A Cultural Intelligence-Emotional Intelligence Approach to Cross Cultural Conflict

Imagine that you are part of a rapidly growing church where hundreds of people from diverse cultural backgrounds are being baptized. You can sense the Holy Spirit working through the people’s prayers, and their sharing of their possessions. Soon a new ministry arises. The people in the church see the widows among them struggling to support themselves, so they decide to feed them daily. However, after a while it happens that a group of people from the minority culture come to complain that the widows from their community are not being fed. In fact, it looks like they are being purposely neglected. As the pastor you are facing an accusation that there’s discrimination taking place in the church. What do you do?

Of course, we are referring here to what happened in the early church in Acts 6. We are told that the Hellenistic Jews complained against the Hebraic Jews because the Hellenistic widows were being overlooked. Here we have an example of cross-cultural conflict taking place in the early church. At first glance it appears like the conflict was simple to resolve. However, when we look at it more closely, we see that the resolution was far from simple.

First of all, consider the fact that we have two groups of people from two different cultures. The Hebraic Jews are the majority culture who have lived in the community their entire lives. As a majority culture their voice and opinions are widely accepted as the norm. The Hellenistic Jews are bilingual and bicultural, with their language of stronger preference probably being Greek. They are a minority and so are probably considered by many as more recent arrivals. There is a history of bias towards those who are not considered fully Jewish.

In looking at this situation from a CQ perspective keep in mind that the Middle East culture was (and still is) deeply collective so the core values of shame, face and honor require using an indirect method as part of the solution. The Apostles immediately see a problem and they know that it’s critical that they look to scripture and seek to maintain the unity of the church.

How do we resolve this problem? First, let’s look at what conflict is. Of the different definitions that are given, I like the simplest one offered by Clara Cheng: conflict is “the emotional tension of the people involved over their differences in common issues of concern.”1 To handle this problem, it’s important that the apostles not react in attack mode but instead exhibit some of the recognized qualities of high emotional intelligence such as self-regulation (not overreacting), empathy, a strong motivation to seek reconciliation, social awareness of the emotions and feelings of the aggrieved and intentional management of relationships in ways that gain the trust of the aggrieved.

The Bible says the apostles gathered, which means they chose the culturally intelligent low power collaborative approach that sought an immediate outcome (short term time orientation). Notice that they also chose seven Hellenistic disciples “full of the Spirit and wisdom”. In the choosing of these men, they replaced shame with honor by giving them authority and voice to address the needs of the aggrieved. In addition, the apostles elevated the status of these men by encouraging them to preach and baptize in the same way as the apostles.

The story concludes on a happy note—the number of disciples increased rapidly, which included “a large number of priests”. It appears that the Hellenists were pleased with the decisions that the apostles made. Forgiveness is given. Unity is restored. The lesson here is that when we are filled with God’s love and look at ourselves and others with cultural and emotional intelligence then cross-cultural conflict can actually be seen as a useful catalyst for advancing the mission of the church.

Carmelo Mercado has served in his current role as the Lake Union’s general vice president for 18 years. He is also Multicultural Ministries director for the Lake Union and secretary for the Adventist-laymen's Services & Industries (ASI) Lake Union chapter. He and Gabriela Phillips have shared several articles over the last few months on Cultural Intelligence (CQ). 

 1 Moreau, A., Hay Campbell, E., & Greener, S. (2014). Effective Intercultural Communication (Encountering Mission): A Christian Perspective. Baker Academic.