Understanding Worldview

This is a Foundational course. We all know the joy there is in getting to know people from other cultures, to realize what is important for them, their families and their values. We are constantly learning about each other in our increasingly diverse communities around the world, of course we want to do all we can to build bridges.

This Understanding Worldview course will equip you to befriend people from other cultures and build bridges to local international communities.  It will help you to engage in simple friendship building and provide a basic understanding of characteristics of worldviews and how to avoid misunderstandings.  This first course looks at the importance of cross-cultural understanding.

Course Outline

Introduction to the facilitators and other participants.

Diaspora Peoples—why are they important?

One area we will look at is the importance of the diaspora. It is really unimaginable to comprehend the impact that the diaspora is having around the world. There is not a part of the political world, the economic world, the labor and educational world to name a few that the diaspora is not impacting profoundly. They are spreading from everywhere to everywhere and as they take the gospel with them the potential is astonishing.

Culture and Worldview

We will explore an overview of worldview and culture, reflecting on and challenging our own cultural backgrounds and what we can miss by not acknowledging the good in other cultures. We will look at linking Behaviors and Values and think about the difference between Universal, Cultural and Personal Distinctions.

Understanding Other Cultures

As you can imagine comparing Eastern and Western Culture is a very big picture comparison, you will know that even within Western cultures there are significant differences. However, it is helpful to make some big brush stroke comparisons between Eastern and Western Cultures, this section will help us do that. Sometimes it is the simplest of daily tasks that reveal fundamental differences about our values.

Communication Challenges

Communicating across cultures can be both exciting and terrifying at the same time! It is amazing what we can communicate through body language alone, and it is not necessarily what we think we are communicating. This part of the course will help us think about our communication and how what we communicate can be interrupted sometimes in multiple ways. We will look at how to avoid some misunderstandings.

An Interview of a person from another culture

There is a point where you will be able to interview a friend from another culture which is a wonderful learning experience.