{"id":17566,"date":"2018-05-11T10:49:24","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T17:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=17566"},"modified":"2018-05-11T10:49:24","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T17:49:24","slug":"cultural-intelligence-or-cultural-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/cultural-intelligence-or-cultural-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Intelligence or Cultural Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first time I was faced with the need to have a cultural intelligence was my first international mission trip to Nis, Serbia. The person leading the trip was a former missionary who had just come back off the field so he and his wife could finish seminary. The first thing he did was give an hour long talk on the culture we were going to be working in. I felt as if I was hearing the same thing play over in my head from 2003 as I was reading\u00a0Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The Real Secret to Success<\/em> by David Livermore.<\/p>\n

While Livermore does a good job of giving the reader a reason for developing Cultural Intelligence, which he calls CQ, to call it a “real secret to success” seems a bit disingenuous. There is no secret found in this book to success. What is found is what some would call basic common sense. There are different people and different cultures all over the world and if you are to be successful in any part of your life, you have to adapt to work effectively with all of them.<\/p>\n

Livermore breaks CQ into four basic categories, first CQ Drive, what’s the motivation. Second CQ Knowledge, what are the cultural influences. Third, CQ Strategy, how do you plan around cultural differences and last CQ Action, how do you adapt.[1]<\/span> So what do all of these CQs mean? Well for some it should be an eye opener. Take for example, Jeff, a U.S. sales manager. His complaint “Okay, no offense. But doesn’t tis whole cultural thing get a little overplayed? I mean, people are people and business is business. I’ll probably have to eat some weird food next week, but otherwise, I don’t see what the big differences are.” [2] This is a prevailing attitude in many people I worked with in the computer industry. If one cannot see the value in understanding culture and norms within a culture then you will fail. In reviewing this book, James Kohnen writes, <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Heightening one’s awareness of another’s culture does not necessarily mean learning a second language, studying the history or political development of a country, or getting into an anthropological study of the culture, according to Livermore. It does mean that a serious attempt be made to become familiar with the cultural differences that might be encountered and develop a strategy to deal with them before they become an insurmountable issue. Improved cultural intelligence is a learned behavior based on an intrinsic individual desire to interact with others having a different cultural upbringing. [3]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So how does a book about secular management and how to do business in other cultures relate to the church. According to the U.S. Census bureau in 2016, the U.S. is 76.9% white, 13.3% black, 17.6% hispanic or latino and, 5.7% asian.[4]<\/span> I have not included numbers under five percent. If you look at the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC for short), according to Pew Research from 2015 we are 85% white, 6% black, 5% asian, and 3% latino. In fact, none of the mainline Protestant denominations trend anywhere close to the trend of the U.S. population, Catholics are the only denomination that come close to the markers. [5] If the demographics of the people we are called to serve are trending one way, and the churches trend to the same old same old, then we have a problem. To say nothing of being called to the nations.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For years Southern Baptist missionaries planted churches in foreign lands that looked just like the churches that sent them out. They would sing the same hymns with a piano, the preaching was aimed at the same thing it was in the U.S. and they would make little churches that were clones of American churches. These churches seemed to be well established and so the missionary would move on, and in doing so left the churches dependent on the missionary. When the missionary left, the church would die. There was no thought given to Cultural Intelligence. Now, if you look at the International Mission Board website (www.imb.org) you see this as the base of their planting:\u00a0Entry:\u00a0<\/strong>We gain access to a people, begin to learn their language, and seek to understand their culture.[6] In essence what the first goal it to learn the culture of those we are going to.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In chapter four, Livermore discusses CQ Knowledge. He has a great line, “By growing your CQ Knowledge, you can better understand things you may otherwise miss when moving into a new cultural context. It involves understanding the rules, albeit often unspoken, that are behind the behavior and assumptions in a particular culture”.[7] If we do not understand the reasons behind the actions we will never connect with those we are sent to. A pastor cannot shepherd a church the same in an inner city the same way he would in a suburban setting. There would be abject failure. A church cannot reach out to its community if all it does is want things done the way they have always been done.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I think this dovetails into scripture when Paul, speaking to the Athenians, says “I have become all things to all people, that by all means, I might save some” (I Cor. 9:22 ESV).We have to become culturally intelligent if we are to reach the culture. To often we stick our heads in the sand, and say I wish it were like the good ol’ days. The good old days were not very good for a great many people groups. How about we look at the culture and show them Christ risen?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0Livermore, David A., Ang, Soon, and Dyne, Linn Van. Leading with Cultural Intelligence : The Real Secret to Success. 2nd ed. New York, New York: American Management Association, 2015. 4-5.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0Ibid. 72.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[3]Kohnen, James. “Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The New Secret to Success.”\u00a0The Quality Management Journal<\/i>\u00a019, no. 3 (2012): 70-1, https:\/\/georgefox.idm.oclc.org\/login?url=https:\/\/search-proquest-com.georgefox.idm.oclc.org\/docview\/1028011021?accountid=11085.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[4]\u00a0“U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: UNITED STATES.” U.S. Census Bureau. July 01, 2016. Accessed May 10, 2018. https:\/\/www.census.gov\/quickfacts\/fact\/table\/US\/PST045216.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[5]\u00a0Lipka, Michael. “The Most and Least Racially Diverse U.S. Religious Groups.” Pew Research Center. July 27, 2015. Accessed May 10, 2018. http:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/fact-tank\/2015\/07\/27\/the-most-and-least-racially-diverse-u-s-religious-groups\/.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[6]\u00a0Staff, Editorial. “Church Planting.” International Mission Board. Accessed May 10, 2018. https:\/\/www.imb.org\/missions-church-planting\/.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[7]\u00a0Livermore, David A., Ang, Soon, and Dyne, Linn Van. Leading with Cultural Intelligence : The Real Secret to Success. 2nd ed. New York, New York: American Management Association, 2015. 70.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time I was faced with the need to have a cultural intelligence was my first international mission trip to Nis, Serbia. The person leading the trip was a former missionary who had just come back off the field so he and his wife could finish seminary. The first thing he did was give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17566"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17593,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17566\/revisions\/17593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}