The Multicultural Leader

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 ....

UReach Toronto is online

UReach Toronto is a unique portal of information -- a resource centre for multicultural ministry in the GTA; with research about communities across the region, interactive maps, news about events and training opportunities. A good place to ask questions or get answers.

Beyond the Welcome

Looking forward to the final report and toolkit from the research conducted by Centre for Community Based Research and Tyndale Intercultural Centre (TIM) and coordinated/funded by World Vision.

Beyond the Welcome: How Canadian Churches are Responding to Canada’s Immigrant Reality

forums across Canada this spring to feedback the research can be found here (scroll down to 2nd event). Bill van Geest is the presenter.

welcoming the stranger

good article here, about how Canadian churches are doing at welcoming strangers:

"People are really willing to open their wallets to help, say, people in Rwanda who are experiencing trouble and trauma. But when they're here in their backyard, they're not as quick to respond," said Jack Taylor, senior pastor of Vancouver's Faith Fellowship Baptist Church. It helps provide temporary shelter and other assistance to refugees through its New Hope Community Services Society.

An online survey that World Vision Canada conducted earlier this year, of churches in 11 cities with high immigrant populations, underscores this apparent inability -- and even hesitancy -- of many churches to embrace recent immigrants.

While there's a real effort by a lot of churches to do an initial welcoming," said Hugh Brewster, World Vision's national manager for Canadian programs, "the welcome was pretty limited."

more insights on preliminary info from this research are found in the article at CanadianChristianity.org.

They highlight comments from people at City Church in Winnipeg

'interculturalism' is now p-c

Globe and Mail article "Quebec groups pushes 'interculturalism' in place of multiculturalism"

I would agree that we certainly hope the popular caricature of multicultural-ism is dead, but the social theory is still more than valid. Even Bouchard in the article states that multiculturalism and interculturalism are two separate ideas and should be understood as inter-related, not as a more currently 'p-c' synonym; interculturalism should not be seen as a slightly more palatable version of multiculturalism. Interestingly the G&M has linked a related story: "Canada near top in integrating immigrants, survey says." There is something about the Canadian experiment that is miles ahead of other civil societies. For me, Will Kymlicka's essay "Multicultural States and Intercultural Citizens" (2003) helps to articulate the pieces very well.

multiculturalism is dead?

French president Nicholas Sarkozy declared Thursday that multiculturalism had failed, joining a growing number of world leaders or ex-leaders who have condemned it.

"My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure," he said in a television interview when asked about the policy which advocates that host societies welcome and foster distinct cultural and religious immigrant groups.

"Of course we must all respect differences, but we do not want... a society where communities coexist side by side.

"If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France," the right-wing president said.

more here...

I'm still amazed that states think they can do this as national policy without a social contract with their citizenry to actively engage as intercultural citizens. But then, this would require citizens to treat their neighbour with the same self-regard as they do themselves. Is that possible in a world of distorted psyches?

Can Multicultural Social Theory Help Us?

last fall I presented a paper at the Evangelical Missiological Society annual meeting in Charlotte, NC. -- Can Multicultural Social Theory Help Us in Leading Multicultural Faith Communities? The paper is going to published by EMS (I believe that is the plan), but here is an mp3

Cg1011 Dan Sheffield-Can Multicultural Social Theory Help Us Lead

of the presentation (minus the images on my ppt.)

leadership: why gender & culture matter

In April 2010,  American Psychologist published a research article by Ayman & Korabik (she's at U of Guelph!). The authors do some in-depth work on the interplay that gender and culture have on diverse leadership models. Here's a quote...

In a diverse workforce, people from different cultural or social groups must constantly interact with each other. In such settings, people’s own cultural identities and their assumptions about and perceptions of others from different social groups (e.g., White and African American, Latino and Asian) relate to ingroup–outgroup dynamics, and these assumptions and perceptions may have an impact on the leadership experience. In these types of situations, the composition of dyads or work groups based on their gender or culture matters because it can affect a leader’s ability to be successful. For example, in an experiment in which a Japanese leader behaved either as an American leader would or as a Japanese leader would, his American followers did not consider him to be as trustworthy when he was behaving like an American leader compared with when he behaved like a Japanese leader.

Moreover, the increasing diversity in today’s workforce means that to be effective, leaders need to develop a multicultural perspective and an understanding of the points of view of those who differ from themselves. Doing so involves two things: (a) eliminating ethnocentrism (i.e., the belief that one’s cultural values are the same as everyone else’s, regardless of the evidence) and (b) increasing isomorphic attributions or the extent that people from culturally diverse social groups are able to reach a similar assessment of a given situation or action. The elimination of ethnocentrism, by reducing the imposition of one’s frame of reference on others, can result in less hostile judgments toward those in outgroups. In addition, by reducing the ethnocentrism present in leadership research, leadership models can become more inclusive of other cultures and representative of all social groups.

creating identity in racially diverse congregations

Our American friends always make this stuff about 'race,' but even so, this journal article by a couple of sociology profs has some good insights...

Dougherty, K. D., & Huyser, K. R. (2008). “Racially Diverse Congregations: Organizational Identity and the Accommodation of Differences.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 47(1), 23–43.

The authors looked at racial reconciliation programs, ethnically diverse staff, experiential charismatic worship and small groups, among other things.

My friends over at unity in christ have a brief condensation of the article on their site.

course at Tyndale summer school

Over the past several months I have been working with Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Ontario [one of the world's great multicultural labs] to design a course focused on developing leadership capacity for facilitating multicultural communities.

Their website has just posted info about the course for next summer: Becoming an Interculturally Competent Leader [July 18-22, 2011].

Here is the course description:

This course is designed for students who currently function, or who anticipate functioning, in inter-cultural environments. The course will enable participants to develop a biblical theology of diversity and to understand and apply the theory and dynamics of intercultural relations. The course will also examine leadership practices suited for facilitating intercultural dialogue and empowering diverse congregations – as a missional response to the demographics of our changing neighbourhoods and workplaces. Through lectures, discussions, exercises and assignments, participants will develop leadership skills for engaging with cultural and religious differences in both community and congregation.