Leadership and Culture: Re-imagining Cross-Cultural Leadership in the Uniting Church in Australia

The fourth Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia (1985) adopted a statement entitled “The Uniting Church is a Multicultural Church.” This declaration is aspirational and is still in the process of being realised. In the practice of ministry frequent subjects that become the focus of attention are sharing property, managing cross-cultural conflict, and performing cross-cultural worship, weddings and funerals. Other subjects are not discussed either because they are not perceived as important aspects of the church’s life, or assimilation has already happened and the diversity is lost. The issues of leadership and discerning what makes for cross-cultural competency have not been explicitly explored. What might such cross-cultural leadership look like? What criteria might be used for the sake of discerning competency? This book is the first attempt to wrestle with these kind of issues in an Australian context.