Being Intercultural
A Jesus Follower’s Guide to Navigating Culture
COMING NOVEMBER 2026!
“It feels like your favorite teacher is coming alongside and guiding you through the stages in a way that’s easy to understand”
Kalyn | expat living abroad
Developing Intercultural Competence
“Intercultural competence is no longer a specialist concern reserved for missionaries or academics. It has become an essential dimension of faithful Christian discipleship in our interconnected world.”
Harvey Kwiyani, author of Decolonizing Mission, from the Foreword
Move beyond learning about culture into developing intercultural competence and embodying sustained Jesus-centered cross-cultural presence.
Intercultural ministry is beautiful and challenging. The joy of genuine cross-cultural friendships and partnerships and fruit of faithful presence are incredibly rich. And at the same time, there are real obstacles that lead to missed opportunities, and at worst even to harm.
We can grow in this. Whether you are preparing to enter cross-cultural ministry, are a seasoned cross-cultural worker, or are simply looking to better understand your neighbors and colleagues, this book is designed to take you further in your own intercultural competence journey.
“Immanently practical and easy to read yet challenging to embody, this book provides language and exercises that will equip readers to move beyond surface level intercultural interactions.”
Rachel Pieh Jones, author of Pillars and Stronger than Death
Designed for Individuals and groups.
2026
314 Pages
Berlin, Germany: I Am Intercultural
978-3-98999-020-3 ISBN (International)
978-3-98999-022-7 ISBN e-Book (International)
About the Book
There are plenty of intercultural ministry resources that introduce help readers understand theory, or which offer practical advice. Others are more interested in demonstrating the why of intercultural ministry. Those resources can be very helpful, but what is often lacking is a focus on becoming. Unfortunately, even well-motivated, educated, and technically skilled ministry practitioners often fail to realize the sustained ministry results they long to see over the long term.
ADDRESSING THE LACK
What ministry practitioners need most is not more information. Instead, we need to become people who are capable of sustained, effective, contextually accurate intercultural ministry.
FORMATION, GROUNDED IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
Being Intercultural guides readers into precisely this journey, through combined theoretical and practical grounding that both demonstrate and guide the way forward as Jesus-follower grow in their intercultural competence. The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), a robust and well-researched model of intercultural competence, provides the theoretical anchor and framework.
Informed by applied education and service-learning pedagogy, the book incorporates insights from decades of practical experience and insights drawn on practitioners from around the world,
CULTURAL GENERAL FOR GLOBAL APPLICABILITY
Because Being Intercultural uses a cultural general approach, readers are equipped for navigating both their own and others’ cultures anywhere in the world, including both urban and rural settings. Through building intercultural competence in this way, practitioners develop the perspectives, abilities, curiosity, and skills to continue learning and re-imagining effective cross-cultural relationships and partnerships.
WHAT’S INSIDE
Each chapter includes:
- An opening scenario to demonstrate the DMIS stage discussed in the chapter
- An introduction to the chapter’s DMIS stage
- Quick facts about the DMIS stage
- A guide for navigating the DMIS stage
- A brief introductory self-assessment related to the DMIS stage, and information on how the reader can make the best use of the chapter
- A series of concepts that help make the stage understandable in the ministry context, each followed by practical exercises designed to engage either individuals or groups in formative growth through the difficult questions posed by each stage.
- A concluding scenario to reinforce learning
- A concluding self-assessment
The book also features a glossary to make unfamiliar terms easier to understand.
One of the book’s greatest strengths lies in its refusal to reduce intercultural competence to a collection of techniques or communication strategies. Instead, Jones understands that becoming intercultural is fundamentally a process of formation.
How to Use This Book
Being Intercultural is designed to work in multiple ways, depending on how you’re engaging with it.
FOR INDIVIDUAL READERS
If you’re reading on your own, approach this book as a guide through the long term process of building intercultural competence.
- Understanding yourself. Being Intercultural invites you to engage the intercultural competence journey through understanding yourself and your own culture. Take time to understand yourself and where you are coming from. You may find yourself needing to work through certain chapters or sections multiple times as you grow.
- Engage the exercises. This book is intended to be done, not just read. Make regular appointments with the book so you can continue moving through it at your own pace. Even when a chapter is big, the learning sections are designed to be bite-sized so that even busy practitioners can move forward a little at a time.
- Develop your curiosity. As you learn more about yourself, you’ll also have the opportunity to grow in curiosity about those you live, work, and ministry with, regardless of how much your cultural perspectives overlap. Most readers will find that the first stage or two describes how they previously saw culture. If that is the case for you, these chapters are a great place to develop your understanding of how others might be interacting with culture today, so you can interact with them more effectively.
- Move to practice. Being Intercultural can introduce theoretical ideas to you, but you will only experience growth if you put them into practice, test them, reflect on them, and grow.
- Keep reflecting. Reflective practice is a cornerstone of developing intercultural competence. Use the book and other resources to intentionally grow your capacity for intercultural reflection. Growing in intercultural competence is a long, slow, demanding process. Regular reflective practice will help you to stay engaged and be patient with yourself as you grow in agency for your intercultural journey.
- Keep praying. This is not a practice that you should try to engage apart from your walk with Jesus. Some of the questions you run into may be in areas you aren’t practiced at bringing to Him. If you need help, seeking out a spiritual mentor for direction in your walk with Christ can be really productive.
FOR TEAMS AND SMALL GROUPS
This book is also built for group study. The exercises and reflection questions work as discussion starters, and the framework naturally creates space for diverse voices and experiences.
Suggested approach:
- Leaders: go first. The intercultural journey is demanding. Leaders should make sure they understand what they are asking of their team or small group.
- Define your shared goals. This work is hard. Make sure you and your team know why you’re doing it!
- Gather regularly. Weekly or biweekly works well; it keeps momentum and lets the material settle between sessions.
- Don’t go too fast. Rushing through the book will lead to frustration. Assign reading segments based on the learning sections you want to get through each time, rather than assigning chapters. This is especially true when you get to the chapter on Minimization! The Minimization stage takes a long time to work through in general, and the book reflects this.
- Come prepared. Depending on the team, it’s often effective to have each member of the team work through the assigned section before the meeting, including doing the exercises. This means real discussion, not summary.
- Develop capacity for holding space and tension. Some of the concepts and exercises in the book may generate strong disagreements. While conflict is not a goal of the book, it is an anticipated part of the process. Learning to work well with others who see things differently is a critical skill for developing intercultural competence. Tension doesn’t mean that the process isn’t working–in fact, it may well mean that it is! Practice reaffirming core goals and shared intentions as you and your team learn to hold tension together.
- Engage your imagination. Being Intercultural is intended to contribute to your formation, not to give you answers. Culture is too dynamic for any book to give you all of the answers. But you can learn to ask more effective questions and to engage your imagination.
- End with intention. Before you finish each meeting, remind your team how the section you worked through is important for your shared goals.
Contents
Foreword by Harvey Kwiyani
Author’s Preface
Being Intercultural
Learning to See Culture
Finding Shared Humanity
Engaging Complexity Beyond Sameness
Rediscovering Ethical and Practical Roots
Adapting Across Cultures
Living with Intercultural Competence
Glossary
Endnotes
Additional Content: Our team is working on a companion guide, designed to help facilitators lead teams through the content, and to guide interested readers into more in depth consideration of the topics. The companion guide is not yet available.
What Readers are Saying
“Stephen has provided us with a fresh and relevant resource for advancing the fruitfulness of today’s intercultural global Christian ministry. Whether in a formal academic or non-formal professional development setting, what is presented here can form the backbone of robust teaching, coaching and supervisory people development efforts for current and future intercultural workers. I look forward to adding this book to my arsenal of training tools.”
Mark Morgenstern| Senior Director (Grow2Serve)
and General Editor for Essentials for Equipping and Growth of Global Workers (Missio Nexus)
“Whether we are witnessing across the street or around the globe, the world is becoming smaller, and we are encountering increasingly diverse cultures. If you want to learn healthy ways to engage across cultures while also becoming more aware of your own cultural competence, Being Intercultural: A Jesus-Follower’s Guide to Navigating Culture is a must-read.
Dr. Stephen W. Jones not only explains the intercultural competence journey, but also provides practical examples of how it plays out in ministry and community. The book is filled with diagrams, illustrations, and reflective questions that illuminate the teaching and ensure we are not simply reading, but growing through what we have read.”
Dr. Anthony D. Bobo, Jr. | Founder, The Joseph Factor Group, and author of Commissioned to Love
“This is the book I needed 25-years ago when I first moved abroad. Immanently practical and easy to read yet challenging to embody, this book provides language and exercises that will equip readers to move beyond surface level intercultural interactions. Stephen Jones doesn’t gloss over complicated issues and some discussions might make readers uncomfortable, but that is where meaningful transformation happens. Being Intercultural is now the book I will use and recommend for training staff, self-analysis, and personal growth in intercultural relationships and work.”
Rachel Pieh Jones | Author of Pillars and Stronger than Death
“Fascinating and helpful. This book helps the reader better understand why and how personal transformations occur in international experiences”
Lexie Jankowski | Missions and education professional
“This book is a needful tool for followers of Jesus looking for authentic ways to live out the Gospel without diminishing the Imago Dei already present in each of us.”
Marcus Dip Silas | Co-Founder, Mending Together
“I LOVED how the text not only provided organized, pertinent information, but also included so many thought-provoking self-reflection questions and activities. I appreciated how I could drop the subject in the middle of the students and then have so many choices of ways for them to interact and reflect upon it. So many times as I prepared to teach, I had an ‘Ah hah’ moment where I understood something that had happened during my time in international ministry.”
Katy | former international ministry professional in Asia, and college instructor
“Being Intercultural is a compelling and timely resource for those seeking to deepen their cultural understanding and develop greater intercultural competence. This read is particularly valuable for individuals preparing to live abroad or serve within culturally diverse communities. The book reflects Stephen Jones’s distinctive integration of academic rigor and lived experience. With clarity and insight, Jones explores the complexities of culture in a manner that is both accessible and practically relevant.”
Liz Blancke | former colleague of the author, cultural broker
About the Author
STEPHEN W JONES
Dr. Stephen W. Jones lives in Berlin, Germany with his family. Across his career, he has worked to develop intercultural competence in students and adult-learners, first as a professor in the U.S., and more recently at Envision Berlin, e.V. He is especially keen to engage learners in applied education, especially including service-learning.
Jones earned his Ph.D. in International Development at the University of Southern Mississippi, his M.A. in Intercultural Relations at the University of the Pacific, and both a B.A. in Bible and Intercultural Studies and a B.S. in Business Administration: Intercultural Management at Grace University. He is the author of Transitions Across Cultures: A Guide to Culture Shock for Travelers and Those Who Love Them.
Ordering Information
In order to keep the price of the book affordable, Being Intercultural is available directly from the publisher. While the eBook will be available from your favorite online retailers, the physical book is available directly from us. Here is information for individual orders, organization / institutional orders, and professor exam copies.
Organizations and Institutions can place volume orders here for 20 or more copies. Organizations / Institutions are eligible to order the deluxe thread-bound edition. Deluxe edition books are shipped from Germany once a week, and your order will be processed once you accept the quote. This form is also valid for organizational / institutional pre-orders.
Are you a professor looking to request an exam copy? Complete the form below.