1. Four “TEAM” Skills for Counseling in Urban/Intercultural Settings: Cultivating Christlike Intercultural Counseling Competency Robert W. Kellemen, Ph.D. www.rpmministries.org

2. The Big Picture Michael 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

3. 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.”

4. 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.’”

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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

9. A Christ-Centered TEAM GPS or MAP  GPS: God’s Positioning Scripture  MAP: Ministry Action Plan

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

11. 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.

12. 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)

13. Taking Another Person’s Earthly Perspective  The ability to walk in the shoes of another person from another culture.

14. 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).

15. Taking Your Friends Worldview  Scouting Your Friend’s Cultural World: Intercultural Empathy—John 2:23-5:54

16. Taking Your Friend’s Worldview  Entering Your Friend’s Cultural Story: Intentional Empathy—John 2:23-4:54

17. 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.”

18. 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.”

19. Taking Your Friend’s Experience As Your Own: Incarnational Empathy— 1 Corinthians 12:26-27

20. Incarnational Empathy Modeled by Olaudah Equiano

21. Incarnational Empathy “Happy should I have ever esteemed myself to 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

22. 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?

23. 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.

24. Engaging in Bridge-Building Spiritual Conversations  The ability to listen to the earthly story while jointly weaving in God’s eternal, heavenly story.

25. Engaging in Spiritual Conversations: Relate Your Friend to God—Invite Honesty  Individual: “Why me?”—Psalm 88

26. Engaging in Spiritual Conversations: Invite Honesty  Cultural: “Why us?”—Nellie

27. “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?”

28. Engaging in Spiritual Conversations: Invite Honesty  Universal: “Why God?”—Quobna Cugoano

29. 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.”

30. Engaging in Spiritual Conversations: Relate God to Your Friend—Infuse Hope  “Which God?”—Rev. Absalom Jones

31. 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!)

32. Genesis 16:13

33. 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!)

34. Engaging in Spiritual Conversations: Infuse Hope  “Who Am I in Relationship to God?”—Maria Stewart

35. “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

36. ... 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

37. 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?

38. Christlike Intercultural Counseling Competency Three: Abolishing Barriers  The ability to apply our forgiveness in Christ to our intercultural relationships.

39. Abolishing Barriers  The ability to be an ambassador of intercultural reconciliation.

40. 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;...

41. 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.”

42. 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.”

43. 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.”

44. 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?

45. 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.

46. Making Intercultural Peace  The ability to unite individually and corporately in mature intercultural loving relationships.

47. Making Intercultural Peace  Putting on the renewed mindset of mature intercultural loving relationships: Envisioning heaven now!

48. Elizabeth Keckley: A Voice of Heavenly Hope

49. “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

50. “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

51. Making Intercultural Peace  Putting on the renewed virtue of mature intercultural loving relationships: Trinitarian unity

52. 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.”

53. Making Intercultural Peace  Putting on the renewed spiritual disciplines of mature intercultural loving relationships: Intercultural fellowship and worship

54. 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.”

55. 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?

56. 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?

57. Four “TEAM” Skills for Counseling in Urban/Intercultural Settings: Cultivating Christlike Intercultural Counseling Competency Robert W. Kellemen, Ph.D. www.rpmministries.org