Spirituality for Becoming MulticulturalAdam Bond

Elizabeth Conde-Frazier

ACCULTURATION

• The process by which the culture of a particular society is instilled in a human from infancy onward.

Who I am shapes who my congregation becomes

• What are my religious convictions and who am I as a person of faith?

• How did I arrive at these beliefs?• How are race and ethnicity a part of these?• What stereotypes and presuppositions come

from these that I may have internalized and how do these affect my relationships with others in ministry and in my personal life?

Who we become shapes community building for the congregation

• What are the steps to building community?• What are the primary obstacles to building

community and why?• How should the church engage in removing

these obstacles?• What does God require of me in the

engagement of community? (as a Baptist, as US citizen, as a Christian…)

Humility

• Humility is living with the understanding of what I am capable of and knowing what my limits are- a sober understanding (Roms. 12:3).

Grace… (Phil. 2: 13

• Is the other side of humility• “God is the one at work in you, enabling you

both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” NRSV

• “Helping you want to obey Him and then helping you do what He wants.” LB

Grace and Salvation

• “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12)

• God initiates transformation by inspiring acts expressing that desire. We act on God’s inspiration.

• Salvation= health, well being, shalom• Salvation= collaborative with God and in

community.

Leitourgia

Kerygma /Didache

Diakonia

Profeteia

Koinonia

Hospitality

• Matthew 25 and Luke 14

• A place where we are connected to one another

• Offers attentive listening and a mutual sharing of lives and life stories

• Hospitality as recognition – respecting the image of God in another and seeing their potential contributions as being of equal value

• Hospitality as resistance – acts of respect and welcome rather than disregard and dishonor

Encounter

• “Who knows one culture, knows no culture. We come to self knowledge on the boundary.” (David W. Augsburger)

• A place for the mixing up of our worlds• Where hybrid significations are created • Mestizo/a consciousness• The place for storytelling

Transforming MomentsJames Loder

• Alter our ways of being in the world. • A convictional experience. • Disrupts our previous assumptive world by

puncturing our previous ways of making meaning

• Discloses to us dimensions of being not previously attended to

• We can re-ground and realign our ways of seeing and being.

• Within our encounters the Holy Spirit helps to birth new stories

Acts 10 Ephesians 2:13-16, 19

Compassion: Doing justice

“Justice is love correcting that which would work against love”

(Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Compassion

• Cum Patior- to suffer with, to undergo with

• Connotes solidarity • Works from a place of the strength of

mutuality• Involves imagination and action– Isaiah 58:6-7– Micah 6:6-8– I John 3:16-18– James 2:14-22

Passion • Connected by a common wound in

the place where our two worlds have encountered each other

Passion • Intimacy and sympathy with

God and with humanity • Divine consciousness and

neighbor consciousness engaging each other

• A borderland between God and humanity

• A prophetic space

Shalom• Every creature in community with

every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well being of every other creature

• A vision of connectedness by and for a whole community

• Includes the process of denouncing, announcing and making persons and structures responsible for responding equitably and compassionately to all

Becoming cross cultural

• Mutually reciprocal relationships among and between cultures.

• Compassionate relationships are formed and people are transformed, shaped, and molded from each other’s experience.

• Focus on relationship building and not survival.• Racial and cultural power imbalances are

addressed.

Another way to see this:

• Listening as savoring • Talking as leaving our aroma upon each other• Reflecting as seeing the perichoresis of God,

you and I in community• Acting as participating in mutuality

From One to the Other