We Did a New Thing!
This past Spring semester, faculty and staff from St. Andrews College (Saskatoon), Emmanuel College (Toronto), and the Centre for Christian Studies (Winnipeg) team-taught for the first time a joint course on Intercultural Leadership for Educational Ministry. HyeRan Kim-Cragg, HyeLim Yoon, Alan Lai, Becca Whitla, Lynn Caldwell, Alcris Limongi, Scott Douglas, Marcie Gibson, and Janet Ross (all co-facilitators) were joined by 27 students from various denominations, geographic locations across Canada, multiple cultures, contexts, and backgrounds. This wide range of experiences offered richness and inspiration as students worked together to consider intercultural leadership in their own faith communities and local contexts.
Drawing on decolonial and intercultural theories, students developed educational events, analyzed their plans for cultural and pedagogical assumptions, then shared excerpts of the events with one another. Students offered final learnings from the course through research papers and art projects including painting, poetry, quilting, and more. The photo above shows a small sample of learnings: how intercultural ministry resists a hegemonic unity of sameness (quilt); intercultural relationships include beauty, ambiguity and texture that shifts and changes (painting); and the necessity of education for revealing the hiddenness of power (camouflage binding of the ‘junk journal’).
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