The Challenges of Multiculturalism for the American Church

Malcolm Webber, Ph.D.

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Where Do We Go From Here?

Church leaders need to be aware of the profound effects of culture and develop practices that will solve potential problems and exploit potential opportunities. As Hofstede (1997) asserts,

if we have to wait until all peoples share the same cultural values we will wait forever. Common practices, not common values are what solve practical problems. The differences in values should be understood, the differences in practices should be resolved. (p. xiii)

Accordingly, the author now makes specific recommendations regarding a variety of leadership and organizational issues.

Recommendations Regarding Communication

All organizational activity involves communication. Unfortunately, as Adler (1997) observes, "cross-cultural communication continually involves misunderstanding caused by misperception, misinterpretation, and misevaluation" (p. 71). To be effective in a multicultural environment, church leaders need training in cross-cultural communication skills. Ruben (1977, p. 474) suggests that these include:

1. The capacity to communicate respect.
2. The capacity to be nonjudgmental.
3. The capacity to personalize one’s knowledge and perceptions.
4. The capacity to display empathy.
5. The capacity to be flexible.
6. The capacity for turntaking.
7. Tolerance for ambiguity.

The development of these skills will require a great deal of persistence, a readiness to be introspective, and a willingness to examine and learn from failures as well as successes. As Ruben (1977) notes, "most critical is the necessary commitment to scrutinize and strive to improve one’s capacity to be genuinely receptive to the communication frameworks of the other persons" (p. 478). In developing cross-cultural communication skills, leaders must give special attention to language and humor.

Language. European countries possess a strategic advantage in intercultural contacts since many people speak several foreign languages. Moreover, whoever speaks more than one language will more easily learn additional ones. Compared to the rest of the world, Americans do not excel in this regard. One farmer from Kansas is supposed to have said, "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it is good enough for me" (Hofstede, 1997, p. 214)! As Adler (1997) laments, "Americans speak fewer foreign languages, demonstrate less interest in foreign cultures, and are more naïve in global business situations than the majority of their trading partners" (p. 10). Our arrogant complacency regarding others’ languages and cultures puts the American church at an inherent disadvantage when it comes to our multicultural future.

Humor. Unless one knows the language, one often misses many of the subtleties of another culture, such as humor. "What is considered humorous is highly culture-specific…In intercultural encounters the experienced traveller knows that jokes and irony are taboo until one is absolutely sure of the other culture’s conception of what represents humor" (Hofstede, 1997, p. 214).

Recommendations Regarding Leadership Training

"Studying culture without experiencing culture shock is like practising to swim without water" (Hofstede, 1997, p. xviii). Consequently, leaders need experiential training in cultural issues. Initial and then periodic immersion in another culture would be highly beneficial for leaders. In a multicultural church, there will be a variety of degrees of intercultural interaction ranging from frequent and intense (key leaders) to rare and superficial (most church members). Thus, it is especially important that the top leaders in the church should be able to function in the multiplicity of cultures of which the church consists. Hofstede (1997) notes that there are three phases of intercultural communication skills: awareness, knowledge and skills (pp. 230-231). All church members should have at least some awareness and knowledge of relevant cultural issues, but the leaders must possess thorough awareness, knowledge and skills.

Furthermore, different kinds of leadership training are necessary. The more traditional kind focuses on specific knowledge of the other culture. The other type of intercultural training process focuses on awareness of and general knowledge about cultural differences. "Awareness training focuses on one’s own mental software and where it may differ from others. It is not specific to any given [culture]…the knowledge and skills taught apply in any foreign cultural environment" (Hofstede, 1997, p. 232).

A useful instrument for self-training is the culture assimilator (CA), which is "a programmed learning experience designed to expose members of one culture to some of the basic concepts, attitudes, role perceptions, customs, and values of another culture" (Fiedler, Mitchell & Triandis, 1971, p. 95). This tool consists of about 100 short case descriptions, each illustrating an intercultural encounter in which someone behaves in a particular way. After the case, four explanations are given of this behavior, one of which is the explanation shared by the majority of those inside this culture. The three others are naïve interpretations by outsiders. The student chooses one answer and then reads the corresponding comment, which explains why the answer chosen is correct or incorrect. Although these assimilators do lead to greater sensitivity in dealing with people from other cultural groups (Hofstede, 1997, p. 233), they are costly to make since different assimilators are needed for each pair of cultures (Fiedler, Mitchell & Triandis, 1971, p. 95).

Recommendations Regarding Leadership Candidates

Some leaders will be better in multicultural situations than others. "People with unduly inflated egos, a low personal tolerance for uncertainty, a history of emotional instability, or known racist or extreme left- or right-wing political sympathies should be considered bad risks [for multicultural leadership]" (Hofstede, 1997, p. 231). Furthermore, successful leaders in a multicultural endeavor will likely have had significant previous cross-cultural experience (M. Ortiz, personal communication, November 25, 1998).

They will also need personal flexibility and an openness to change (Daft, 1999, p. 318). In the multicultural church, cultural differences must be understood as cultural differences and not as moral issues. In multicultural contexts, "conflict arises not only from personal and cultural differences, but also from the fact that people often attribute moral force to their priorities for personal behavior and judge those who differ from them as flawed, rebellious, or immoral" (Lingenfelter and Mayers, 1986, p. 14). The leader must be able to establish an organizational environment in which people can hold to their own cultural norms and standards, without being judged and rejected by others in the local body of Christ.

More research is needed in this area to determine if there are consistent characteristics of leaders who will succeed in multicultural environments.

Recommendations Regarding Church Structures

All parties in the church must recognize and accept that they bring their own cultural values to the organization, and the structure of the church must somehow reflect these differences if the church is to become successfully multicultural. As Hofstede (1989) asserts, "structure should follow culture" (p. 390). Thus, a multicultural church will, of necessity, be a multi-structural church. This patchwork structure may lack beauty, but it will follow the needs of the variety of cultures in the church. Too often, leaders desire uniform principles in structuring their entire organization. These simple structures may satisfy the leaders’ needs for simple solutions and clear procedures, but they are bound to violate the cultural assumptions or needs of some of the constituents sooner or later. Thus to embrace multiculturalism is to embrace a significant complexity and difficulty of structure.

Recommendations For Families In Churches

For the American church to thrive in a multicultural world, Christians must understand first their own cultural values and then the cultural values of the people they are trying to reach. Parents have a great influence in creating or preventing multicultural understanding in their children, since cultural values are mainly acquired during the first 10 years of a child’s life, through observation and imitation of adults and older children (Hofstede, 1997, p. 238). Consequently, the way parents talk about and behave towards people from other cultures determines the degree to which the child’s mind will be opened or closed for cross-cultural understanding. Furthermore, children’s ministries in churches should develop systematic multicultural awareness and knowledge activities for the same reason. For tomorrow’s church to be successfully multicultural, today’s children must be thoroughly and happily exposed to other cultures.

Recommendations Regarding Continued Development

"Culture shocks are environment specific. For every new cultural environment there is a new shock." (Hofstede, 1997, p. 211). Thus a new structure and new understanding must accompany every new initiative to incorporate a different nationality in a church. There will never be a time when a church has "arrived." To embrace the divine call to true multiculturalism is to embrace the call to continued development of the church’s leadership, structure and people.

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Where Do We Go From Here?

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© Malcolm Webber, Ph.D., www.healthyleaders.org.

Reproduced on this web site by permission.