The Importance of Cross-Cultural Engagement

Because the Gospel involves both vertical reconciliation between man and God and horizontal reconciliation between peoples, God’s church – people who are new creations in him – is to embody this reconciliation. And yet like sanctification itself, in which we are justified and still growing into our ability to live it faithfully, our unity in Christ is real in heaven and a work in progress on earth.

Cross-cultural engagement is about upholding the dignity of each person made in God’s image, as well as God’s desire that disciples be made of all ethnicities and that, in Christ, we are treated as one, reconciled to one another. Cross-cultural engagement is about valuing the oneness of the church while valuing the uniqueness of the cultures that make up God’s one church.

We want to communicate the value of cross-cultural engagement, equip the conference, and elevate and connect multi-cultural ministry leaders so we might bear God’s image ever more faithfully and we might be better able to discern the movement of his Spirit as he draws all people unto himself.

We are led by the desire of Jesus as he prayed in John 17:20–23: “I am not asking on behalf of these alone, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one; just as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I also have given to them, so that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and You loved them, just as You loved Me.”