Four “TEAM” Skills for Counseling in Urban/Intercultural Settings:

Cultivating Christlike Intercultural Counseling Competency

Robert W. Kellemen, Ph.D.www.rpmministries.org

The Big PictureMichael Jordan and the End of the Story

I’ve read the end of the story and we win! The “we” is intercultural!—Rev. 7:9-10

The End of the Story: Revelation 7:9-10

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count,

from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.

They were wearing white robes and were holding branches in their hands.”

The End of the Story: Revelation 7:9-10

“And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God,

who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’”

The Big Idea

Since God is moving all of history toward Revelation 7:9-10,

we must equip one another to counsel, relate, and minister interculturally now as a TEAM

in light of our eternal future.

The Big Issue:What Are We Talking About?

Culture:

The shared life patterns of relating, thinking, acting, and feeling learned

through social interactions that group members use to relate to one another and to others.

The Big Issue:What Are We Talking About?

Intercultural Counseling Competency:

The ability to relate like Christ when interacting with people whose patterns of relating, thinking,

acting, and feeling are culturally different (diverse) from yours.

A Christ-Centered TEAM Approach

T: Taking Another Person’s Earthly Perspective E: Engaging in Hope-Building Conversations A: Abolishing Barriers M: Mobilizing Intercultural Peace

A Christ-Centered TEAM GPS or MAP

GPS: God’s Positioning Scripture MAP: Ministry Action Plan

Using Heroes and Heroines of the Black Church to Illustrate “TEAM”

Christlike Intercultural Counseling Competency One: Taking Another Person’s

Earthly Perspective

The ability to empathize with someone whose patterns of RTAF developed out of a diverse culture.

Taking Another Person’s Earthly Perspective

“Tisn’t he who has stood and looked on, that can tell you what slavery is—

’tis he who has endured.” (John Little, 1855, Fugitive Ex-Enslaved Person)

Taking Another Person’s Earthly Perspective

The ability to walk in the shoes of another person from another culture.

Taking Another Person’s Earthly Perspective

“If you want Black history, you will have to get it from somebody who wore the shoes, and by and by from one to the other, you will get a book” (Mr.

Reed, Ex-Enslaved Person).

Taking Your Friends Worldview

Scouting Your Friend’s Cultural World: Intercultural Empathy—John 2:23-5:54

Taking Your Friend’s Worldview

Entering Your Friend’s Cultural Story: Intentional Empathy—John 2:23-4:54

Octavia Albert and Charlotte Brooks

“It was in the fall of 1879 that I met

Charlotte Brooks. I have spent hours

with her listening to her telling of her sad

life of bondage in the cane-fields of

Louisiana.”

Octavia Albert and Charlotte Brooks

“La, me, child! I never thought any body

would care enough for me to tell of my

trials and sorrows in this world! None but Jesus knows what I

have passed through.”

Taking Your Friend’s Experience As Your Own: Incarnational Empathy—

1 Corinthians 12:26-27

Incarnational Empathy Modeled byOlaudah Equiano

Incarnational Empathy

“Happy should I have ever esteemed myselfto encounter every misery for you, and to

procure your freedom by the sacrifice of my own!”

Romans 9:2-3—Incarnational Empathy John 1:14—Incarnational Empathy

Personal Application

Whose culture do you want to scout? How could you practice intercultural empathy? Whose cultural story do you want to enter? How could you be intentional about intercultural empathy? Whose cultural experience do you want to experience? How could your empathy be incarnational?

Christlike Intercultural Counseling Competency Two: Engaging in Bridge-

Building Spiritual Conversations

The ability to encourage another person to assess her/his own individual, cultural, and universal experience through the lens of God’s eternal Person, perspective, purposes, and plans.

Engaging in Bridge-Building Spiritual Conversations

The ability to listen to the earthly story while jointly weaving in God’s eternal, heavenly story.

Engaging in Spiritual Conversations:Relate Your Friend to God—Invite Honesty

Individual: “Why me?”—Psalm 88

Engaging in Spiritual Conversations:Invite Honesty

Cultural: “Why us?”—Nellie

“It has been a terrible mystery, to know why the good Lord should so long afflict my people, and

keep them in bondage—to be abused, and trampled down, without any rights of their own—

with no ray of light in the future. Some of my folks said there wasn’t any God, for if there was He wouldn’t let white folks do as they have done

for so many years”(Nellie, a former slave from Savannah, GA).

“Why Us?”

Engaging in Spiritual Conversations:Invite Honesty

Universal: “Why God?”—Quobna Cugoano

Engaging in Spiritual Conversations:Invite Honesty

I may say with Joseph that whatever evil intentions and bad motives those insidious

robbers had in carrying me away from my native country and friends, I trust, was what the Lord

intended for my good.”

Engaging in Spiritual Conversations:Relate God to Your Friend—Infuse Hope

“Which God?”—Rev. Absalom Jones

Our text tells us that He saw their afflictions, and heard their cry: His eye and His ear were

constantly open to their complaint: every tear they shed was preserved, and every groan they

uttered was recorded, in order to testify at a future day, against the authors of their

oppressions.”

God Has Seen! (13 Times!)

Genesis 16:13

But our text goes further: it describes the judge of the world to be so much moved with what He saw and what He heard, that He rises from His throne to come down from heaven in His own

person, in order to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians. Glory to God for this precious

record of His power and goodness.”

God Came Down! (4 Times!)

Engaging in Spiritual Conversations:Infuse Hope

“Who Am I in Relationship to God?”—Maria Stewart

“Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that

you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not

consider you as such. He hath formed and fashioned you in his

own glorious image, and hath bestowed upon you reason and strong powers of intellect. . . .

Identity in Christ

. . . He hath made you to have dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea (Genesis 1:26). He hath crowned you with glory and honor; hath made you but a little

lower than the angels (Psalms 8:5).”

Identity in Christ

Personal Application

Who could you help to see who they are in Christ? Who could you help to find God’s perspective on their individual/cultural suffering? What individual/cultural lies do you need to replace with the truth of who you are in Christ? What individual/cultural suffering do you need God’s perspective on so you can heal?

Christlike Intercultural Counseling Competency Three: Abolishing Barriers

The ability to apply our forgiveness in Christ to our intercultural relationships.

Abolishing Barriers

The ability to be an ambassador of intercultural reconciliation.

Enlightening Your Friend to Her/His Need for Forgiveness

“I was a lost sinner and a slave to Satan; and soon I saw that I must

make another escape from another tyrant. I did not by any means forget my fellow-bondmen, of whom I had

been sorrowing so deeply, and travailing in spirit so earnestly; but I

now saw that while man had been injuring me, I had been offending

God; . . .

Enlightening Your Friend to Her/His Need for Forgiveness

. . . and that unless I ceased to offend him, I could not expect to

have his sympathy in my wrongs; and moreover, that I could not be

instrumental in eliciting his powerful aid in behalf of those for whom I

mourned so deeply.”

Enlightening Your Friend to Her/His Need for Reconciliation

“Have you forgiven me?”

“Yes, Mars.”

“How can you forgive me, Charlie?”

“I love you as though you never hit me a lick, for the God I serve is a God of love.”

“I am sorry for what I did.”

“I done left the past behind me.”

Enlightening Your Friend to Her/His Need for Reconciliation

“I had felt the power of God and tasted His love, and this had killed all the spirit of hate in my heart years before this happened. Whenever a man has been killed dead and made alive in Christ Jesus,

he no longer feels like he did when he was a servant of the devil. Sin kills dead, but the Spirit of God makes alive. I didn’t know that such a change

could be made, for in my younger days I used to be a hellcat.”

Personal Application

Have you allowed someone’s sin against you to divert you from dealing with your sin against God? Who do you need to forgive for their intercultural sin against you? Who do you need to ask forgiveness of for your intercultural sin against them?

Christlike Intercultural Relational Competency Four: Mobilizing Intercultural

Peace—Shalom

The ability to envision and treat every human being as a bearer of the image of God.

Making Intercultural Peace

The ability to unite individually and corporately in mature intercultural loving relationships.

Making Intercultural Peace

Putting on the renewed mindset of mature intercultural loving relationships: Envisioning heaven now!

Elizabeth Keckley: A Voice of Heavenly Hope

“Is there no one, Mrs. Lincoln, that you desire to have with you in this terrible affliction?”

Mrs. Lincoln responded, “Yes, send for Elizabeth Keckley. I want her just

as soon as she can be brought here.”“She denied admittance to almost every one, and I

was her only companion, except her children, in the days of her great sorrow.”

Elizabeth Keckley: A Voice of Heavenly Hope

“At the grave, at least, we should be permitted to lay our burden down, that a new world, a world of

brightness, may open to us. The light that is denied us here should grow into a flood of effulgence beyond the dark, mysterious

shadows of death.”

Elizabeth Keckley: A Voice of Heavenly Hope

Making Intercultural Peace

Putting on the renewed virtue of mature intercultural loving relationships: Trinitarian unity

Elizabeth Keckley: Cross-Cultural Spiritual Friends

“I bathed Mrs. Lincoln’s head with cold water, and soothed the terrible tornado as best I could. Tad’s grief at his father’s death was as great as the grief of his mother, but her terrible outbursts awed the

boy into silence.”

Making Intercultural Peace

Putting on the renewed spiritual disciplines of mature intercultural loving relationships: Intercultural fellowship and worship

Elizabeth Keckley: Intercultural Church Care-Giving

“The colored people are moving in this matter. They intend to take up collections in their churches for the benefit of

Mrs. Lincoln. They are enthusiastic, and a trifle from every African in the city, this would, in the aggregate, swell into

an immense sum. The colored people recognized Abraham Lincoln as their great friend, and they were anxious to

show their kind interest in the welfare of his family in some way more earnest and substantial than simple words.”

Personal Application

How well are you envisioning and living out heaven now? How well are you living out Trinitarian unity: equality in diversity? What intercultural spiritual disciplines of fellowship and worship are you practicing?

The Big Questions: “So What” and What Now?

So what? What is God calling you to do differently? What now? Which of the personal application will you begin to apply today? How?

Four “TEAM” Skills for Counseling in Urban/Intercultural Settings:

Cultivating Christlike Intercultural Counseling Competency

Robert W. Kellemen, Ph.D.www.rpmministries.org