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Military Youth and Third-Culture Kids — Kenji Fukunaga
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April is the Month of the Military Child, a time when we celebrate the youth of our service members. These family members face unique challenges in the nomadic lifestyle of the military community, forfeiting a "typical" childhood for one filled with transition, moving, goodbyes, and (often) identity crises. This special group is also uniquely joyous, adaptable, and resilient, and the good news of the gospel is invaluable for third-culture kids searching for dependable roots.
Kenji Fukunaga leads Cadence Kids Care, which equips Cadence staff members to care well for third-culture kids for the sake of the Kingdom, including both military youth and the youth of missionaries.
Learn more about Cadence's ministry to the military: https://cadence.org/
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Transcript
Introduction to Military Kids and Gospel Sharing
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to In Cadence, where we talk about what it looks like to share the gospel in our lives with the military community. Join us as we talk about what God is doing in the lives of our service members and how we can be a part it.
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome back to the In Cadence podcast. We are excited to have you listening in And this month we're focusing in on military kids who have a unique experience in their lives.
00:00:37
Speaker
And April is the month of the military child. And so Cadence is excited to talk about the ways we get to lean in to this unique group of people that have real unique needs.
00:00:48
Speaker
Yeah, we have a pretty remarkable history with that, actually, all the way back to the early 80s and our ministries identifying the needs of military kids stationed overseas. And that started in Europe. So we're now more than 40 years of serving military families.
Kenji Fukunaga's Role and Background
00:01:06
Speaker
And in recent years, we've started to create more space within our mission for the care of military kids, as well as our missionaries' children, as well, and our our ministry families.
00:01:19
Speaker
um So we have Kenji Fukunaga with us, who is filling a new role within Cadence that is focusing on that care and that support. So Kenji, good to have you with us, man.
00:01:31
Speaker
It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. And we just kind of want to pick your brain a little bit about what you have come to learn and know and understand through your experience in ministry with military kids and teens and families, and then care for our own missionary families as well. Because there's, you've told us often, there's a lot of overlap there. So we'll probably get into both of those as we focus on military kids.
00:01:59
Speaker
So why don't you take us back first off? ah To those who don't know you, how'd you end up with Cadence and a little bit of your background? And and then ah we'll also be curious about what your specific role within Cadence is.
00:02:12
Speaker
Yeah, cool. So I grew up in Hawaii and I grew up about in five minutes outside the back gate of a Marine base in Hawaii. So I grew up with a lot of military friends, played baseball and soccer with military ah friends.
00:02:29
Speaker
I was never in the military myself, and my parents weren't either, but I knew at some point that I wanted to go into ministry. ah So I went to Corbin University, and at Corbin I um met Dave Lambert, who was one of our recruiters at the time.
00:02:48
Speaker
And when he found out I was studying ministry, he invited me to think about Cadence. Finally, he convinced me to do an internship actually with you Dave, out in Japan.
00:02:59
Speaker
and it was that summer that I fell in love with ah Cadence and with working with military kids.
Challenges and Resilience of Military Kids
00:03:06
Speaker
So graduated, got married, and ended up moving back to Japan for about eight years where we spent a time out there as a youth pastor on a Marine base.
00:03:18
Speaker
What does a youth pastor on a Marine base look like? Yeah, ah pretty much the same as a youth pastor in the States. We just get to work with ah Military kids, um and I guess a big difference is that stateside, you'd probably have the same kids from middle school all the way through graduation.
00:03:41
Speaker
ah But on a Marine base, we had turnover probably every single year where half to a third of our group would change just because of the unique nature of military moves and transitions.
00:03:56
Speaker
That was, yeah, that was a big difference in some of why we fell in love with that. So you did that for eight years in Japan and then changed to a new role still within Cadence.
00:04:10
Speaker
Right. What's that role look like? yeah After eight years, we moved back. We had a sabbatical for year, home assignment for a year, and then got asked to step into a new role with Cadence Kids Care. So what...
00:04:23
Speaker
My wife and I get to now is spend time with the kids of our missionaries and just build um build relationships, support and resource them and support and resource our families so that they can be as healthy as possible for them to do the ministry to the military.
00:04:43
Speaker
And now our audience has an idea of why we invited you in for the month of the military child. One of our homegrown experts on it. So what are some of, I mean, and we did ministry together for years. And so we've we've grown kind of up through this a little bit together in experiencing different branches of the military and different age groups from young children through middle school and high school. But talk to us just a little bit about, um the things that make military kids unique and what is it that has captured you by this people group that you've wanted to invest your life in?
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think working with military kids was one of the big things that drew me to cadence as opposed to getting involved in church ministry or any other ministries, is we love military kids. they They are awesome. And while they definitely are have some unique challenges, they also bring some unique benefits ah to the world. And some of that is they just have such a unique perspective with moving around so much and getting to see a little bit more of the world or see a little bit more of America. They have a unique perspective that's broader
00:05:58
Speaker
and um Yeah, bigger than maybe somebody who grew up in the same city their entire life. ah They tend to have more empathy and they're more able to build bridges with other people and with different cultures because they've experienced a little bit more of the world and experienced it ah a lot more than, again, somebody who would be monocultural, who just grew up in the same place ah their whole time.
00:06:26
Speaker
And those, yeah, that perspective makes them a little bit more adaptable, more flexible, more compassionate often, and more able to think outside the box as far as what's going on in the world.
00:06:38
Speaker
That's
Community and Identity for Military Families
00:06:39
Speaker
so interesting, because I think some people might diminish their experience if they haven't gone overseas or haven't made these, what we would call a larger move or transition to a a different culture, a different country, a different language. But if they've moved from the East Coast to the West Coast, that's still a change. They've still, ah their environment, the people around them, their support structures, all of that has changed. And so that gives them some great opportunity, but it also, there's loss connected to each of those changes. And you what builds through that is what the military calls resilience. And that resilience in these kids is, um I know we've experienced just such an incredible way that that um grows in military kids and even in our own kids. I mean, Brian, as an army guy, you're kids growing up there and then as a missionary as well for us as missionaries that we've seen ah the strength and resilience in the midst of that challenge for our kids. Um,
00:07:40
Speaker
What are some ways that, um Kenji, just talking about resilience and talking about the growth that happens through ah life as a military kid, what would you want people to hear about military families and what those challenges produce? Sure. Yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges for a military kid is understanding who they are, like their sense of identity.
00:08:04
Speaker
With the frequent moves, it can be confusing for them. Like, am i as somebody who lives in the Midwest? And is that part of my identity? Or am I somebody who is a California a surfer kid?
00:08:19
Speaker
Or am I somebody who's Japanese because I've spent time in Japan and just moving between each of those different cultures can be very disconcerting and confusing and give give them a sense of a lack of rootedness or a lack of identity.
00:08:35
Speaker
So having a cadence ministry ah to attend and having people who care for them and love them well can offer them that rootedness that is often missing ah because they're sharing more of who God says who they are and more of what the Bible talks about.
00:08:55
Speaker
man, no matter where you are in the world, this is true about you. So giving them an anchor for their identity is huge. Yeah. And it's interesting having, you know, I was in the army for six years and then we ran a cadence ministry for eight years. um I realized, and I hadn't thought about it this way until you were just talking, but when people, ah when military families move into a new location, the question we often ask is, where are you coming from?
00:09:22
Speaker
Not where are you from? Because it's implicit within the military that they they don't have a home. There's no home. And so we we did where are you coming from? Meaning what was your last duty station?
00:09:34
Speaker
um And I've heard it now that I'm not around a military base. you know Someone, hey where are you from? Oh, I'm a military brat. Which is, I guess, a shorthand of way of saying i don't have a a certain home. Right.
00:09:51
Speaker
You've talked before about kind of the the three, there's three core things that make up identity. um you've You've mentioned family and place and community.
00:10:03
Speaker
How are those challenged for military kids and how does ah the military culture try to overcome those as we look at a kid's identity? Yeah, so there's one model of identity that talks about yeah what you mentioned, the family, ah the physical location, the place that they live, and the community. So some of the trend traditions and culture of that specific place.
00:10:25
Speaker
So for a military kid who's moving around all the time, they're moving to different cultures, they're moving to different places. So that's two out of those three pieces of identity that are constantly shifting and changing lives.
00:10:35
Speaker
And that's some of what makes ah finding a solid sense of identity so difficult is that, yeah, their family is staying the same, but those other two pieces are tough.
00:10:47
Speaker
So as families move around, it can be important to be real intentional about finding some sense of connection with each of those different locations that they're moving to, engaging with some of the different traditions, cultural traditions of each of those locations.
00:11:03
Speaker
And that's, again, where I feel like finding a cadence house or a cadence ministry can just be such a helpful ah route that anchors them to that specific place, even if it's just for a year or two or three.
00:11:17
Speaker
It can be a crucial piece of building a sense of identity for kids and for families and service members as well. I mean, that almost makes me ask the question. We've seen it with families before that sometimes you make a move and that move is just so hard. You've left behind something so significant, special. Maybe you're close to family, maybe you had an incredible church or whatever that experience was in the prior location.
00:11:45
Speaker
To lose that is so intense and so hard when you move to a new location. it can be really hard to connect there. Why does it matter for a military kid or for a military family to connect in that new place to that community and to that place? well I mean, obviously, we're talking about how it's connected to our identity, but can you flesh that out a little bit? Why does it matter that they do get connected there?
00:12:11
Speaker
Even with moving to different places, there is still something that is true of who we are, no matter where we are. So finding that identity anchor ah that is true of them, whether they are overseas, whether they're on the West Coast or the East Coast is so important.
00:12:31
Speaker
and So that's, yeah, again, some of where ah finding somebody, finding a ministry, finding a church, finding a community who can speak that truth into you is critical.
00:12:46
Speaker
What about for the the kids that are out there? I mean, our own missionary kids, I think all of our own stories, we've had seasons and times where we've we've wrestled with our relationship with God. And what Do we really want to follow him?
00:13:01
Speaker
Do we really want to submit our lives to him? And in the midst of challenge and change, that that's an easy thing for any of us to wrestle with. ah What encouragement would you give for the military kid, military family that's out there wrestling with their faith right now?
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah, i feel like... not to necessarily just harp on this, but community just is so important. I think whether you, again are monocultural, somebody who grew up in one place, in one city, um there are going to be days that you are struggling, that you are doubting, that there's hardships, that there's trials.
00:13:39
Speaker
And you need other people to come alongside you to hold hope, to have faith for you in the midst of your trial. So I think particularly for military kids who are moving around, who are experiencing um the hardship of all of those transitions, they need that community even more.
00:13:59
Speaker
Somebody who will hold the hope for them, somebody who will speak truth over them and remind them of who they are and of what God says about them, what the Bible says about them. wherever they are. Yeah, it's okay to struggle, but not alone.
00:14:14
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, we all struggle. And there's going to be times where the strongest of us need somebody else to speak truth, to love us, to care for us Well, so often I think that really is the normative way that God works. You know, I can read the Bible and see what the Bible says, what God says about me just by reading the Bible.
00:14:33
Speaker
But so often the way that Bible comes to life for me is when somebody else, i mean, God uses his people. ah to help us understand what's what he believes. And it's true. um i was actually just journaling prayer this morning. um And I wrote to God, I'm like, you delight in me more than I delight in you.
00:14:57
Speaker
And I'm less delightable than you are. You know, it's just this incredible aspect of how much. And so to remember um how much God delights in his children,
00:15:10
Speaker
And that can easily be lost when your community changes or when you went from a really wonderful community to a new installation where it's just really hard to find community and people.
00:15:22
Speaker
And so now my my sense of awareness of what God thinks of me can easily start to wane or what I start to think of God starts to wane. That is definitely a challenge when when you have to move quite frequently.
00:15:36
Speaker
i think that's where... Yeah, community and being real intentional, especially in the midst of the transitions to finding that space. What would you say to parents who, I mean, it's their fifth move in, you know, eight years.
00:15:53
Speaker
and It just takes work to get plugged in again. and what would you say to parents who are just like, you know what, at this duty station, we're just going to like not work at it. We're just, we'll get you to school, get you home. Right.
00:16:07
Speaker
What would you say to that family that, cause they might be listening right now. Right. Yeah. I've heard that's from so many people, whether both military and missionaries that man, I've moved one too many times. It hurts too much to build relationships just to move again.
00:16:21
Speaker
So we're not going to try. i think the encouragement would be, ah Yes, it does hurt. Yes, it is hard to move. It is hard to say goodbye to people.
00:16:33
Speaker
It's also hard to be alone. And it's much better to do life with people, to go through the hardship alongside other people than to not have anyone at all.
00:16:45
Speaker
It's like Winnie the Pooh says, it's great to say goodbye because that means we've had somebody who it was worth being in relationship with. That's good.
00:16:57
Speaker
You know, if for're being really honest, as missionaries, we've all had that thought too. Absolutely. yeah Where there's people who have left our ministries and we've said goodbye, we've invested, we've loved deeply, we've enjoyed ah that friendship, that connection with them, that discipleship of walking with Jesus together.
00:17:18
Speaker
And then someone shows up at our ministry and we find out, oh, you're you're showing up for the first time. You're here for a month before you move again. and we have that moment, of that sinking feeling in us. Do I have it in me to invest in this person?
Identity Challenges of Missionary and TCKs
00:17:33
Speaker
and And we have to answer that question every time it comes up. Am am I willing to dive in yet again? i think it's one of the hardships that are missionaries face, but also our our missionary kids face in that change of relationships because cadence stays. And we've talked about how we stay in a community constantly.
00:17:52
Speaker
There's a different heart in being the one who always stays while everyone leaves you yeah and goes to a new place. And so I think even for our missionary kids, so shifting gears a little bit, our missionary kids have their own unique version of going to new places, new cross-cultural or um foreign cultures.
00:18:13
Speaker
But then they're also saying goodbye and it in a unique way that compounds over time as well. um And our our missionary kids, sometimes when they're living overseas, they don't get to go to the American school.
00:18:26
Speaker
And so they even feel more of an outsider. um Because all the American kids, you know, have that commonality and they're making friends with them either at a cadence ministry or at youth sports on base or something like that, but may not be in the school with them. And so there's there's a unique aspect of identity loss and loneliness for missionary kids.
00:18:50
Speaker
that don't quite fit in ah with even the military crowd. And so I guess the idea of third culture kids is what it's often called. um For those who haven't heard of what a TCK is, just describe what a third culture kid is.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, so a third culture kid is a sociological term ah used. And the textbook definition of a third culture kid is that they've spent significant time during their developmental years outside of their parents' passport country and usually have repatriation in mind. So they're not going to stay expats forever, but they're going to move back to wherever their passport country is.
00:19:33
Speaker
So a Cadence, American, mike my kids, ah we lived in Germany for 13 years. um U.S. passports. We were planning to come back to the U.S. They went to a, so they're they're Americans.
00:19:48
Speaker
They went to a German school. They don't totally fit in with the German kids. They don't go to the military school with a lot of their friends. So they don't quite fit in there. They're they're not, but they also don't fully understand American culture. Right.
00:20:01
Speaker
And when we moved back here, they thought it was great that you can get free refills, you know, at restaurants. They were like shocked by that. They didn't understand American culture, even though that's their culture. So they they it's a third culture. They just don't fit in any of the cultures.
00:20:14
Speaker
Which has unique challenges too. Absolutely. Yeah, I remember even personally when we moved back from Japan, I walked into a Walmart, into the granola bar aisle, and almost had a panic attack about the number of choices that I had and the granola bar are aisle in Target.
00:20:32
Speaker
And just thinking about my own personal like experience and hardship with repatriating and compound that for my four-year-old, who probably was even more confused, but with less language and ability to understand.
00:20:47
Speaker
There's something unique about a third culture kid yeah and the challenges that they face. And just ah on the the free refill story, too. So they were so excited about free refills. And then we went to a Major League Baseball game. They got their drink. They drank it down quick. and they're like, I'm going to go get a free refill. And we're like, oh, but not here. Right. They had to learn all the nuances of free refills. You don't get them at baseball games. right So we hadn't been to a movie in the U.S. in years. And when we first moved back here, the movie gets ready to start. And all my kids, our whole family, we all just kind of stand up in the middle of the movie theater because we're expecting the national anthem to start and realizing, oh, ah we don't do that before every movie here. Sorry. And so we all it's kind of awkward and we sit down and the kids are confused. What? You know, on military, for those of you listening on military bases before on base, before they show the movie, they play the national anthem. Mary stands up and soldiers are at a position of attention. That's right.
00:21:45
Speaker
And so some of these are fun differences, right? They're just, I mean, they're silly things, but. but they they highlight where we can feel out of place, but it also highlights a breadth of experience.
00:21:55
Speaker
there I think there's ah a great breadth and depth to what a military kid or a missionary kid experiences. And it brings wisdom. It brings perspective, the ability to piece together all these different experiences and realize, think one of the most beautiful things I've seen in my kids and your kids is...
00:22:17
Speaker
God's kingdom, God's work is so much bigger than I can see or perceive in this moment in time, in this place that I'm at now, and that he's actually doing this marvelous work on a global scale. And I've i've had my eyes opened to little glimpses of what that is beyond my current experience. And I think there's a wisdom in being reminded of that. There's a beauty in knowing that, um that I think our our kids and military kids get to experience.
00:22:46
Speaker
If I could even summarize the, like you just mentioned, we feel out of place. You know, Kenji, you've said several times about the the importance of being intentional and all that relates back to our identity.
Support from Cadence Ministries
00:22:59
Speaker
And when, for military kids who um often feel out of place and about the time they start to feel in place, they move again. um eight That impacts who, how they view themselves.
00:23:16
Speaker
And so then to be intentional, to be in a place, and this is where our encouragement to families out there that are listening to this, military families, um shameless plug, we got Cadence Ministries around the world, not at every military base, but a lot of them.
00:23:31
Speaker
And if you go to cadence.org, look up at your next PCS where you're getting move to, see if we have a ministry there, because that's how you can be intentional and get into a community that's going to help you feel not out of place.
00:23:44
Speaker
um Because we want you to have a sense of belonging. Because you mentioned we stay. you know It's one of the core aspects of the Cadence Way. is We stay in these places. And so when people come in, we want you to feel like family.
00:23:58
Speaker
We want to be one of those pillars, community. Absolutely. We want to help that other pillar of family grow strong. Help them learn how to do that. And we can't change the pillar of place because they keep moving.
00:24:12
Speaker
you I need to be reminded that I'm loved and that I have value and how much more do our kids, whether they're missionary kids or military kids or monocultural kids, we all need to be reminded yeah that we're loved and we do that in community. We do that with other people who will speak that truth over us.
00:24:33
Speaker
m Kenji, I really appreciate the work that you're doing, the value of giving ah a title, a role, a job to hold place for community and to speak identity and value to our kids, ah the kids across our mission and to military kids to ah help us be informed about what third culture and cross-cultural impacts are. but But all of that to say how we can be more secure in our identity in Christ and that that's worth holding space for, that's worth being intentional about and finding ways to make ourselves available to kids who are going through these challenges of life that are normal to
00:25:17
Speaker
more than a million kids around the world within the military. And then all these missionary kids on top of that, there's um a huge need there, a huge opportunity for us to draw close to Jesus. You're creating space for that. And um I'm grateful for it, man. You're you're doing good work and it's fun to have you here today.
00:25:35
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, it's great. I think even as you said that, Hutch, it it just reminds me that Cadence sees such value in this, in caring for military kids in this way that We wanted somebody to be intentionally doing it all the time and equipping our people to be able to do it well.
00:25:49
Speaker
And so we're grateful to have you doing that role in cadence for the kingdom and for military families. We appreciate you, Kenji. Yeah, thank
Conclusion: God's Care for Military and Missionary Kids
00:25:57
Speaker
you. One final thought. Yeah. As you guys said that.
00:26:01
Speaker
In Genesis, we see God as the God who sees. i think military kids, missionary kids can often be forgotten. And we want you all to know that God sees you.
00:26:12
Speaker
And we see you and we want to do our best to care and and love you the way God does. Amen. Amen to that.