In the last couple of weeks, a group of 27 counseling and ministry students have completed the required course, Cross-Cultural Encounter/Counseling. This 1.5 unit course, which took place during seven Mondays earlier this semester, plays a key role within our seminary programs. Dr. David Bruce Rose and I serve as its co-teachers.
During the course this spring, we visited five cultural centers within our community:
- FIRM (Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries)–Here, we heard a great presentation on the Southeast Asian refugee community from Dr. Sharon Stanley and Rev. Sophia DeWitt, as well as some reflections on the Slavic refugee community from our recent seminary grad, Yevgeniy Runkevich (who now works with FIRM).
- African American Heritage and Cultural Museum of the San Joaquin Valley–This valuable site in downtown Fresno is filled with significant images and information chronicling the African American experience in Central California.
- Pilgrim Armenian Congregational Church–Here, we heard from a recent Armenian immigrant about his experience in coming to America.
- Arte Americas-Elva Rodriguez, the Executive Director of Fresno’s Hispanic cultural center, was a wonderful host and did a nice job of sharing with the group about her own story and about the Hispanic experience in our community. We had opportunity to view the work of an accomplished artist from Mexico City, as well as an impressive collection of Pre-Columbian artifacts.
- Islamic Cultural Center-Kamal Abu-Shamsieh, the Director of ICCF, is always an engaging presenter. His commitment to being a spokesman for Islamic-Christian relations makes him especially able to engage with groups of Christian guests.
At the conclusion of each of these site visits, CCE students spent time in group discussion of Cultural Intelligence: Improving Your CQ to Engage our Multicultural World (Baker, 2009) by David Livermore. This text helped generate some lively conversation about students’ cultural self-awareness, capacity to understand the culture of “the Other”, and willingness/readiness to behave in ways that reflect cultural sensitivity.
During the last class session, teams of students gave presentations on area cultural groups that they had studied. These were as varied as Sikhs, the Tower District coffee shop culture, and the Fresno Bulldogs gang. Students prepared for these presentations by reviewing relevant literature, conducting interviews, and engaging in participant observation.
As the subtitle of Livermore’s text suggests, a key objective of this course is to help ministry leaders and counselors become equipped to relate and to serve in an increasingly multicultural world. In fact, this is an important aspect of the formation that we are trying to accomplish in our seminary programs, a crucial capacity that we aim to see in all our graduates.
The recent release of Fresno’s 2010 U.S. Census figures confirm that our community continues to grow increasingly diverse. Being situated in the Fresno context affords us an extraordinary and rich opportunity to learn to related across cultural boundaries, to honor and appreciate one another, and to foreshadow that day when “the glory and honor of the nations” will be brought into the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:26). However, history has taught us rather clearly and consistently that this simply does not occur apart from intentionality on our part. Even those of us who follow the racial and cultural boundary-breaker Jesus do not tend to embody his vision for humanity without concerted, conscious effort in the power of his Spirit–the one who makes unity and mutuality possible in the midst of diversity.
Cross Cultural Encounter is one modest, yet meaningful way in which we as a seminary endeavor to serve this aim.