Building Cross Cultural Relationships
January 31, 2017
Three key understandings in Building Cross-Cultural Relationships
1. Identifying the person.
- What is different about this person than you?
- What is the same?
2. Determining the person’s need.
- There are common human needs.
- There are cultural needs that are unique to each person.
- There are unique needs. What do you need?
3. Formulate a way to minister.
- How can you minister in community?
- Identify with their culture.
- Bend over backwards. Paul said, I become all things to all people.
- The person in the comfort zone is always the one responsible to make others comfortable.
- How can you minister individually?
- Create ways to introduce the person to your culture.
- Discover individual needs that can be met.
- Work with the language issue or discovery issue (something new to the international). Bring the person into your world and always be sensitive to explain.
The Top 10 Mistakes People Do With An International
- Speak v-e-r-y slowly and loudly so that they can understand you better.
- Use your hands when you are speaking to them.
- Plan to start your event at exactly the time you said.
- Hug them upon greeting!
- Show them some good ole’ American slang.
- Serve them a ham dinner.
- Leave your shoes on in an Asian home.
- Refuse to accept a drink refreshment.
- Speak to them using their same accent and grammatical speech.
- Tell a cultural joke about their country.
