Cross-Cultural Hospitality Training

Cross-Cultural Hospitality training provides practical tools and strategies for church members and leaders to recognize, understand, appreciate and utilize cultural differences as a strength for God’s mission in the world.

This is the training that Belonging, Inc. provides to churches receiving cross-racial and cross-cultural clergy appointments. In many United Methodist Annual Conferences, cross-racial and cross-cultural training is required for congregations as they prepare and receive a new pastoral appointment where there are significant cultural differences between the pastor and the congregation.

The assumption is that cultural differences - particularly race differences - come with unique opportunities for practicing Christian discipleship. Those differences when ignored, discounted or treated as if they don’t matter can lead to harm (intentionally or unintentionally) for the appointed clergy, the congregation and their God given mission in the community.

This training is not only helpful for the relationship between a culturally different pastor and congregation, it is helpful for every congregation interested in building more authentic cross-cultural relationships within the congregation and the community that they serve.

During this 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. training we will learn and practice 7 tools for Cross-Cultural Hospitality. These tools are part of a larger framework created by VISIONS, Inc. for creating communities of belonging where cultural differences are recognized, understood, appreciated and utilized as a strength for the mission God has given to the church. Facilitators for the training will be Rev. David Williamson and Rev. Laverne March. Click here to view their bio page.

Training Overview

This training provides practical tools, exercises, and frameworks for:

Appreciating your own culture and that of others.
Addressing and healing personal, interpersonal and organizational harm.
Replacing traps in our thinking, behaving and feeling so that cultural differences become strength for our way forward.
Ongoing learning to live justly with our neighbors.

Our participants have found this training valuable not only for their relationships in the church, but also with their families, neighbors and work colleagues. They have described this approach as a means to ease anxiety, transform conflict, grieve loss and work towards just resolutions through hard conversations about all the “isms” that create fractures within us and between us.

We look forward to partnering with you in this healing work for ourselves and the world in which we live!

Training Assumptions

Cross-cultural hospitality is an expression of God’s heart for the world. It is liberating and not oppressive.
Jesus calls us to follow him into this work for the well-being of our own soul and for the world’s healing. (It is one way to think about the Wesleyan Way of Salvation that has so deeply formed the United Methodist Church).
By practicing cross-cultural hospitality we are becoming an answer to Jesus’ prayer that the realities of heaven would become the realities of earth, AND that we may all be one.
Cultural formation is a normal part of being human. Unlearning the conscious and unconscious “better than, less than” dynamics that are taught and caught requires spiritual support and ongoing change work in our thinking, behaving and feeling.
We join Jesus in four different “neighborhoods” to address and change the way cross cultural hospitality happens: personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural.
Cross-cultural hospitality is non-violent, sometimes uncomfortable, celebrates diversity, seeks cooperation, trusts in abundance and leads to peace, power and joy.

Training Goals

Create a culture of mutual trust where all people love to work and thrive.
Address and change the barriers and obstacles to authentic diverse and collaborative teamwork that benefits the mission of your church/organization and the communities that you serve.
Learn to communicate more effectively across differences, de-escalate and transform conflict into cooperation.
Recognize cultural differences as an asset, their importance in effective leadership and building diverse collaborative teams for success.
Learn to recognize cultural misinformation in yourself, in others, and in organizations without attack, shame or blame.
Recognize the role of personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural change in creating the kind of community where everyone belongs.

Training Learning Objectives

Recognize Cross-Cultural Hospitality as an expression of the Wesleyan Way of Salvation. (This is Christian Discipleship as alternative to religious supremacy culture)
Learn and practice Guidelines for Effective Cross Cultural Hospitality.
Define culture. Recognize and appreciate my own culture and that of others.
Recognize three dimensions of change necessary for me to practice lasting Cross Cultural Hospitality.
Recognizing the realities of group membership for inclusion and exclusion. (Oppression Definition, Historically Included/Excluded Identities Exercise)
Begin writing my vision for how I will practice authentic and lasting cross cultural hospitality in my own setting.

A Word About Our Christian Bias

Our facilitators are Christian clergy and we recognize that Christian church culture, while very diverse, has also contributed to harmful supremacy culture in a variety of ways.

Our aim is to teach tools and frameworks to acknowledge and examine this reality for people inside and outside the church. We come with the belief that the way of Jesus is not inherently oppressive or dominating to anyone. Therefore this model illuminates an alternative to oppressive expressions of Christianity and is accessible for people who have a different faith tradition than Christianity or no particular faith tradition. That said, here are some of our assumptions from our Christian faith tradition:

The idea of hospitality includes all the ways that we recognize, understand, appreciate, include and utilize different people for God‘s mission.
In a sentence we might say: Hospitality is about offering a wide welcome as Jesus did (and as he does!).
Jesus reveals God’s heart for hospitality. We observe from reading the gospels that Jesus is good at recognizing, understanding, appreciating and utilizing different people for God’s mission in the world.
And Jesus is good at addressing and changing all the ways cultural differences get corrupted by “better than - less than” dynamics.
Jesus has given us an example that we are invited to follow!
Practicing cross cultural hospitality is about following Jesus into the good and healing work of recognizing and changing the cultural barriers and obstacles to authentic belonging and sharing together in God’s mission.