Note: The following is the outline that I spoke from at my presentation at Moody Bible Institute on September 23, 2009. Maybe people asked for the outline…here it is.

The Big Picture: Michael Jordan and the End of the Story

The Big Idea: Since God is moving all of history toward Revelation 7:9-10, we must equip one another to relate and minister interculturally now as a TEAM in light of our eternal future.

The Big Issue: What Are We Talking About?

*Intercultural Relational Competency: The ability to relate like Christ when interacting with people whose patterns of relating, thinking, acting, and feeling are culturally different (diverse) from yours.

The Big Reason: Why Should We Embrace Minority Impact and Intercultural Competency?

*Taking God’s Worldview: Seeing the World as God Sees the World

1. Intercultural Relating Is a God the Father Issue: James 1:27-2:13; Romans 2:4-11

2. Intercultural Relating Is a God the Son Issue: Matthew 28:19-20; John 2:1-4:54

3. Intercultural Relating Is a God the Holy Spirit Issue: 1 Corinthians 12:12-27

4. Intercultural Relating Is a Trinitarian Issue: John 17:20-26

5. Intercultural Relating Is a Salvation Issue: Ephesians 2:11-22; Rev. 5:9; John 3:16

6. Intercultural Relating Is a Sanctification Issue: Colossians 3:1-11

7. Intercultural Relating Is a Church Issue: Acts 2:14-47; Acts 10:1-48; Colossians 3:11-17

8. Intercultural Relating Is an Eternal Issue: Revelation 7:9-10

*A Christ-Centered TEAM Approach

*T: Taking Another Person’s Earthly Perspective through Empathy and Culturally-Informed Listening

*E: Engaging in Bridge-Building Spiritual Conversations through Focusing on God’s Eternal Perspective

*A: Abolishing Barriers through Forgiveness and Reconciliation

*M: Making Intercultural Peace through Spiritual Renewal—Shalom

The Big Questions: “What Motivates Us?” “How Are We Motivating Others?”

Tags: christlike, Intercultural

The Best of Books on Multicultural Ministry and Intercultural Relationships

Kellemen’s Christian The Best of Guide: Making your life easier by finding, summarizing, evaluating, and posting the best resources on a wide variety of topics from a Christian perspective.

The Best of Books on Multicultural Ministry and Intercultural Relationships: Part One

Note: Excerpted from African American History, Life, Christianity, and Ministry: An Annotated Resource Guide, by Robert W. Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC. For information on the full version please visit our Store. 

Anderson, David. Gracism: The Art of Inclusion. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007.

Pastor David Anderson builds a thoughtful, practical, balanced Christian approach to multiculturalism. He avoids the extremes of color-blindness and of affirmative action. Skillfully he explains the biblical injunction to care for the marginalized. Gracism is a must read for anyone who longs to build bridges leading to racial healing, harmony, and reconciliation. Its balance between theology, philosophy, and methodology makes it a uniquely practical manual.

Anderson, David. Multicultural Ministry: Finding Your Church’s Unique Rhythm. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004.

Pastor David Anderson has “been there, done that.” As a seasoned pastor of a multi-cultural church in a multi-cultural community, Pastor Anderson writes both with biblical insight and personal experience. A well-written, practical, and hopeful book, Multicultural Ministry is a foundational book for everyone interested in racial harmony and mutual ministry.

Anderson, David, and Brent Zuercher. Letters Across the Divide: Two Friends Explore Racism, Friendship, and Faith. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001.

Pastor David Anderson and author Brent Zuercher have penned a groundbreaking and distinctive book. What happens when two friends of different races explore racism and faith? Letters across the Divide happens. For a firsthand account of what honest, open, bold, and loving multicultural relationships could look like, read this book.

Breckenridge, James, and Lillian Breckenridge. What Color Is Your God?: Multicultural Education in the Church. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995.

As the subtitle suggests, What Color Is Your God? educates pastors in foundational cultural understanding. Covering ethnic groups in America, this primer shows church leaders how to value cultural differences. It also highlights transcultural biblical principles and probes how various cultures apply or misapply these eternal principles in daily life.

Conde-Frazier, Elizabeth, Steve Kang, and Gary Parrett. A Many Colored Kingdom: Multicultural Dynamics for Spiritual Formation. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004.

A Many Colored Kingdom provides ground breaking insight into the theology and methodology of spiritual formation from and in a multicultural perspective. The co-authors themselves live and breathe what they write, researching and writing with passion and precision. This book richly celebrates the diverse contributions to Christian spirituality necessary to fully engage and embrace the infinite, multifaceted beauty and glory of Christ.

Cooper, Rodney. We Stand Together: Reconciling Men of Different Color. Chicago: Moody, 1995.

We Stand Together would be a five-star book if it were not now somewhat dated. Editor Rodney Cooper is a leading Black Evangelical educator. Active in the 90s in the Promise Keepers’ movement, he surrounded himself with men of diverse ethnic groups to edit this primer on how men of different races can understand, forgive, reconcile with one another, and minister together.

Emerson, Michael. Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Please, don’t read this book without reading the “sequel” (see below): United by Faith.

Divided by Faith outlines the problem, as understood through a dissertation research project, of race relations in Evangelicalism in America in the 1990s. The results are troubling and at times could even produce hopelessness. However, facts are facts, and this sort of detailed quantitative and qualitative study is all-too-rare in Evangelical circles.

Emerson’s premise is that much of what White Evangelicals do to unite across racial lines end up being counter-productive. He does so by showing a concise history of Evangelical thought about racism from Colonial times to the Civil Rights movement. His core thesis is that most work done is too individualistic—one person trying alone to cross racial boundaries. His basic suggestion is the cross-cultural congregation. Unfortunately, until one reads United by Faith, how to accomplish this goal is left to the reader’s imagination—which may by now have been stunted by all the piles of statistics suggesting that Evangelical racial reconciliation is futile. However, the power of God, starting with one person’s commitment to cross-cultural relationships, can start a chain reaction—and lead to hope.

Emerson, Michael. United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Emerson has convened a multicultural team of co-authors to follow-up his earlier work Divided by Faith. In this work, Emerson argues that Evangelicals, when they have done anything at all to work toward racial reconciliation, have been to individualistic in their approach.

Emerson then argues that the biblical and effective approach is the multicultural congregation in which no one race makes up more than 80% of the congregation. The authors explain the biblical and social need for such congregations. They then follow with hope-giving success stories which provide the philosophy, principles, and practices necessary to obtain the biblical social vision of the multicultural people of God.

Implied, but not highlighted or extracted in detail, is the truth that such congregations can and should then do two things: 1.) Be a visible testimony exhorting the world to “go and do likewise.” 2.) Take a stand against societal racism and promote racial reconciliation and justice.

Kellemen, Robert W. and Karole A. Edwards. Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007.

Beyond the Suffering is a one-of-a-kind African American narrative. It is not simply a history of America, not simply a history of African Americans, not simply a history of African American Christianity, but a narrative of how African American Christians ministered to one another. As the title suggests, the book tells how African American believers helped one another to move beyond their horrific suffering to a place of healing and hope.

The characters are the African American believers themselves. The plot is their real-life battles told in their empowering words. The authors are a co-authoring team, one an African American female, the other a Caucasian male. Together, they embrace the legacy of how African Americans sustained, healed, reconciled, and guided one another in the faith.

Written in an engaging style that allows African Americans to tell their own story, Beyond the Suffering reads like a novel. It empowers African Americans and all people of all races and nationalities to love like Christ loved even in the worst of circumstances. Readers not only are riveted by the powerful historical chronicles, but are also equipped to apply soul care and spiritual direction principles to their own lives and ministries.

Important Stuff

*Your Guide: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, is the Founder and CEO of RPM Ministries (www.rpmministries.org) through which he writes, speaks, and consults to equip God’s people to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth. He blogs daily here.

*My Necessary Disclaimer: Of course, I don’t endorse everything in every article, book, or link that you’ll find in Kellemen’s Christian The Best of Guide. I report, you decide.

*Your Suggestions Are Welcomed: Feel free to post comments and/or send emails (rpm.ministries@gmail.com) about resources that you think deserve attention in various categories covered in Kellemen’s Christian The Best of Guide.

In light of the ongoing controversy over the arrest of African American Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., many of you have asked to hear more about my views on intercultural (multicultural) ministry.

Goals of a Christ-Centered TEAM Approach



The primary goal of Cultivating Christlike Intercultural Relational Competency: A Christ-Centered TEAM Approach is to equip people to develop four championship TEAM skills that empower them to function effectively in our culturally diverse society. People can learn how to relate harmoniously by building bridges of understanding across diverse cultures.

The TEAM approach is based upon the biblical conviction that God in Christ is moving all of history toward an eternity where “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language” will stand before the Lamb in united worship (Revelation 7:9-10). Thus the eternal goal is to equip people to relate interculturally now in light of their eternal future so that God is glorified and others are attracted to Christ by their love.



Learning Outcomes of A Christ-Centered TEAM Approach



After successful participation in Cultivating Christlike Intercultural Relational Competency: A Christ-Centered TEAM Approach, people will be able to implement the TEAM intercultural relational competencies of:

T: Taking another person’s earthly perspective through empathy and culturally-informed listening.

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 spiritual conversations through focusing on God’s eternal perspective.

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: Abolishing barriers through forgiveness and reconciliation.

This is the ability to apply Christ’s forgiveness of us to our intercultural relationships. It highlights the fact that “racism” 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 intercultural peace through spiritual renewal.

This is the ability to move beyond the absence of hostility to the presence of biblical unity in diversity. It highlights biblical shalom which only comes from Christ’s supernatural resurrection power among His redeemed people. It includes the “skill” or relational competency of applying personal spiritual renewal to individual and group interpersonal relationships.

Just How Biblical Is Intercultural Ministry?

Consider just a few examples of how central intercultural ministry is to the eternal plan of God.

1. Intercultural Ministry Is a God Thing: James 2:1-13; Romans 2:4-11. For God so loved the world. God is no respecter of persons. He is calling people from all nations to His forever family. He calls us to godly living that shows no favoritism.

2. Intercultural Ministry Is a Christ Thing: Matthew 28:19-20; John 4:1-42. Christ calls us to make disciples of all nations. Christ models intercultural ministry in breaking social barriers to witness to the Samaritan women, resulting in the people proclaiming that He is indeed the Savior of the world.

3. Intercultural Ministry Is a Spirit Thing: 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. We are all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks. The Spirit purposefully combined the diverse members into one Body so that there would be no division.

4. Intercultural Ministry Is a Salvation Thing: Ephesians 2:11-22; Revelation 5:9. Christ’s salvation purpose is to reconcile, make peace, and create in Himself one new people who have full and equal access to the Father by the Spirit, making us all fellow citizens and joint members of God’s household. The Lamb purchased for God people from every tribe, language, people, and nation.

5. Intercultural Ministry Is a Church Thing: Acts 2:14-47; Acts 10:1-48. The first Church and the Church throughout Acts integrated believers from diverse cultures.

6. Intercultural Ministry Is a Sanctification Thing: Colossians 3:1-11. As we put off the old and put on the new person in Christ we are renewed not only individually, but also corporately where there is no Greek or Jew, barbarian or Scythian, but Christ is all and is in all.

7. Intercultural Ministry Is an Eternal Thing: Revelation 7:9-10. As John peers into eternity, he witnesses a great multitude that no one can count from every nation, tribe, people, and language worshipping God together forever.

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.

Still, we can at least suggest some beginning descriptions.

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.

Speaking



I have spoken on this topic across the country in diverse settings. My presentation includes a five-page outline, a 60-slide PowerPoint presentation, and an engaging, interactive lecture/discussion. If you are interested in having me speak to your group, feel free to contact me: rpm.ministries@gmail.com.

Resources

My book Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction offers insights for all people into the great contributions to ministry made by our African American brothers and sisters. For more information on Beyond the Suffering visit: http://tinyurl.com/d7bwnv.

The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity

Day Ten: Longing for Someone to Confide In

Welcome to day ten of our forty-day intercultural journey. From Martin Luther King Day to the end of Black History Month we are focusing on The Journey: Forty Days of Promise—Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity.

Day Ten: Longing for Someone to Confide In[1]

The most horrific aspect of slave family life was the rape of black women by their masters and others. Harriet Jacobs, the victim of constant lewd advances from her master, expresses her despondency because of the birth of a daughter.

“When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women” who inevitably must endure licentious assaults on their virtue.

Jacobs describes the onset of such onslaught in her own life.

“But I now entered on my fifteenth year—a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import.” She felt that “every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows.”

Her master, Dr. Flint, tried his utmost to corrupt the pure principles that her grandmother had instilled in her. He peopled her young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could imagine. She turned from him with disgust and hatred, but he was her master. She was compelled to live under the same roof with him—where she saw a man forty years her senior daily violating the most sacred commandment. He told her that she was his property and that she must be subject to his will in all things.

“My soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn for protection.”

Jacobs longed for someone to confide in and “would have given the world to have laid my head on my grandmother’s faithful bosom, and told her all my troubles.” However, Dr. Flint swore that he would kill her if she was not as silent as the grave. Being very young, Jacobs felt “shamefaced about telling her (grandmother) such impure things, especially as I knew her to be very strict on such subjects.”

A Skillful Spiritual Friend

What was she to do? And what are we to do when life kills the dreams we dream; what recourse do we have? We, like Jacobs, can turn to those who love us unconditionally.

“Still I was not stripped of all. I still had my good grandmother, and my affectionate brother.” Of him, she writes, “When he put his arms round my neck, and looked into my eyes, as if to read there the troubles I dared not tell, I felt that I still had something to love.”

Her affectionate brother was a skillful spiritual friend. Consider his relational competencies: the appropriate use of physical touch, the meaningful application of eye contact, accurately reading body language, sensing unspoken pain, and communicating unconditional love. And consider the result of his ministry: the rebirth of love.

A Skillful Spiritual Director

Her saintly grandmother was a skillful spiritual director. Upon finally learning of Dr. Flint’s advances, Jacobs’ grandmother confronts him, telling him plainly what she thought of his character. She then forcefully rebukes him:

“I tell you what, Dr. Flint, you ain’t got many more years to live, and you’d better be saying your prayers. It will take ’em all, and more too, to wash the dirt off your soul.”

When he responds by asking if she knows to whom she is speaking, she boldly replies, “Yes, I know very well who I am talking to.” Flint then backs down, leaving the house in a great rage.

The moment Flint leaves, Jacobs’ eyes meet those of her grandmother. The anger is gone, replaced with tenderness. Jacobs expresses amazement that her infidelity did not lessen her grandmother’s love for her. “She was always kind, always ready to sympathize with my troubles.”

Whereas Jacobs’ brother illustrates expert sustaining, her grandmother exhibits adroit reconciling. She literally takes her life in her hands to stand toe to toe with a white master. Even when she rebukes him, she retains concern for him—for his eternal destiny. She also demonstrates the vital ability to quickly shift from righteous anger to tender compassion, not to mention her expressions of unconditional love.

Learning Together From Our Great Cloud of Witnesses

1. What spiritual friendship principles can you learn from Harriet Jacobs’ brother?

2. What spiritual direction principles can you learn from Harriet Jacobs’ grandmother?

[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at http://www.rpmministries.org/.

The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity

Day Eight: Pulling the Rope in Unison

Welcome to day eight of our forty-day intercultural journey. From Martin Luther King Day to the end of Black History Month we are focusing on The Journey: Forty Days of Promise—Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity.

Day Eight: Pulling the Rope in Unison[1]

It has become something of a cliché to imagine that black families today find it difficult to experience stability because of a long history of instability caused by slavery and racism. While not at all minimizing the obstacles that enslaved African American families have faced, history paints a truer and more optimistic picture of their response. Though everything fought against them, enslaved African Americans battled gallantly to maintain family cohesion—a cohesion that provided a sturdy platform from which to handle life courageously.

Jennie Hill was born and enslaved in 1837 in Missouri. Florence Patton interviewed the ninety-six-year-old Hill in 1933. During her interview, Hill adamantly resisted the notion that enslaved families lacked closeness.

“Some people think that the slaves had no feeling—that they bore their children as animals bear their young and that there was no heartbreak when the children were torn from their parents or the mother taken from her brood to toil for a master in another state. But that isn’t so. The slaves loved their families even as the Negroes love their own today. . .”

Hardships Do Not Make It Too Hard to Love

Communicating the message of African American family love was so important to Reverend Jones that he bore witness to it on the very first page of his narrative. “I can testify, from my own painful experience, to the deep and fond affection which the slave cherishes in his heart for his home and its dear ones. We have no other tie to link us to the human family, but our fervent love for those who are with us and of us in relations of sympathy and devotedness, in wrongs and wretchedness.”

Satan longs to blind African Americans to their legacy of family love. He wants all of us to believe that hardships make it too hard to love. Hill’s family, Jones’ family, and millions like them, belie that lie.

Truth for Life

Enslaved African American couples sustained strong marital relationships. Venture Smith was born in Dukandarra, in Guinea, about 1729. Kidnapped at age eight, Robertson Mumford purchased him a year later. After living with Mumford for thirteen years, Venture married Meg at age twenty-two. They remained together for over forty-seven years, through many trials and tribulations, until parted by death.

Venture’s narrative contains an explanation for their marital faithfulness. On the occasion of their marriage, Venture threw a rope over his cabin and asked his wife to go to the opposite side and pull on the rope hanging there while he remained and pulled on his end. After they both had tugged at it awhile in vain, he called her to his side of the cabin and by their united effort they drew the rope to themselves with ease. He then explained the object lesson to his young bride.

“If we pull in life against each other we shall fail, but if we pull together we shall succeed.”

Premarital couples, newlyweds, and seasoned married spouses would all do well to heed Venture’s guiding wisdom.

Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses

1. Whether married or single, how can you apply African American family cohesion to your family and personal relationships?

2. What hardships are you facing that seem to make it too hard to love? How can the witness of the African American slaves empower you to defeat that lie?

[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.

The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity

Day Seven: Groaning to the Father of the Fatherless

Welcome to day seven of our forty-day intercultural journey. From Martin Luther King Day to the end of Black History Month we are focusing on The Journey: Forty Days of Promise—Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity.

Day Seven: Groaning to the Father of the Fatherless: Perpetual Lament[1]

In the gripping slave narratives, we find believers sharing their hurting hearts with their caring Savior. In their practice of the biblical art of lament, African American Christians clung to biblical imagery.

For example, Pastor Peter Randolph describes a mother named Jenny who grieves the loss of her children.

“So she (Jenny) commends them to the care of the God of the widow and the fatherless, by bathing her bosom in tears, and giving them the last affectionate embrace, with the advice to meet in heaven. Oh, the tears of the poor slave that are in bottles, to be poured out upon his blood-stained nation, as soon as the cup of wrath of the almighty Avenger is full, when he shall say, ‘I have heard the groanings of my people, and I will deliver them from the oppressor!’”

Painting Pictures of God onto the Palettes of Life Portraits

Enslaved African Americans survived by painting pictures of God onto the palettes of their life portraits. They viewed Him as the Father of the fatherless, as the God who collects their tears in his bottle of remembrance, and as God the just Judge avenging their suffering, hearing their cries, and delivering their souls.

While Solomon Northup lies in a slave pen with fifty fellow slaves, he prays a prayer of personal lament.

“My cup of sorrow was full to overflowing. Then I lifted my hands to God, and in the still watches of the night, surrounded by the sleeping forms of my companions, begged for mercy on the poor, forsaken captive. To the Almighty Father of us all—the freeman and the slave—I poured forth the supplications of a broken spirit, imploring strength from on high to bear up against the burden of my troubles, until the morning light aroused the slumberers, ushering in another day of bondage.”

His mouth vocalizing his pain and his eyes watching God, Northup draws a line in the sand of retreat. When everything inside screams, “Surrender hope!” he cries out to God lamenting the evils he is suffering while pleading for strength to endure. He teaches us that the will to survive is soaked in continual lament.

Fixing Your Eyes on the Hope of the Future: Heavenly Reunion

Randolph explains that given such earthly sorrow, enslaved African Americans ministered to one another by emphasizing heavenly reunion. “In parting with their friends at the auction-block, the poor blacks have the anticipation of meeting them again in the heavenly Canaan, and sing:

‘O, fare you well, O, fare you well! God bless you until we meet again; Hope to meet you in heaven, to part no more. Sisters, fare you well; sisters, fare you well; God Almighty bless you, until we meet again.’”

Enslaved Virginian, William Grimes, summarizes it best. “If it were not for our hopes, our hearts would break.” Knowing that they would never see one another again in this world, they set their sights on another world.

Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses

1. The will to survive is soaked in continual lament. What does that mean to you? How could you practice its meaning in your life?

2. How could you apply the truth of biblical lament in your ministry to others who are grieving?

3. In what situations do you say, ‘If it were not for my hopes, my heart would break? How does God sustain you through future hope?

4. What image of God do you cling to when life attempts to batter and break you?

[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.