Cultural Intelligence: Improving Your CQ to Engage Our Multicultural World
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
As twenty-first-century society grows increasingly complex, pluralistic, and multicultural, it behooves Christians to communicate effectively between and among diverse populations. Research indicates that missions often fail because of cultural collision and lack of empathy and understanding between different peoples. David Livermore proposes a meta model—based on sound research principles and social science methodology—for helping Christians intelligently navigate the multicultural maze in Cultural Intelligence. The much-needed skill of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) both at home and abroad is the ability to work effectively across national, ethnic, and even organizational cultures. Livermore explains that CQ is not simply learning how to externally modify behavior but is based on inward transformation. His work is replete with assessment tools, simulations, case studies, and reflective exercises. Professors and students of missiology, practical theology, ministry leadership, intercultural studies, and sociology in Christian colleges, seminaries, and lay training programs will glean needed knowledge to become culturally sensitive, aware, and intelligent.
Whether you’re a pastor, youth leader, or layperson, this collection will enhance your understanding. All Scripture passages in Cultural Intelligence: Improving Your CQ to Engage Our Multicultural World link to your favorite Bible translation in your library. You can perform powerful searches by topic and find what other authors, pastors, and theologians have to say, making this collection ideal for studying youth evangelism.
- Considers why CQ matters from various vantage points
- Covers the seminal material related to the first factor of cultural intelligence: knowledge
- Explores the integral aspects of interpretive CQ
- Discusses ways of applying cultural intelligence to our service and relationships
- Part 1 Love: CQ Overview
- Twenty-First-Century CQ: Getting Along in the Flat World
- First-Century CQ: God Speaks “Jesus”
- CQ 101: The Path to Loving the Other
- Part 2 Understand: Knowledge CQ
- The Average American: Understanding Our Own Culture
- Getting below the Surface: What Is Culture Anyway?
- Hutus, Presbyterians, and Boomers: Cultural Domains
- When Yes Means No and No Means Yes: Language
- Why We Do What We Do: Cultural Values
- Part 3 Go Deep: Interpretive CQ
- Cruise Control Off: Awareness and Empathy
- What Makes an Apple an Apple? Labeling Our World
- Being Okay with Gray: Category Width
- Theory Gets a Bum Rap: A Model for Going Deep
- Part 4 Express: Perseverance and Behavioral CQ
- When the Goin’ Gets Tough: Perseverance CQ
- Kiss, Bow, or Shake: Behavioral CQ
- Where Do We Go from Here? Twenty-four Ways to Advance Your CQ
Top Highlights
“Behavioral CQ refers to the actions and words we use as we interact cross-culturally. It refers to the ability to observe, recognize, regulate, adapt, and act appropriately in intercultural meetings.” (Page 53)
“There is no one right way for the gospel to be expressed.” (Page 34)
“God speaks ‘in Son.’ The language of God is Jesus.1 The incarnation is the ultimate form of contextualization, the fullest embodiment of cultural intelligence.” (Page 33)
“Perseverance CQ, or motivational CQ, measures our level of interest, drive, and motivation to adapt cross-culturally” (Page 52)
“The six values we’re going to explore are identity, hierarchy, risk, time, communication, and achievement.” (Page 123)
The more I’m around Dave Livermore, the more I learn how to develop kingdom relationships that cross cultures. Whether you are leading a short-term mission trip, doing local justice work, or simply want to more effectively love others, you are smart to read Cultural Intelligence. You are even smarter if you apply its profound insights to your life and ministry.
—Kara E. Powell, executive director, Fuller Youth Institute, Fuller Theological Seminary
In an era of drive-by, short-term missions, David Livermore brings reconstruction. He does not merely suggest cultural sensitivity; he helps us deconstruct and build something new—a pathway to cultural intelligence that can guide us to be citizens of the kingdom of God while being proactively engaged as neighbors in the world.
—Mark Oestreicher, president, Youth Specialties
Comprehensive and accessible, this book clearly details the cultural intelligence model for multicultural ministry. In this book, David Livermore addresses both conceptual and practical issues on cultural intelligence. He has expanded the ideas of multiculturalism to include not only national cultures but also organizational and generational subcultures. This book is an ideal text and a valuable resource for building the core skills of cultural intelligence in individuals and organizations.
—Soon Ang, executive director, Center for Leadership and Cultural Intelligence, Nanyang Business School, Singapore
In an increasingly diverse and cynical society, the pursuit of cross-cultural competence is something that the church can no longer afford to ignore at home or simply relegate to missionaries living abroad. Livermore’s book helps us understand our own culture and the grids through which we see the culture of diverse others with whom we walk, work, and worship in a dynamic global society. With such understanding, then, we will be better equipped to engage our multicultural world for the sake of friendship and faith, all for the sake of the Gospel.
—Outreach
- Title: Cultural Intelligence: Improving Your CQ to Engage Our Multicultural World
- Author: David A. Livermore
- Editor: Chap Clark
- Series: Youth, Family, and Culture
- Publisher: Baker Academic
- Publication Date: 2009
- Pages: 288
David A. Livermore is the executive director of the Global Learning Center at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. In addition, he’s a research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and a senior consultant with the Cultural Intelligence Center. Livermore has traveled to more than 75 countries and is the author of the award-winning Serving with Eyes Wide Open as well as numerous articles and training manuals.
