Talking About Cultural Diversity in Your Church: Gifts and Challenges

In the Great Commission, Jesus told his followers to "go and make disciples of all nations". But today, you don't need to be a missionary in another country to come across different cultures. In your neighborhood, school, workplace, and shopping area you probably run across many people with backgrounds vastly different from your own. To have an effective ministry in the U.S. today, outside or inside the church, Christians need to be aware of how people's culture affects the ways they think and live. Talking about Cultural Diversity in Your Church gives classes, workshops, or small groups the opportunity to discuss issues of multiculturalism. Presenting what culture means in the first part of the book shows how understanding and misunderstandings of culture affect American society. This beginning section encourages readers to be aware of their own cultural assumptions and how these assumptions color relations with others. It then highlights special skills for communicating between cultures and highlights the special challenges for religion in a pluralistic society. But the heart of the book is eleven case studies with discussion questions. These concrete cases allow participants to see about how their understandings of culture have real world implications. And the discussion questions let participants talk in meaningful ways about these difficult issues. If you want a useful discussion about multiculturalism in your congregation, you should take a look at Talking about Cultural Diversity in Your Church.

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