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.

*Note: For The Journey: Day Twenty-Six see my earlier post today.

Well, I wanted to start a conversation. And I have!

Someone sent me a private message sharing the opinion that:

1.) Racism is a thing of the past.

2.) The election of Barack Obama proves racism no longer exists in America.

3.) Writing about any one race promotes a “victim mentality.”

4.) We should only read about good people of all races.

I love when people respond to my posts because it inspires me to think deeply and passionately. It does indeed create an ongoing conversation.

Here, in no particular order, are a couple of my thoughts in response to this email.

1.) Victim Mentality? No. Victor Mentality!

I have never written about a victim mentality in my writings on Heroes of Black Church History. In fact, the entire series comes from my book with the title Beyond the Suffering. I would think that Beyond might communicate the Victor Mentality! Writing about the heroes of a given culture is designed to encourage people of all cultures.

2.) Valuing Diversity throughout Eternity

I hope we all understand something. Even if racism were wiped from the face of the earth, the Bible still commands us to value diversity throughout eternity. We will celebrate unity in diversity in heaven for all eternity according to Rev. 7:9-10. The end of racism would not be the end of diversity. It would be the beginning of unity in diversity. There’s a world of difference.

3.) Racism Has Yet to Be Defeated

I would love to believe that one election implies the end of all racism, prejudice, and bias in America. I fear that would be a naïve conclusion.

Practically, we have no way of knowing what motivated the 49% of people who did not vote for an African American President. But more importantly, theologically, we know that we are totally depraved people. Sin will not be eradicated until our glorification in heaven. So, sadly, the hideous sin of prejudice and racism will never totally be eliminated until all sin is eliminated.

4.) Walking the Talk

I always find it interesting when someone says, “Let’s just read about good people of all races and not focus on just one race!”

Here’s the thing. I like to follow-up with the question, “So tell me the most recent book you read, especially the most recent American church history book, that talked about anyone other than dead white guys…”

Or, I’ll ask, “So tell me some great heroes of the faith who are from a culture different from yours…”

Of course, 99% of people can’t provide an answer. In theory, we say we want to read about all people of all cultures. In reality, most general studies books on American church history are only about the dead white guys. And most of us read only about people who are like us.

Now, I’m not against the dead white guys. One day I will be one of them! I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on one of them: Martin Luther.

I just happen to be of the conviction that fair and balanced history is still not being written. That’s why I also write on Heroes of Black Church History. And why I also write on Heroines of Church History. As I said earlier, writing about the heroes of a given culture is designed to encourage people of all cultures.

Let the Conversation Continue

And what do you think?

As I always do, I appreciated and enjoyed the interview yesterday with Steve Hiller and Michelle Strombeck of Moody Radio’s Prime Time Chicago. We discussed Beyond the Suffering and the state of race relationships in America.

Steve asked me the perceptive question, “Bob, with the election of President Obama, are we now a post-racial soceity?”

My answer?

Well…I’m interested in your answer also. So…please join the conversation.

Okay…my answer…

We have made progress. Obviously, the election of an African American President, an election where millions of whites voted for an African American, is light years ahead of where we were just a generation ago.

However, we still have issues to deal with. Even since the election, I could share half-a-dozen examples that friends of mine have shared with me of racial tensions, misunderstandings, prejudice…

Just since the interview yesterday, I have received several “Thank You” emails from “new friends” (people I “met” only through the radio program and their response). They were thankful for the “balance” I brought to the issue: progress, but work to do. They shared examples in their lives of current struggles against intolerance.

Those who know me and read my blog know I am not a person interested in stirring up controversy. You know I strive to be a bridge-builder and that I strive to explore biblical solutions to relationship problems. That’s why I am inviting you to join me on The Reconciliation Journey from January 19 to February 28 on this blog. That’s why I am teaching around the country on A Christ-Centered TEAM Approach to Intercultural Relationships.

That said, sometimes we have to get the truth out there. So…what is your experience? What is your opinion? Are we a post-racial society? Are we there yet? If so, what examples do you see? If not, what examples do you see and what can we do to get there?

Racial Identity in American Life

Here’s an interesting article by Jesse Washington of the AP.

Here’s the original link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081213/ap_on_re_us/obama_s_not_black

Obama’s True Colors: Black, White … or Neither?

By JESSE WASHINGTON, AP National Writer Jesse Washington, Ap National Writer – Sat Dec 13, 2008

A perplexing new chapter is unfolding in Barack Obama’s racial saga: Many people insist that “the first black president” is actually not black.

Debate over whether to call this son of a white Kansan and a black Kenyan biracial, African-American, mixed-race, half-and-half, multiracial — or, in Obama’s own words, a “mutt” — has reached a crescendo since Obama’s election shattered assumptions about race.

Obama has said, “I identify as African-American — that’s how I’m treated and that’s how I’m viewed. I’m proud of it.” In other words, the world gave Obama no choice but to be black, and he was happy to oblige.

But the world has changed since the young Obama found his place in it.

Intermarriage and the decline of racism are dissolving ancient definitions. The candidate Obama, in achieving what many thought impossible, was treated differently from previous black generations. And many white and mixed-race people now view President-elect Obama as something other than black.

So what now for racial categories born of a time when those from far-off lands were property rather than people, or enemy instead of family?

“They’re falling apart,” said Marty Favor, a Dartmouth professor of African and African-American studies and author of the book “Authentic Blackness.”

“In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois said the question of the 20th century is the question of the color line, which is a simplistic black-white thing,” said Favor, who is biracial. “This is the moment in the 21st century when we’re stepping across that.”

Rebecca Walker, a 38-year-old writer with light brown skin who is of Russian, African, Irish, Scottish and Native American descent, said she used to identify herself as “human,” which upset people of all backgrounds. So she went back to multiracial or biracial, “but only because there has yet to be a way of breaking through the need to racially identify and be identified by the culture at large.”

“Of course Obama is black. And he’s not black, too,” Walker said. “He’s white, and he’s not white, too. Obama is whatever people project onto him … he’s a lot of things, and neither of them necessarily exclude the other.”

But U.S. Rep. G. K. Butterfield, a black man who by all appearances is white, feels differently.

Butterfield, 61, grew up in a prominent black family in Wilson, N.C. Both of his parents had white forebears, “and those genes came together to produce me.” He grew up on the black side of town, led civil rights marches as a young man, and to this day goes out of his way to inform people that he is certainly not white.
Butterfield has made his choice; he says let Obama do the same.

“Obama has chosen the heritage he feels comfortable with,” he said. “His physical appearance is black. I don’t know how he could have chosen to be any other race. Let’s just say he decided to be white — people would have laughed at him.”

“You are a product of your experience. I’m a U.S. congressman, and I feel some degree of discomfort when I’m in an all-white group. We don’t have the same view of the world, our experiences have been different.”

The entire issue balances precariously on the “one-drop” rule, which sprang from the slaveowner habit of dropping by the slave quarters and producing brown babies. One drop of black blood meant that person, and his or her descendants, could never be a full citizen.

Today, the spectrum of skin tones among African-Americans — even those with two black parents — is evidence of widespread white ancestry. Also, since blacks were often light enough to pass for white, unknown numbers of white Americans today have blacks hidden in their family trees.

One book, “Black People and their Place in World History,” by Dr. Leroy Vaughn, even claims that five past presidents — Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge — had black ancestors, which would make Obama the sixth of his kind.

Mix in a few centuries’ worth of Central, South and Native Americans, plus Asians, and untold millions of today’s U.S. citizens need a DNA test to decipher their true colors. The melting pot is working.

Yet the world has never been confronted with such powerful evidence as Obama. So as soon as he was elected, the seeds of confusion began putting down roots.

“Let’s not forget that he is not only the first African-American president, but the first biracial candidate. He was raised by a single white mother,” a Fox News commentator said seven minutes after Obama was declared the winner.

“We do not have our first black president,” the author Christopher Hitchens said on the BBC program “Newsnight.” “He is not black. He is as black as he is white.”

A Doonesbury comic strip that ran the day after the election showed several soldiers celebrating.

“He’s half-white, you know,” says a white soldier.

“You must be so proud,” responds another.

Pride is the center of racial identity, and some white people seem insulted by a perception that Obama is rejecting his white mother (even though her family was a centerpiece of his campaign image-making) or baffled by the notion that someone would choose to be black instead of half-white.

“He can’t be African-American. With race, white claims 50 percent of him and black 50 percent of him. Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all,” Ron Wilson of Plantation, Fla., wrote in a letter to the Sun-Sentinel newspaper.

Attempts to whiten Obama leave a bitter taste for many African-Americans, who feel that at their moment of triumph, the rules are being changed to steal what once was deemed worthless — blackness itself.

“For some people it’s honestly confusion,” said Favor, the Dartmouth professor. “For others it’s a ploy to sort of reclaim the presidency for whiteness, as though Obama’s blackness is somehow mitigated by being biracial.”

Then there are the questions remaining from Obama’s entry into national politics, when some blacks were leery of this Hawaiian-born newcomer who did not share their history.

Linda Bob, a black schoolteacher from Eustis, Fla., said that calling Obama black when he was raised in a white family and none of his ancestors experienced slavery could cause some to ignore or forget the history of racial injustice.

“It just seems unfair to totally label him African-American without acknowledging that he was born to a white mother,” she said. “It makes you feel like he doesn’t have a class, a group.”

There is at least one group eagerly waiting for Obama to embrace them. “To me, as to increasing numbers of mixed-race people, Barack Obama is not our first black president. He is our first biracial, bicultural president … a bridge between races, a living symbol of tolerance, a signal that strict racial categories must go,” Marie Arana wrote in the Washington Post.

He’s a bridge between eras as well. The multiracial category “wasn’t there when I was growing up,” said John McWhorter, a 43-year-old fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Race and Ethnicity, who is black. “In the ’70s and the ’80s, if somebody had one white parent and one black parent, the idea was they were black and had better get used to it and develop this black identity. That’s now changing.”

Latinos, whom the census identifies as an ethnic group and not a race, were not counted separately by the government until the 1970s. After the 1990 census, many people complained that the four racial categories — white, black, Asian, and American Indian/Alaska native — did not fit them. The government then allowed people to check more than one box. (It also added a fifth category, for Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders.)

Six million people, or 2 percent of the population, now say they belong to more than one race, according to the most recent census figures. Another 19 million people, or 6 percent of the population, identify themselves as “some other race” than the five available choices.

The White House Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the census, specifically decided not to add a “multiracial” category, deeming it not a race in and of itself.

“We are in a transitional period” regarding these labels, McWhorter said. “I think that in only 20 years, the notion that there are white people and there are black people and anyone in between has some explaining to do and an identity to come up with, that will all seem very old-fashioned.”

The debate over Obama’s identity is just the latest step in a journey he unflinchingly chronicled in his memoir, “Dreams from My Father.”

As a teenager, grappling with the social separation of his white classmates, “I had no idea who my own self was,” Obama wrote.

In college in the 1970s, like millions of other dark-skinned Americans searching for self respect in a discriminatory nation, Obama found refuge in blackness. Classmates who sidestepped the label “black” in favor of “multiracial” chafed at Obama’s newfound pride: “They avoided black people,” he wrote. “It wasn’t a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around.”

Fast-forward 30 years, to the early stages of Obama’s presidential campaign. Minorities are on track to outnumber whites, to redefine the dominant American culture. And the black political establishment, firmly rooted in the civil rights movement, questioned whether the outsider Obama was “black enough.”

Then came the primary and general elections, when white voters were essential for victory. “Now I’m too black,” Obama joked in July before an audience of minority journalists. “There is this sense of going back and forth depending on the time of day in terms of making assessments about my candidacy.”

Today, it seems no single definition does justice to Obama — or to a nation where the revelation that Obama’s eighth cousin is Dick Cheney, the white vice president from Wyoming, caused barely a ripple in the campaign.

In his memoir, Obama says he was deeply affected by reading that Malcolm X, the black nationalist-turned-humanist, once wished his white blood could be expunged. “Traveling down the road to self-respect my own white blood would never recede into mere abstraction,” Obama wrote. “I was left to wonder what else I would be severing if I left my mother and my grandparents at some uncharted border.”

As I pen these words, America has just elected its first African American President—Barack Obama. While Evangelical Christians may take issue with President-elect Obama’s pro-choice views on abortion, and perhaps with various other political positions, no Christian, of any race, can deny the historic nature of what has just occurred.

For African Americans in particular, Obama’s election is a ray of hope. And hope—awaiting a better future day—has always been core to African American Christianity.

Hope Then: The Story of Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne[1]

African American Daniel Alexander Payne was a Bishop in, an early leader of, and the official historian for the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC). Reflecting back on the 1816 organizing convention of the AMEC, Payne believed that the separation of the AMEC from the white Methodist Episcopal Church was “beneficial to the man of color” in two ways.

“First: it has thrown us upon our own resources and made us tax our own mental powers both for government and support.” Secondly, it gave the black man “an independence of character which he could neither hope for nor attain unto, if he had remained as the ecclesiastical vassal of his white brethren.” It produced “independent thought,” “independent action,” and an “independent hierarchy,” and the latter “has made us feel and recognize our individuality and our heaven-created manhood.”[2]

Personally, Payne experienced numerous opportunities to live out his Christian manhood. Early in his life Payne was devastated when a new law forced him to stop teaching his fellow African Americans.

Wavering on the precipice of doubt, he girded up the loins of his mind with solemn words of hope, “‘With God one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. Trust in him, and he will bring slavery and all its outrages to an end.’ These words from the spirit world acted on my troubled soul like water on a burning fire, and my aching heart was soothed from its burden of woes.”[3]

Payne engaged in a spiritual conversation with himself in which he exhorted himself to see this life from God’s eternal perspective. He encouraged himself to trust that God is good even when life is bad.

From 1619 when a Dutch man-of-war came ashore in Jamestown, Virginia carrying twenty enslaved African men and women, until November 4, 2008, 389 years elapsed. That’s almost 150,000 days waiting for hope. Hope that slavery and all its outrages, that prejudices and racism and all their outrages, would come to an end.

Hope waits. It waits 389 years. It waits 150,000 days.

Hope Now: Stories of African Americans Today

Mitchell Landsberg of the Los Angeles Times reports on hope now.

“God bless America,” the woman said as she walked past the line of voters standing outside a mid-city Los Angeles elementary school. She was middle-aged, African American, with an “I Voted” sticker on her blouse. And she was bubbling over with emotion.”God bless America,” she repeated, and disappeared down the street.

It was that kind of day in heavily black neighborhoods of Southern California, where a swirl of emotions—joy, hope, pride, fear—crested after months of anticipation. For the first time in American history, an African American appeared poised to become president of the United States, and people were savoring the moment.”I’d be lying to say [race] didn’t matter,” said Vincent Marshel, 43, an audio-video director at a hotel who got in line at 6:36 a.m. to vote near his home in Eagle Rock. “I’m glad I was alive and kicking to see this day come.”

Marshel was in line early, but not as early as Iris Hill. She showed up at her polling place in Valley Village at 5 a.m., and was the first voter in line at Faith Presbyterian Church. Hill, 27, usually mails in an absentee ballot, but wanted the experience of voting in a booth this time. “I’m excited about this one” she said, “It is a historic opportunity for change, and voting in person just felt right this time.”

Hill, who is African-American, sees the election as a sea change. “This election means a great deal. So much had to change to get to this point,” she said. Hill said she was thinking of her grandmother, who was born in 1929 and lives in North Carolina.”She was part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s in Birmingham, fighting for basic rights. And for her to go from being a disenfranchised non-voter in the South to being able to vote in this election for an African-American for president. . . .”[4]

Hope Waits

One need not have voted for Barack Obama, nor agree with his political positions to understand that November 4, 2008 is a profound day in American history. It is also a profound example of the power of hope, of the power of trusting in a good God who shapes beauty from ashes, who empowers us to move beyond the suffering.

It is a day that can profoundly impact each of us personally if we will apply the message of hope to our lives, particularly to times of suffering in our lives. How long do you wait when life beats you down? How do you cope when devastating doubts seek to defeat your faith?

Hope waits. Hope waits on God who is a time-God. Hope waits 150,000 days for God to bring good out of what people intend for evil.

Hope waits because hope trusts that God is good. Hope believes that our physical eyes perceiving our physical world can never be the final arbiter regarding the goodness of God. We need faith eyes to see that God is at work even when all seems lost.

And, yes, sometimes we do not see His work until that final day when all tears will be wiped away. But every once in a while, even in this life, we can see glimpses, a small taste now, of that future day of hope.

For many, November 4, 2008 is such a day.

[1]For more on Bishop Payne, see Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction, Baker, 2007.
[2]Payne, A History of the A.M.E. Church, I, pp. 9-12.
[3]Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years, p. 28.
[4]Landsberg, Los Angeles Times, November 4, 2008.