soul of the people they serve through fluency in their cultures and languages.


We are inspired by the knowledge that “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language” will worship God in the new heavens and new earth (Revelation 7).

Our Values

We train Jesus followers to skillfully and joyfully learn, adapt to, and serve within unfamiliar languages and cultures.

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  • God-Centered

  • Relational

  • Agile

  • Sustainable

  • Practical

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History

The CultureBound story began with Donald and Faye Smith, missionaries to East Africa in the 1950s. As part of their ministry, they researched communication across cultures. They focused on the communication of the people they lived around. That research turned into training events, educational institutions, and printed materials that were used in both Africa and the United States. The organization that they formed to pursue those ministry opportunities was called the Institute for International Christian Communication, or IICC.

In the United States, the IICC moved into a building called WorldView Center based in Portland, Oregon. Over time, the IICC and Worldview became synonymous as both names described the living and learning community growing that took place in Portland. 

In the early 2000s, the ministries of IICC began to serve the training needs of specific mission sending agencies. After years of ministry in Latin America, Mark and Karen Hedinger moved to Portland to be part of the teaching staff for those agency-focused events.

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The Portland-centered format worked well for years, but suffered from the high costs of bringing groups to Portland. Looking at internet options, the training team decided in 2020 to shift to an online format. God's timing was perfect! CultureBound was able to provide fully online training during the earliest days of the Coronavirus pandemic.

In 2017, a brand refresh was commissioned by the Board of Directors.  WorldView became CultureBound and the building was sold. Since that time, the number of trainees has increased greatly. Our training staff travel to different locations around the world and make effective use of interactive internet technologies.

CultureBound continues to expand trainings offered, now working in new languages and with local churches, business professionals, and Christian schools and universities. We continue to add new training and support staff so that we can reach the global scale of the current mission movement.

CultureBound’s vision is to see the world teeming with Jesus’ ambassadors who are skilled at carrying his Gospel to unfamiliar languages and cultures. We will not stop until every tribe, tongue, people, and nation have heard!

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