Thursday, August 30, 2018

Want to do urban ministry?

LeBron James shows the way, in a manner of speaking, by sharing some of the attitudes he'd picked up--and then discarded--upon attending St. Vincent-St. Mary's High School in Akron.  He appears to have made some of the same kind of cultural errors that I made the opposite way when I would visit Compton, CA on Saturdays as a college student.  Want to do urban ministry, or, for that matter, ministry outside your particular culture?  Understand that the people you're going to get to know may live in a very different world, and that you've got to understand a lot of people simply don't understand your world. 


Side note is that some of the most difficult cultural differences to overcome are those where you don't have an immediate visual cue--like race--that people think very differently than you do.  For example, when a conservative tries to minister on a prestigious college campus, or when someone from the suburbs goes to poor rural areas.


Well done, LeBron.

3 comments:

elspeth said...

The comments below that Fox article (your link is broken, btw) show a stunning ignorance, lack of reading comprehension, or both.

The whole thing was about how he, as a 14 year-old boy entered a new world with one attitude, learned, matured and grew into a man with a new perspective.

The commenters call him racist and offer up their own racist screeds.

Couldn't help but consider our discussion at my blog about education. Or the lack thereof.

Bike Bubba said...

My thoughts exactly. I have the thought that one of these days, people are going to start holding stupid stuff people did in their junior high days against them...I will be so out of luck!

Maybe I should visit your site.....

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