The Power of Love for Reaching Out to “the Other”: IMAGE-IQ Intercultural Communications Model for the Church Today
Ebook
Race is a result of God's design and not of sin. God loves diversity and sought it. Race biases are normal and come as a result of likes and dislikes; love of "the other" is to be learned. In this book, Bible stories and principles are combined with four intercultural communication skills to help develop love of the other. This book builds on what Sherwood Lingenfelter and Marvin K. Mayers developed for understanding cultural values and diversity of likes and dislikes. Those differences are normal. The problem comes from excluding the other. This book explores a step-wise approach to developing the love of the other. How the person, the leader, and the church see diversity defines the church's outreach, mission, and gospel fulfillment.
Author's Own Words Book Description
The Power of Love book explains how emotions and feelings were part of God's creation design from before sin entered this world. While departing from cognitive neuropsychology and the latest learning from science this seminar furthers the idea that race relations are not to be understood by sociology and science but by Bible and Christian beliefs.
If you want to learn a non-CRT (critical race theory) approach to race relations while risking being, again, convicted of the need to reach out to the other in gospel love--enter into dialogue--with the author by reading his book and let us pray together. If you want to keep it safe and your intercultural relationships as they are--in a tongue in cheek way the author advices to--stay away from this book!
“It is impossible for us to change unless we are willing to learn to know ourselves and others in a substantive and personal way. . . . Johnny Ramirez-Johnson has placed in your hands an offering of Scripture, insight, and experience that you may prayerfully employ to begin your personal journey of submission first to Christ and then to obedience as his healing presence for racial healing and justice in your local community and family.”
—Sherwood Lingenfelter, Fuller Theological Seminary
“In the following pages, Dr. Johnny Ramirez-Johnson supplies a compelling interdisciplinary discussion of theology, social science, and psychology which offers hope for getting past our current racial divides. As a pastor, Harvard-trained educator, and Fuller Seminary missiologist, Ramirez-Johnson presents his original IMAGE-IQ framework . . . to help us gain an understanding of the unconscious logic, values, and beliefs that limit dialogue and hinder koinonia across ethnic difference.”
—Robert Chao Romero, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Ramirez-Johnson’s extensive discussions in this book are questioning our value-driven assumptions in general, and value-driven assumptions about the other in particular. . . . I unite with John the Revelator and with Dr. Ramirez-Johnson calling the reader to stand down, look around, see the earth, and ‘subdue it’ in love. Only then can we claim our new birth in the biblical ways.”
—Joy J. Moore, Luther Seminary
From the poem “Princesa” (see afterword):
The princesas marrones are not bonitas
I want to be blanca with straight pelo
Even the white missionary that preached in our church said that
In heaven we all will be white, straight pelo, and tall like him
¿Por Que I have curly hair?
I want to be like angels and missionaries.
—Clara Jorge Ramirez-Johnson, pastor, Glendale City Church
- Title: The Power of Love for Reaching Out to “the Other”: IMAGE-IQ Intercultural Communications Model for the Church Today
- Authors: Sherwood G. Lingenfelter, Joy Moore, Johnny Ramirez-Johnson, Robert Chao-Romero, Clara Jorge Ramirez
- Publisher: Cascade Books
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666729658, 9781666729641, 1666729647, 9781666734126, 1666734128, 1666729655
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666729658
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-08-31T21:06:57Z
Johnny Ramírez-Johnson is Professor of Anthropology and Centro Latino at Fuller Theological Seminary School of Mission and Theology. His doctorate in cultural psychology from Harvard University and his biblical studies masters from Andrews University and a year at the Semitic Museum at Harvard University equipped him well for the integration of social sciences and faithful biblical readings. He is co-editor of Can "White" People Be Saved?: Triangulating Race, Theology, and Mission (2018).