ACross Culture

Cultural identity or Christian identity? Can you have both? Which comes first?

Explore some of these questions with Jessie and Yinxuan in this episode of ACross Culture. Yinxuan calls himself a Christian, Chinese and a scholar. He shares his testimony of coming to faith from an atheist family with one parent in the Communist Party, and talks about his research - giving us insight into the effects of recent Hong Kong migration to the UK on Chinese churches.

Yinxuan reads from 2 Corinthians 4:7-9 at the end of the ep.

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗

ACross Culture is back!
Social media content creator, speaker & host Paula Melissa is Jessie's guest for this episode of ACross Culture. They talk about learning languages, podcasts, Christian music and passions.

Paula hosts two podcasts - SheHH and Hermosas Chicas Negras. 

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗

Dayalan Mahesan joins Jessie as her guest for the final episode of the series. Dayalan is an entrepreneur who mainly works in property and is also working with Evangelical Alliance's South Asian Forum. 

Listen to this episode where they talk about setting up businesses, ministry, monoethnic diaspora churches, multiethnic communities, identity and more. 

Dayalan also shares a word of encouragement based on Psalm 103:15-16 and recommends the book 'Redeeming Your Time' by Jordan Raynor. 

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗

Stephanie Biggs is an Ethnomusicologist who calls herself a world traveller! Listen to this episode of ACross Culture where Stephanie and Jessie talk about travelling, experiences in Tanzania and the construction of whiteness there, Stephanie's work & ministry, perceptions of worship norms and more (including song contests!). 

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗

davecreates is Jessie's guest for this episode of ACross Culture. Hear more about him and his music, faith, identity and more. 

Revd. Mark Nam joins Jessie as the guest for this episode of ACross Culture. Listen to this as they discuss identity, church, the Teahouse, forms of resistance, racial injustice and more.

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗

Ruwani Gunawardene is Jessie's guest for this episode, where they explore intercultural reconciliation. Listen to this to hear a little bit about Ruwani's background, interests, and what it might look like to combine culture and faith in her contexts.  

Apologies for the sound quality in this episode. 

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗

Rachael Newham, author of 'Learning to Breathe' and 'And Yet' joins Jessie on this week's episode podcast, where they talk about mental health, the charity she founded, lament, and grief. 

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗

Gloria Fanchiang is a second-generation Taiwanese American songwriter, independent recording artist and worship leader, passionate about decolonising worship and helping Asian American communities develop contextualised worship music and liturgy.

She joins Jessie in this first episode of Series 5, where they talk about identity, worship, multi-ethnic worship, songwriting, decolonisation and more. 

A clip of Gloria's latest release, the acoustic version of 'God Who Sees Us', is played at the end of this episode. 

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗

Ellen joins Jessie in this week's episode where they talk about the stigma of mental health, therapy, mental health in the church, Chinese and East Asian communities, codeswitching, bicultural identity and more. 

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗

Cleo and Jessie talk about identity, missions, OM Logos Hope and reentry from the mission field. 

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗

Cleo's art

Philippa joins Jessie on this week's podcast episode. We talk about her music, our experience at Christian Union, identity, intercultural worship, diversity and more.  

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗:

Follow Philippa:

Father Simon Cuff joins Jessie as her guest for this episode - he shares about community organising, racial consciousness, Critical Theory and Critical Race Theory.

Fr Simon recommends the following books by Terry Eagleton - Reason, Faith, Revolution and Tragedy. 

🔗 LINKS 🔗:

As promised, here is a talk that Jessie gave earlier in July 2021.

Topic: Anti-racism
Passage: Luke 10:29-37

---

I want to thank Dr Elizabeth Sung for her expertise... a lot of the things I said in this talk was learnt from her!

---

🔗 LINKS 🔗:

Rev Anna Poulson, vicar of St John's Southall, speaks to Jessie about intercultural church, whiteness, being a white privileged woman and more. This episode is really important, and what I call "getting into the nitty gritty"... so please listen and share.

----

🔗 LINKS 🔗:

Calvin and Jessie talk about students and student ministry. 

Listen to hear about his story, Cambridge, internationals and more.

----

🔗 LINKS 🔗:

FOLLOW CALVIN:

Parvaneh Nicholson, an evangelist with a strong passion for the persecuted church, joins Jessie to share her story, some miracles that have happened in her life, and losses too.

Listen to find out more about the challenges of being a Muslim-Background Believer (MBB), the persecution that some Christians face, receive some tips, and more. 

This is a wake up call, everyone!!

----

🔗 LINKS 🔗:

Jessie's bonus episode, designed to sit in between Series 3 and Series 4. Listen to this short episode to hear about the inception of ACross Culture, listen to some reviews and a clip of the new song 'God Who Sees Us' by Gloria Fanchiang. Click on the links below to listen to the full song, which features some of our friends in the US. 

I'd like to thank all of my guests for their willingness to be interviewed and share about themselves and/or interesting topics! See you in Series 4! 

🔗 LINKS 🔗:

Musical artist Coco Mbassi joins Jessie for Series 3 Episode 7 of ACross Culture podcast. In this episode she talks about her background, music, identity, scriptwriting and more.

- Photo by © Ewane Nja Kwa

🔗 LINKS 🔗:

Eden Dayuha, a certified coach, speaker and trainer, joins Jessie to talk about John Maxwell coaching, singleness and her Dear Singles community. 

🔗 LINKS 🔗:

Jessie is joined by Ian Collinge in this episode where he talks about heart music, music psychology, worship in the church and more. 

In this episode, Karen speaks about her experiences being a priest in the Church of England. 

I also talk about unconscious bias :) 

---

🎙 Please subscribe and review this podcast 🎙

---

CONNECT with me:

Corina speaks to Jessie about intercultural communication, relationship counselling and some joys & challenges of being in an intercultural relationship. 

Details for her training: 

This episode is with Anna Tran. We talk about ethnic identity, churches, healing and more.

I also talk about Lunar New Year, and the book The Life of a Banana by PP Wong, who is the first published British Born Chinese novelist. 

Kicking off series 3 is an interview with Theo Visser, leader of the Intercultural Church Plants EU network.

We talk about fruit salads (seriously), setbacks, lessons learned on the way and some practical tips about church planting. 

This is part two of the interview with Shakeel Nurmahi.

Josh joins Jessie to talk about his experience of being a Third Culture Kid/Missionary Kid. 

Topics explored: TCKs, MKs, the 'where are you from?' question, missionary culture, diversity, transition and change. 

Kicking off series 2 is an episode with Joelle Phua, who talks to Jessie about life coaching, women of colour, social justice, the system, activism, and being a Christian. 

Wien and Jessie talk about many things in this episode, from leadership, to abuse, to awareness and authenticity.

2:12 - The Wounded Leader
6:59 - Mental health
9:35 - Spiritual abuse
12.15 - Emotional abuse
13.15 - Awareness and authenticity
15.17 - Harmony vs hierarchy
16.45 - Authentic redemption
21.13 - Reconciliation/relationships
23.41 - Family systems therapy
27.40 - Awareness, authenticity, action
33.27 - Conflicts

Eileen, founder of the NGO Creative Hope International, talks to Jessie about using the arts to bring about lasting change. 

00:48 - Eileen's introduction
11:45 - what Creative Hope International is
23:38 - Himalayan context
29:15 - where is the place of folk/traditional music in the present age?
31:29 - why combine the arts and faith to create change?
38:41 - book recommendations

Eileen recommends: Where Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, and Children of the Stone by Sandy Tolan.