Toward a Description of Intercultural Ministry/Relating

In the old game show, Name That Tune, contestants would say, “I can name that tune in ____ notes” (the lower the number of notes, the better). Well, I canNOT name the “tune” of intercultural (or multicultural or cross-cultural) ministry/relating in just a few notes.

In fact, one specialist in this area lists more than a dozen different names for the concept related to intercultural/multiculturalism. That’s a dozen names–each with its own set of scores of definitions.

So, is the cause hopeless? Nope.

But, keep in mind the humble title of this blog post: “toward a description…” It is not a final anything. And it is not even a “definition.” It is a beginning description.

I’ll save the more technical aspects for a forty-semester hour graduate course, and try to keep matters relatively straight forward for a somewhat short blog post. Of course, that means these basic descriptions have much wiggle room and can easily be quibbled with. That’s good–makes for expanding the conversation.

What Is Culture?

Let’s start with a supposedly simple word like “culture.” This word itself has a myriad of definitions. My working definition of culture is based upon a biblical theology/psychology of how God designed us. Here are two similar ways I would word my description of culture:

Culture is the shared relational, rational, volitional, and emotional patterns for living that people use in social interactions and learn through social interactions.

Culture is the system of shared patterns of relating, thinking, acting, and feeling that members of society use to relate to one another and to others, and that are learned through social interactions.

What Is Intercultural Relational Competency?

First, I use intercultural relational competency interchangeably with multicultural skillfulness. Here are a few ways I describe these terms:

Intercultural relational competency is the ability to relate like Christ with people from other cultures.

Intercultural relational competency is the ability to relate like Christ when interacting with people whose patterns of relating, thinking, acting, and feeling are culturally different (diverse) from yours.

What Is a Christ-Centered TEAM Approach to Christlike Intercultural Relational Competency?

Wow! That question alone is a mouthful!

Just as I build my description of “culture” on a biblical theology of people, so I build my description of competency based upon a biblical methodology of change. In my biblical theory of how to help people to change, I highlight sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding (SHRG). For intercultural or multicultural or cross-cultural ministry, I take these four terms and turn them into an acrostic: TEAM.

T: Tacking Another Person’s Perspective (Or Tracking Another Person’s Perspective)

This is the ability to empathize with someone whose patterns of relating, thinking, acting, and feeling developed out of a diverse culture. It is the ability to walk in the shoes of another person from another culture. It requires culturally-informed listening, among many other “skills.”

E: Engaging in Bridge-Building Conversations

This is the ability to encourage another person to assess their own individual, cultural, and universal experience through the lens of God’s eternal Person, perspective, purposes, and plans. It includes the both/and “skill” of listening to the earthly story while jointly weaving in God’s eternal, heavenly story.

A: Accepting, Reconciling with, and Forgiving One Another

This is the ability to apply Christ’s forgiveness of us to our intercultural relationships. It highlights the fact that “racism” (another word with multiple definitions) is not a skin issue but a sin issue. It recognizes that integration alone is a legislative/law issue, while reconciliation is a heart issue, a spiritual issue. This includes the “skill” of being an ambassador of intercultural reconciliation.

M: Making Disciples Who Are Interculturally Competent (Or Mentoring Disciples…)

This is the ability to equip equippers. It is the ability to envision, empower, and equip others to be interculturally Christlike. It is a spiritual direction/discipleship process that passes on and stirs up Christlike intercultural love.

A Soul Care and Spiritual Direction Model

What I am developing/suggesting is a soul care and spiritual direction model of intercultural (multicultural, cross-cultural) competence. It is not simply an individual model: change one person. Nor is it simply an institutional model: change the law. It is a spiritual, ecclesiological model: a Christ-centered, TEAM approach to cultivating Christlike intercultural relational competency.

My passion is to equip the Body of Christ to relate like Christ when interacting with others whose patterns of relating, thinking, acting, and feeling are culturally different from them.

Thus, intercultural competency certainly includes evangelism, since the unsaved and the saved, even from the same home, have diverse patterns of relating, thinking, acting, and feeling.

But it goes far beyond evangelism (ambassadorship) to include fellowship, worship, stewardship, and discipleship. Christlike intercultural relational competency includes how we relate to one another of different cultures in church, at work, in our neighborhoods…it is all-inclusive.