INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION COMPLEXITIES AND CUES IN NIGERIAN MULTICULTURAL CHURCH CONTEXTS

Abstract

Arguments in scholarship and practice about models and methods of church planting
and administration have been sharply divided along monocultural and multicultural
perspectives. Most importantly, inevitable conflicts due to intercultural
communication barriers have been suggested as grounds for strictly monocultural
churches. However, in an increasingly globalised world, due to migration issues,
among others, the global church is predisposed to 21st
-century compatible
multicultural contexts. This paper uses a literature research method to explore the
concept of intercultural communication, its complexities, and cues in multicultural
contexts to address communication barriers in multicultural churches. It analyses
selected empirical case studies (secondary data) to propose an intercultural
communicative framework on how Nigerian churches can handle intercultural
communication barriers to foster truly cohesive multiethnic church communities.
This paper argues that cross-cultural understanding through intercultural education
and awareness prevents miscommunication that arises due to intercultural
communication barriers in multicultural church contexts.