Now that I’ve got your attention, neither multicultural nor monocultural teams work in the long run if team members don’t work hard to understand the ‘world’ of each member.
Teams do not work because team members do not take the time to understand another’s ‘culture’ or way of working. I can be from the same culture as other team members, but if I am a ‘thinker’ and another is a ‘feeler’, I could be frustrated by his/her lack of being able to ‘make a decision’. It may feel like he/she is always stalling our team and never wanting to come to closure. However, that is not how this person is ‘thinking’ or processing. Failing to understand another’s way of thinking will cause dissonance and conflict in a team.
Teams fail, not because of the cultural make-up of the group, but because we believe our way of seeing and dealing with reality (for example, how to do ‘team life and ministry’) is the best or ‘biblical’ way. Our own culture can create a sense of right-ness in our hearts, and keep us from humbly learning from others on our team. We can miss the opportunity to experience team in a deeper way.
It is true that when you add the ‘multicultural’ card into a team, it adds another dimension that the team must address. However, the ‘multicultural’ card will also add a dimension to any team that enhances its cross-cultural ministry capacity.
When two or more cultures come together to work on a church planting team, they must learn how to ‘bridge’ between the cultures represented on that team. They learn not only how to ‘divest themselves’ (Philippians 2), but how to ‘translate and contextualize’ what another is saying. This allows them, as a team, to be even better prepared to contextualize the message into the cultural context of the people group to whom they have been called. In other words, they gain valuable experience for their ministry from learning to work together and minister to one another as a team.
So, whether your team is monocultural or multicultural, each of us needs to start by asking at least two questions so that our team can be built on grace and honesty:
- What do I need to ask another to better understand how they think and process?
- What heart barrier (cultural, emotional or spiritual) keeps me from hearing and learning from another who seems very different from me?
Filed under: Crossing cultures, Cultural intelligence, Teams | 9 Comments »
Back in 2014, we re-introduced one another to the idea of building community with others for our spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. A small working group put together the document: “TC4u: Transformational Communities“. If you have never seen this document or can’t currently find it in your files, drop me a note and I’ll make sure to send you a copy.
In our World Team Global circles, we are used to hearing the phrase: “preaching the Gospel to yourself every day”. By that we mean to say our hold on the Gospel is tenuous and our hearts need to be reminded of the deep love of Christ each and every day in order for us to live out of the Gospel.
Okay, I know that’s not proper English (neither British nor American). However, my point is simply that learning to talk with others in a language that is not our heart language is a work of perseverance in order to get to the objective of sharing our faith with others in a cross cultural context.
We as workers in God’s mission must give the time and energy necessary to understand another’s world (language, culture, worldview and context) in order to ‘put the Bible in their hands’ for them to discover, learn and apply for themselves in their culture and context.
