DanSheffield

The Multicultural Leader - 2nd edition

JUST RELEASED: Second edition of The Multicultural Leader.

(Only available in Kindle at the moment).

The first edition came out in 2005, but I had basically written all the content in 2001-2003. That makes the content definitely more than a decade old -- but we've all been learning so much since then! Hence the reason for this second edition.

The book is still being used as a text in a variety of institutions in Canada and the USA, so an update was necessary to do justice to the burst of new material in this field. Interestingly there is still very little written in a substantial way about leadership in multicultural churches for the Canadian context. Most of what has been published over the last decade or so is all couched in American context.

Additions have been made to Section 1 on A Christian View of Multiculturalism, updating current thought from Canadian author Will Kymlicka and American writers Branson and Martinez.

Section 2, Defining the Multicultural Leader is largely untouched with just the additions of a few more illustrative stories.

Section 3, Becoming a Multicultural Leader, has the most substantial updates, adding another 20 pages to the book. In the original I briefly touched on Milton Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity; in the update I go much deeper in the relevant applications of this model and assessment framework, now with a decade of experience using this tool in leadership development contexts. I add specific insights from the work of Darla Deardorff on processes for developing intercultural competence. Most of the charts have also been updated and some new ones added.

I think the main reason that I have gone to the effort of updating the book, is that there is still very little written on the specific leadership attitudes, knowledge and skills required for pastoring multi-ethnic faith communities, particularly in the Canadian context.

Mashup: The Road, Patty Griffin & Scripture

The Road, a film based on Cormac McCarthy's book of the same name (which I haven't read, still), had a significant impact on me when I first watched it. The visual imagery of a grey, desolate post-apocalyptic world contrasted each evening of the journey (along The Road) with the glowing intimacy and warmth of a campfire still stands out to me, years later. I have mashed up those images with Patty Griffin's song, Little Fire.

For me, this film serves as a metaphor of the role of Christian community as a sacramental presence in the world -- radiating the grace of God as found in Jesus as the light of the world, through re-humanizing contact and sacrificial engagement, in a grim, challenging, dehumanised context. The only other patches of light in The Road were pre-apocalyptic shots of a beautiful household garden, completely obliterated by the apocalypse, represented by the whole screen illuminated with the destructive use of fire (another interesting metaphor)

 

re-imagining "church" for people who could care less

The fastest growing "religious" grouping in Canada is those who declare they have no religious affiliation on the census form (24% in 2011). For some of us, this grouping has become of particular interest. What does "good news" look like for those who could care less about church, Jesus and Christianity? This story is a look at some thinking and practice from others who are working on the same issues.

Theologians study Seattle for future of "church" 

taking shortcuts have repelled many

In their book, Slow Church, Chris Smith and John Pattison draw a comparison between Wendell Berry's imagery in "The Wages of History" about poor farming techniques in Kentucky and the practices of many North American churches through the 20th century.

For Kentucky farmers, the shortsightedness of past generations have now become a matter of life and death. They are "doomed, bound and doomed," Berry says, "to the repair of history or to death." Repentance, the poet goes on to say, requires sacrifice: the farmers must live "drawn out or nearly broken." The inattentive work of the past must be redone alongside the work of the present.

The tough road ahead of Kentucky farmers is not unlike the one we face in the Western church. Decades, if not centuries, of taking shortcuts have repelled many people from the faith and diminished the quality of our life together... Like the steep hillsides of Kentucky, it will take many, many years for these fractures to heal.

In the meantime, those of us who recognize the damage must live sacrificially as we work both to care for the demands of the present and to begin the long work of healing past wounds.

house church advocate or "make disciples" advocate?

In class recently, a student serving in a Chinese church in the GTA asked a question about the significance of the house church model for ministry. This is a class in an MDiv program at Tyndale Seminary where all the students have to be engaged in ministry already, to get into the program. The program is framed around the "missional church." [One 2nd year student the other day, said, "when I came into this program I thought missional church was just another model, but now I can't find any other kind of church in Scripture."] but I digress...

I had mentioned that I am part of a house church community here in Hamilton, and this brought to her mind the explosive growth of house churches in mainland China in the second half of the 20th century. I said, I'm not a "house church" advocate, I am a "make disciples" advocate. I suggested that the Chinese house church movement wasn't just "a ministry option" for possible consideration in China.

At a certain moment it became a matter of life and death as Christians moved underground in Mao's communist society. Interestly, forced movement into small groups, in geographic neighbourhoods, with limited spiritual materials, and where members had to deeply trust each other and help each other understand the meaning of Christian life and practice -- became the exact requirements necessary for explosive Christian growth throughout China.

I turned this around to suggest to my student that I had not come across another approach so significant for "making disciples" as Christian community formed around small groupings of networked households (families) living in reasonable proximity to one another. Call it 'house church' if you will. I suggested that if churches paid attention to "making disciples" rather than presenting spiritual consumer goods we might have a different story to tell in Canada too. 

Related articles

China: Treatment of "ordinary" Christian house church members by the Public Security Bureau (PSB), including treatment of children of house church members (2009-2014)

"Missions" - what are we doing here?

A millenial Christian (20-30 yrs old) questions all the reasons she wanted to save the world with her efforts. 

This is hard for me, because I know my time in Haiti changed my life and my understanding of the world. I made wonderful and life-altering friendships, and I tried in some small ways to improve life for a few people. However, I also know that I initiated the dumping of hundreds of pounds of supplies that could have been bought in country. I led us in efforts that made us look like the rich foreigners there to save the day. I brought clothes and toys and bandaids and doctors when all of those things were right there in Les Cayes. 

her subheadings:

• romanticizing "the other" is still "othering"
• uneducated efforts can do a lot of damage
• what about long-term staying rather than short-term going?

great advice in her closing:

Maybe instead of “mission trips,” we can start taking “perspective trips,” where we go to learn and listen. And maybe we can consider staying a little longer in an effort to do that well. In that scenario, we all get changed and bettered and liberated.

- See more at: 

stories that measure a life

Last weekend I was at a gathering in Selby, Ontario to celebrate my father's 80th birthday. We had to rent a hall and during the course of the afternoon probably close to 200 sat down and chatted and listened to some live music. My dad has been a church planter, pastor, itinerant missionary, bible camp director, musician and stringed instrument teacher. And let's be clear, all of those were accompanied by, or led by, my mother, for better or worse. For the past 40 years or so, his most consistent occupation has been as a music teacher, in and around Napanee -- until he was 75.

At the gathering were friends of close to 60 years. Some got on the stage to play along with my dad [I brought along his Gibson J50 guitar that he bought in 1954]. There were music students that he taught as pre-teens, now in their 50s. There were former campers whose whole families were transformed by meeting Jesus 30 years ago. There were nieces and nephews and grandchildren. Only a few got on the stage to sing and share a memory, but there was a lot of nodding in agreement from the audience.

One student from the 1970s, and long-time family friend, is a missionary in Nigeria; she sent this brief note: "Your dad impacted my music journey in how music can be a great influence on the lives of the people one touches while teaching."

I have been re-reading Joseph Myers book, Organic Community. He suggests that stories are the universal measurement of life. For people like my father and mother who have lived their lives with a sense of purpose and mission -- that others might encounter Jesus as Saviour, Healer and Comforter in the way that they have -- the only 'count' is "persons served in mission." I believe that each person in that room on Saturday had been "served" in one manner or another by my father and mother. At weddings and funerals. At times of great joy and great sadness. Faithful friendship year in and year out. Every person in that room would have a story to tell. And many, many songs...

Tune in here to listen to my dad from a cd recorded about 10 years ago. Back to the Prairies

looking for a concrete, tangible community

In Lamin Sanney's journey toward faith in Jesus, (in Summoned from the Margin) he struggled with the place of suffering and failure in human experience. In his own experience of suffering during his early life in The Gambia, he wondered where God was, and if God was absent did that mean his own sufferings or failure were signs of God's displeasure. It was the Jesus revelation that helped him make sense of this dilemma:

If God accepted Jesus' suffering and failure, it would require us to judge him and God by a different rule, thus giving hope to suffering humanity; it was proof that God would not abandon us in the desolate experience of pain and loss. If a God-appointed Jesus suffered, as scripture claims, that fact would trump all theory; it would give us new knowledge about God and about us: God is in suffering to transform us. It would be crucial to affirm that truth. "For who dares despise the day of small things? ... for they shall rejoice" (Zech 4:10).

Although I could recognize the logic, it was a different matter to submit to it. I had no experience of a corresponding community of faith to be able to imagine how one would live life on those terms. Living is conceivable only in concrete terms, and religion shares in the vitality of tangible, palpable life." 

That was the key challenge for Sanneh, he couldn't find a Christian community that lived the life he was finding answers for, in the Jesus story. I think that is a common concern. 

Short clip here:  

the gospel is like a seed

Dr D T Niles (1908-1970) a Sri Lanka Methodist pastor, evangelist and missiologist spoke of planting the seed of the gospel -- and then letting it take the form of the soil in which it is planted...

The gospel is like a seed, and you have to sow it. When you sow the seed of the gospel in Palestine, a plant that can be called Palestinian Christianity grows. When you sow it in Rome, a plant of Roman Christianity grows. You sow the gospel in Great Britain and you get British Christianity. The seed of the gospel is later brought to America, and a plant grows of American Christianity. Now, when the missionaries came to our land they brought not only the seed of the gospel, but their own plant of Christianity, flowerpot included. So, what we have to do is to break the flowerpot, take out the seed of the gospel, sow it in our own cultural soil, and our own version of Christianity will grow.

If our Canadian mission context is so radically different than the setting in which our present version of Christianity was planted/established, and we see signs everywhere of weak, anemic, dying "plants," perhaps we need to break a few flowerpots and plants seeds in fresh soil. 

to the dying church from a millenial

Great post here at Sojourners, from Brandon Robertson

God is still at work in our world and is still bringing people into this rag-tag family called the church. My generation, the millennials, are also not walking away from their faith in Jesus, but are walking away from the modernized, politicized, sterilized, Europeanized version of Christian faith. Organic, grassroots communities of faith are forming all across our nation without buildings, without marketing, without ordained clergy, without 501(c)(3) exemptions, and without the privilege that most institutionalized churches have enjoyed for so many decades. These communities are simple: spiritual seekers, followers of Jesus, coming to express their true questions, thoughts, and experiences, seeking to be encouraged and empowered to live out the radical way of Jesus in their communities, cultures, and world. These communities aren’t recognized as a church, but as a way of life, a tribe of friends who are working and walking with one another to change the world and establish the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

See the full post here.