Cross-Cultural Engagement
OVERALL REFLECTION
For my competency in cultural engagement, I am submitting a cross-cultural workbook, as well as a compiled report of helpful ways to inspire living out the gospel on mission, which demonstrates how I was able to help and learn to integrate diverse cultures within the church, without assimilating or segregating, and prepare them to go out into other cultures to proclaim the gospel. I was able to prepare a workbook to go through, that will help in the first steps in guiding people in dealing with other cultures in a manner that is servant-hearted and appropriately contextualized to them.
Learning Reflection
As I developed and demonstrated cultural engagement, I learned that I had inadvertently defaulted to seeking out people of my own culture/ethnicity, and avoiding those from outside of my cultural “normal.” Yet through interning at a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-lingual church, I was exposed to so much that I had never seen before, and I was able to not just learn about the differences in our culture, but appreciate the differences between us. Creating a workbook and conducting interviews helped me in understanding how to instill a lifelong mindset of discovering ourselves and others through self-reflection and cultural perspective-taking.
Lifelong Development Reflection
As a result of the experiences documented by these artifacts, I will continue to develop in cultural engagement by seeking out communities of other cultures, so that I will not live in a bubble, but instead enjoy more of what God has given to the world. Next time I will begin from a place of humility, by being more open to how others express themselves, and accepting their culture, so I can build trust with them. That way I can learn from/with them, without my own personal biases getting in the way to help understand them better, so that I may serve them better.