Thursday, January 31, 2008

Everyone Needs to be Cross-cultural

In my short years of life I experience cross-cultural things all the time. I am a Navajo from the Navajo Nation so I am a minority in the United States. Yet as one fellow sojourner in ministry, Brad Griffin, the Assistant Director of the Center for Youth and Family Ministry puts it, "cross-cultural is not an option any longer." In fact, Brad says

"In the past, cross-cultural communication was primarily relegated to the realm of interacting with people outside of your own country. But now, given an increasingly multicultural United States and the globalization of nearly every technology, industry and service—not to mention ministry—our ability to bridge language and other divides has become critically important. So important, in fact, that some argue that youth workers must develop new skills for encountering the multicultural realities of ministry today."

Brad summarizes Cultural Intelligence in a terse manner citing David Livermore and his passion for teaching the emerging generation about leading in a multi-cultural world in a contextual and relevant way. The concepts intrigued me so I checked out the intersectcommunity. I saw that the next cohort/gathering is for the New England region so I will need to wait for a closer venue. But I am interested in finding out more.

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