The Multicultural Leader

<p>This book is intended as a resource for provoking dialogue on the nature of leadership in<br />multicultural congregations. When the first edition was written more than a decade ago there<br />was a limited pool of resources available to help practitioners in the field even less addressing<br />the Canadian context. Dan Sheffield brought a missiologist’s perspective to this discussion<br />that had been shaped by lived experience in North America’s multi-ethnic reality and churchplanting<br />experience in post-apartheid urban South Africa.</p><p>Over the past decade however a proliferation of resources on multi-ethnic intercultural<br />multi-racial multicultural churches have entered the marketplace. Again almost all written<br />through the lens of the American experience and often focused on the mechanics of<br />multicultural community rather than the challenges specific to the leadership task. With<br />another 15 years under his belt of working with leaders in multi-ethnic congregations across<br />Canada USA Mumbai Manila Accra Bangkok and Budapest Sheffield brings further<br />reflection on the development of intercultural leadership skills.</p><p>This second edition of The Multicultural Leader deals with the role of congregational<br />leadership in embedding the multicultural vision as a way of “seeing.” The author draws<br />from various disciplines to develop a profi le of leaders necessary to initiate and sustain the<br />multicultural congregation. Sheffield’s conclusion is that leaders in multi-ethnic congregations<br />must move through a developmental process from an ethnocentric monocultural perspective<br />to a multi-ethnic intercultural approach in order to serve as enablers of multicultural<br />congregations.</p>