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A student with significant congregational ministry experience (5 years or more) may petition to substitute SMFE601 Clinical Pastoral Education (6SH) in place of FS 601/602 Formation in Ministry I&II to meet the Mentored Ministry “core” requirement.
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Intercultural Experience
Eastern Mennonite University educates students to live in local and international contexts. Thus, Eastern Mennonite Seminary requires each student to engage in one intentional cross-cultural intercultural experience. The university also teaches students to embrace environmental sustainability as a core value. Because the travel industry is particularly environmentally and economically taxing, students and faculty are encouraged to make use of local contexts that are most conducive to cross-cultural intercultural learning.
Cross-cultural Intercultural experiences have the potential to equip students for ministry in our diverse world by increasing students’ cultural intelligence, which is crucial to transformational leadership. Cultural intelligence (CQ) is the capability to function effectively in intercultural contexts. It involves serious analysis of our motivations, interests and drive to adapt cross-culturallyinterculturally. CQ requires wise interpreters with knowledge of the similarities and differences between cultures. It also demands mature practitioners who have strategies for interpreting cues and planning for multicultural interactions. And CQ encourages discerning communicators to develop skills that will enable them to behave appropriately in cross-cultural intercultural situations. If entered into with these possibilities in mind, the context of cross-cultural intercultural experiences can provide fruitful dimensions for theological reflection.
There are strong biblical interests and motivations for learning to adapt cross-culturallyinterculturally. In the biblical world, people were at times called by God to encounter new cultures. We remember Abraham wandering towards the promise, Moses and Israel in the desert, Jesus moving about the fringes, Paul in the heart of the pluralist Roman Empire. All of these journeys required motivation, knowledge, strategies, and behaviors for effectively navigating intercultural contexts. Jesus sent his followers into all the world, not only to teach others but to listen and learn as they went. Following this call can create a sense of “wilderness,” where one struggles with God, self, and others. People often grow as disciples of Christ where they do not have the usual securities and support to alleviate intellectual, spiritual and physical discomfort.
Intentional cross-cultural intercultural experiences have the capacity to help students grow in cultural self-awareness, which is crucial to effective cross-cultural intercultural relating. Cross-cultural Intercultural engagement can also help students become aware of their own negative attitudes towards difference so that they can begin to develop positive attitudes about difference that will contribute to healing and reconciliation across religious and ethnic divisions in the communities where we live and work. Our Anabaptist convictions regarding reconciliation and peacebuilding call us to help alleviate suspicion among diverse peoples that can so readily result in alienation or escalate tensions that explode into dangerous violence.
In academic pursuits, our strategies for engaging the “other” too often present them as objects of study rather than as true conversation partners. In contrast, intentional cross-cultural intercultural encounters offer the possibility of life-changing mutual growth and change. We grow spiritually when we learn to interpret cues and are open to discovering the presence and work of God within the “other.” Therefore, we seek to cultivate in our students the ability to claim their own identity (personal, family, ethnic, confessional) while extending hospitality (respect, space, time, openness) to others. This tension must not blur or obliterate genuine distinctions. Rather, these cultural distinctions should be explored and celebrated.
We intend for our students to be mature in their ability to behave appropriately in cross cultural intercultural situations by discerning which of their own cultural patterns and perspectives are, or are not, consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Intentional cross-cultural intercultural experiences can magnify our own distinctives and convictions so that we no longer see them as normative, but as part of a cultural context. In this light, we also note that difference is a fact of every community, local and international. We need safe spaces to learn about diversity, within diversity, and from diversity. Ironically, the more “at home” we become in the diversity of our own identity and tradition (tested in encounters with various “others”) the more generous of spirit we can become toward diverse others.
EMS requires that students engage in one intentional cross-cultural intercultural experience for academic credit. The experience may involve a variety of learning strategies such as ministry in a context different to one’s own, living with a host family while learning another language, or interfaith interaction. More specifically, students may fulfill the curriculum requirement in one of the following ways:
- participating in a cross-cultural an intercultural experience led by seminary faculty;
- completing the course CM 613 A – Cross Cultural Intercultural Church Experience; or
- arranging a mentored ministry internship or directed study with significant cross-cultural intercultural dimensions;
Each cross-cultural intercultural experience will demonstrate integration of the four key components of Cultural Intelligence. The integration of these components will show evidence of a robust experience that contributes to increasing the capability of EMS students to function effectively in cross-cultural intercultural settings:
- Motivation, interest, and drive to adapt cross-culturallyinterculturally. (self-awareness)
- Knowledge of the similarities and differences between cultures. (other-awareness)
- Strategies for interpreting cues and planning for multicultural interactions. (planning to engage difference)
- Skills that foster the ability to behave appropriately in cross-cultural intercultural situations. (developing skills)
In cases where students bring significant prior intentional cross-cultural intercultural experience, they may meet the cross cultural intercultural requirement by taking the 1SH CM 572 – Cross Cultural Intercultural Integration Seminar for further reflection on their maturing Cultural Intelligence. This alternative should be made available to international students comparing and reflecting on ministry within the U.S. context.
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