The Multicultural Leader

Churches, Cultures and Leadership

Churches, Cultures and Leadership

This is a brilliant piece of work, bringing together so many interdisciplinary streams; missional theology and practice, intercultural relations, communications, leadership theory and models, etc. A lot of books by our American friends on this subject tend to focus on the racial reconciliation issue, which is a particular challenge in their context. But this book addresses ethnicity and culture in a manner which has great relevance for our Canadian environment, all in the context of local churches, and puts forward lots of useful theory, models and practices. I'd give it 5 stars except that almost all the illustrations are from the American social context.

by Juan Martinez and Mark Lau Branson, both profs at Fuller.

 

Beyond the Welcome -2

Had a chance to attend the Toronto version of the World Vision event,  mentioned in a previous post. Disappointment would have to be the word... I was expecting to go into the actual research data and findings. I kind of think that's what most people in the room were there for too -- some frustration was expressed. [I had brought a group of about 12 leaders from our national movement, specifically hoping to get into the content of the research]

Instead we had a nice introduction to the fact that churches need to engage more with new immigrants... I guess I was thinking that most of the people who would show up for an event like this would, in fact, be people who are already engaged and want more depth of content and reflection to help us with our ongoing work.

I always seem to get suckered into these kinds of things, offered/advertized as an all-encompassing national strategy, by some national org... then I'm always reminded of my basic modus operandi -- small is better, work with those want to be worked with, 'comprehensive' means nobody really deals with on-the-ground stuff; don't be a joiner; do your own thing, in your own place, in your own sphere of influence... see where it leads.

Thankfully the full research document, findings and suggestions (51 pages) are included on the CD takeaway from the event.  Here is the table of contents from the research report.

1. Introduction

1.1 Study Partners
1.2 Study Purpose and Main Research Questions
1.3 Research Approach
1.4 Study Scope and Sites
1.5 Research Methods and Analysis
1.6 How the Report is Organized
2. Why This Research Study
3. How Recent Immigrants Experience Church
3.1 Church Experience Depends on the Context
3.2 Church Experience and a Limited Sense of Belonging
4. How Churches are Responding to Recent Immigrants
4.1 A Positive Trend: A Growing Response
4.2 A Trend Lacking Depth: Limitations in the Response
4.3 What is Hindering the Response of Canadian Churches?
5. Suggestions for Improving How churches Respond
5.1 Promote a Vision for Change
5.2 Create Structures That Support Change
5.3 Develop Processes that Encourage Change
Appendices ....

Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS)

The continuum model in my book, The Multicultural Leader, is related to Milton Bennett's Development Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). A future edition of my book will make closer connections to Bennett's model; after almost a decade of using the DMIS in my work. You can find his original thoughts in these locations...

"Towards Ethnorelativism: a development model of intercultural sensitivity" Bennett, in Education for the Intercultural Experience (Paige, ed., 1993)

"Measuring Intercultural Sensitivity: the Intercultural Development Inventory" (Hammer, Bennett, Wiseman, IJIR, 2003)

"Becoming Interculturally Competent" Bennett, in Toward Multiculturalism: a reader in multicultural education (Wurzel, ed., 2004)

 

difference & Christian mission

I gave a presentation at the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) Conference in Minneapolis October 30, 2010... here are some of summary points from my ppt.

“conceiving the same on the basis of the different” makes identity secondary to and derivative from difference. [Deleuze, 1968]

–I am different from you, and that is my identity

“The freeing of difference requires thought without contradiction, without dialectics, without negation; thought that accepts divergence;” [Foucault, 1977]

–Will you allow me to be different, period?

“a theology of difference would stem from the diversity intrinsic in God’s creativity and would analyze the ways in which humanity has distorted God’s abundance of difference… of which the urge to suppress difference is one expression.” [Titus Presler, IBMR, 2010]

The encounter with Other challenges us to see the unexplainable beyond ourselves, and calls into question everything we have previously understood or constructed. [Levinas]

• If mission is intrinsic to Christian identity – that is, to be a Jesus-follower is to follow Jesus into the encounter with difference – then ‘engaging the other’ who is different is, in fact, intrinsic to Christian faithfulness.

• Christian mission, then, is not a marketing campaign to persuade people of other faiths, or non-faiths, to accept my version of reality [we are called to be a ‘witness,’ to state our experience with Jesus], but a community of practice which has come to believe a particular set of convictions about reality and would like the freedom to offer those convictions for consideration by persons who hold other sets of convictions, while at the same time allowing them to be different, period.
• And it is in this engagement with difference that I am adjusted and shaped toward the image of God, because I come to recognize the different other as also shaped in the image of God, period.

We need to be released from our “present dependence upon one set of cultural forms so that we can provide the place wherein we are able to do theology in the only way that it can be done properly – by learning with increasing capacity to confess the one Lord Jesus Christ as alone having absolute authority and therefore recognize the relativity of all the cultural forms within which we try to say who he is. [Newbigin, 1995]

Soong-Chan Rah & Many Colours

Korean-American pastor and professor, Dr Soong-Chan Rah has released a couple stimulating books in the last 2 years. TheOoze writer Stephanie Smith has a review of his latest book, Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church (Moody, 2010):

In Many Colors, Rah is not afraid of asking the hard questions as he urges his brothers and sisters in Christ to answer God's high calling for a multicultural church. Boldly honest and realistic, Rah warns his readers that building a multicultural, racially reconciled church is an ongoing process that involves a lifetime of learning. No formula can deliver the church from centuries of ethnic tension, but we can adopt what Rah calls a "learning posture" that will help us recognize God in other cultures besides our own and teach us to worship Him together.

Last year he released The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (IVP, 2009).

Rah raises some very significant points, adding to the dialogue on the nature of the 'multi-faceted' God we serve (Eph 3:10). He is, of course, addressing his context, US of A.

Other good dialogue going on here at nextgenerasian -- "is Francis Chan a sellout?"