Are you Different?

I spend a lot of time speaking with pastors, ministers, church workers and lay leaders who are wanting to help people grow. That is a worthwhile motive. Unfortunately, I find most of them do not know what to do to help people in need.

Right now I am working on developing materials designed to train Christan counselors help folks from what is being called, "Cross Cultural" backgrounds. Almost all of the literature really talks about counseling minorities. The earliest research in the counseling professions comes from the Seventies and has to do with issues of Race, Gender and Sexual "Orientation". It is, therefore, good for political rhetoric but not so good for training counselors.

The tragedy is that most of the writers do not seem to know the difference between taking a stand for politics and what makes good counseling. This is a very sad problem for it means that many people will receive inadequate help with their problems.

Many of the authors act as though everyone from a specific ethnic or cultural group act, think and feel the same and all are from similar backgrounds. This is blatant prejudice and can only lead to poor counseling.

Some of the papers I read actually talk about what they call, "Culture Centered Counseling" instead of "Client Centered Counseling". I suppose that means that the individual is less important than the culture they come from. That is bad counsel.

If we simply treat each client as a unique human being with unique ideas, feelings and behaviors all the other issues will fall away. Of course we need to learn the things that might be offensive to a particular group and avoid using names of non verbals that would offend them. However, we ought not assume that just because a woman is a female that she is more sensitive than a man or that a man is analytical.

When we interact with peace and patience we can listen carefully and allow the person to tell us what he or she thinks and feels. As a rule, the differences between persons from a similar cultural, religious, racial group are usually much greater than the general differences between two groups.

I was reared in a Southern Baptist Church. However, when I moved to Cincinnati I discovered that the differences between the Baptist Church here and my church back home were greater than the differences between other religious groups and my home church.

So, do not assume you can judge a person by their group.
Listen and learn. It could be a pleasant surprise.