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Creating Belonging Through Language
5 Plays5 months ago
Sarah Callen is joined by Emanuel “Ricky” Padilla and Dra. Itzel Meduri to discuss multilingualism. They share the history of language weaponization and hierarchy in America, which led to the signing of an Executive Order in 2025 designating English as the official language of The United States. Ricky and Dra. Meduri also offer theological support for multilingualism and practical steps we can take to embrace this practice in our lives.
Visit World Outspoken’s website to learn more about the work that Ricky and Dra. Meduri are doing on multilingualism. And be sure to check out their course, Lingua Franca. Follow World Outspoken on Facebook and Instagram @worldoutspoken.
Born in Detroit, the experience of the Puerto Rican diaspora is central to Emanuel’s research and ministry interests. He is completing a PhD in theological and ethical studies at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, working to construct a theology that accounts for the history of colonization in Puerto Rico and the theological implications of a Black diasporic identity for recovering belonging and peoplehood. He is committed to serving bi-cultural congregational leaders facing questions of identity, culture, and theology through his work as president of World Outspoken, a ministry preparing the church for cultural change.
Dra. Itzel Meduri is a Spanish professor and Chair of the Modern Languages Department at Biola University. Her work focuses on multilingual communities, highlighting linguistic diversity, bilingual identities, and language ideologies. A Los Angeles native of Mexican heritage, she is married to an Italian man and raising multilingual children.
Connect with CCDA on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Follow CCDA on YouTube.
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Transcript
Introduction to Multilingualism in Churches
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the CCDA podcast.
00:00:12
Speaker
My name is Sarah Callan.
00:00:14
Speaker
I am the communications coordinator at CCDA and I am your host for this episode.
00:00:19
Speaker
Today we will be discussing multilingualism, what it is, why it's important, and how we can move toward embracing multilingualism in our churches and organizations.
Meet the Guests: Emmanuel Rikki Padilla and Dr. Itzel Midori
00:00:29
Speaker
But I'm not alone for this conversation.
00:00:32
Speaker
Thankfully, I have some very special guests joining me, Emmanuel Rikki Padilla and Dr. Itzel Midori.
00:00:39
Speaker
Rikki and Itzel, thank you so much for being here.
00:00:42
Speaker
Would you like to introduce yourselves?
00:00:45
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'm a Spanish professor and chair of the Modern Languages Department at Biola University, where I teach second language and heritage language learners.
00:00:57
Speaker
So heritage learners, for those of you who might not be familiar with the term, are students who have a familial connection and
00:01:05
Speaker
or community tied to the minoritized language, in my context, Spanish.
00:01:10
Speaker
So typically these are students who grew up speaking Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, et cetera, at home, but may not have received any formal instruction in
00:01:20
Speaker
in the language.
00:01:22
Speaker
And I'm actually a heritage learner myself.
00:01:24
Speaker
So I was born and raised in Los Angeles to parents, to Mexican parents.
00:01:30
Speaker
I grew up speaking Spanish at home and in my community, but I didn't receive any formal instruction in the language until I was in high school.
00:01:40
Speaker
And I am also the mother of two beautiful kids, Chito and Camila, who my husband and I are raising to be trilingual in Spanish, English, and Italian.
00:01:50
Speaker
trilingual.
00:01:50
Speaker
What a flex.
Understanding Multilingualism and Its Challenges
00:01:54
Speaker
Sarah, CCDA, thanks for having us.
00:01:56
Speaker
My name is Emanuel Enrique Padilla.
00:01:59
Speaker
If you've heard me say this before, forgive me, but
00:02:02
Speaker
My family didn't know English at the time and thought that the best translation for Enrique was Ricky.
00:02:08
Speaker
And I've been Ricky ever since because my dad and I share the same first name.
00:02:13
Speaker
And so I've always gone by the bad translation of my middle name.
00:02:16
Speaker
If it were translated correctly, it would have been Henry.
00:02:19
Speaker
Don't call me Henry.
00:02:20
Speaker
No one's ever done that.
00:02:22
Speaker
But
00:02:23
Speaker
I am president of World Outspoken, an organization that started in 2018.
00:02:29
Speaker
We exist to provide resources and offer training related to questions of cultural change.
00:02:34
Speaker
Our first organizations that we were serving were migrant churches where the pastors were from their country of origin, primarily Spanish speaking, and they were retiring.
00:02:46
Speaker
And the pastors that were stepping into the roles of leadership in those congregations were pastors that were born in the U.S.,
00:02:52
Speaker
and had their sort of cultural influences, their theological influences, their orientations and concerns oriented toward questions that emerged from this context rather than a country of origin.
00:03:06
Speaker
And that was creating some pretty significant conflicts between the incoming pastor and the existing culture of the congregation.
00:03:13
Speaker
And so, World Out Spoken started doing that kind of work.
00:03:15
Speaker
We've been doing it ever since.
00:03:17
Speaker
And one of the things that it's a joy that we get to do
00:03:20
Speaker
Because we have to have scholars and residents that represent the communities that we've been serving, the congregations that we have been training and offering resources to.
00:03:29
Speaker
And Dr. Ameduri is one of those scholars that has been a huge help to us when we've been navigating questions of language.
00:03:35
Speaker
Great.
00:03:35
Speaker
Thank you both for being here today and even just raising this topic as something that we should be talking about.
00:03:45
Speaker
So to start off the conversation, can you guys just let us know what is multilingualism?
00:03:52
Speaker
Yeah, great question.
00:03:53
Speaker
Well, in simple terms, it is the ability to communicate in more than one language.
00:03:58
Speaker
And I want to add that this is actually a very common global phenomenon with more than half of the population speaking more than one language.
00:04:06
Speaker
Unfortunately, despite the fact that here in the States we're known as a nation of immigrants, only 21% of the U.S. population is multilingual.
00:04:16
Speaker
That is because as a country, we do a very poor job at maintaining languages.
00:04:22
Speaker
So there is a running joke that goes, what do you call someone who knows two languages?
00:04:28
Speaker
Bilingual.
00:04:29
Speaker
What do you call someone who knows three languages?
00:04:32
Speaker
Trilingual.
00:04:34
Speaker
And what do you call someone who only knows one language?
00:04:38
Speaker
American.
00:04:40
Speaker
Itzel is trying her bits on us here.
00:04:42
Speaker
She's going to go Saturday Night Live after this.
00:04:45
Speaker
This is a running joke.
00:04:46
Speaker
It's not my joke.
00:04:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:48
Speaker
So in fact, and this is sad, right?
00:04:51
Speaker
We are known as the graveyard of languages.
00:04:53
Speaker
So a place where languages come to die.
00:04:56
Speaker
That is really helpful.
00:04:58
Speaker
And your joke.
00:04:58
Speaker
Not my joke.
00:04:59
Speaker
Not my joke, but the joke.
00:05:02
Speaker
The joke that you shared that you take no ownership of.
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:08
Speaker
It was really good.
00:05:09
Speaker
So, okay, so we here in America don't experience the multilingualism that is experienced in a lot of other countries.
00:05:18
Speaker
So can you share a little bit about maybe the history of language here in the U.S. and how that informs where we find ourselves today?
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, totally.
00:05:26
Speaker
So if we continue with the metaphor of the graveyard, I will say that in many instances, the death of these languages doesn't occur by natural causes.
00:05:38
Speaker
So languages have been violently taken away from people in the name of mostly American nationalism.
00:05:45
Speaker
Throughout history, there have been many people in power that believe that to be a true American, one must look a certain way, behave in a particular manner, and speak only one language, English, right?
00:06:00
Speaker
In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt said, we only have room for one language in this country, and it is English.
00:06:08
Speaker
This was a reaction to the growing influx of European immigrants whose languages were viewed as a threat to the American identity.
00:06:16
Speaker
And we see this throughout history.
00:06:17
Speaker
The English-only movement always emerges with anti-immigrant rhetoric, and we know that this is not a coincidence, of course.
00:06:26
Speaker
To give another example, in 1980, Miami-Dade County, Florida enacted a county ordinance designating English as the official language of local government.
00:06:36
Speaker
This took place after 125,000 Cuban immigrants arrived in South Florida.
00:06:42
Speaker
There was nothing benign about this ordinance.
00:06:44
Speaker
It wasn't coincidental.
00:06:46
Speaker
It was enacted for one purpose, and that was to exclude Spanish speakers, right?
00:06:51
Speaker
To give another example, in 1998, California, and now we're talking about states that have a high population of bilingual speakers, right?
00:07:02
Speaker
So California is
00:07:04
Speaker
in 1998 passed the infamous Proposition 227 that would eliminate bilingual education.
00:07:11
Speaker
Despite the fact that California has one of the most abundant populations of non-native English speakers, it took almost 20 years for Proposition 227 to be repealed.
00:07:23
Speaker
Again, we see this, and it was a reaction to the influx of immigrant students in the public school system.
00:07:32
Speaker
And instead of viewing their languages as an asset, they were perceived as a threat to the English language and to quote-unquote Americanism.
00:07:42
Speaker
In fact, when I was in elementary school in the 90s, my mother was told by one of my teachers that she shouldn't speak to me in Spanish.
00:07:53
Speaker
Now, this advice was completely absurd, right?
00:07:56
Speaker
My mom's native tongue is Spanish.
00:07:59
Speaker
And at the time, she knew very little
Language, Nationalism, and Church Practices
00:08:01
Speaker
English.
00:08:01
Speaker
So if she would have heeded that advice, she would basically not be able to talk to me.
00:08:07
Speaker
Our relationship would have suffered a great deal, right?
00:08:10
Speaker
Second, my mom was a teacher in Mexico.
00:08:13
Speaker
So she had tons of Spanish workbooks and books that she had me read and writing activities.
00:08:23
Speaker
And we know that these are all transferable skills.
00:08:26
Speaker
So in fact, my mom's help with Spanish and helping me read and write was going to, and it did eventually reinforce my English.
00:08:37
Speaker
Imagine if I didn't speak Spanish now.
00:08:39
Speaker
Right.
00:08:40
Speaker
Well, for one, I wouldn't be a Spanish professor, of course, but also I wouldn't be able to communicate with my family in Mexico, with the many Spanish speakers that I encounter here in the States and around the world.
00:08:53
Speaker
I wouldn't be able to pass the beautiful gift of bilingualism to my children.
00:08:57
Speaker
I will be disconnected from my community.
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:01
Speaker
Right?
00:09:02
Speaker
When languages are buried, whole generations suffer.
00:09:05
Speaker
There's a rupture in that.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yes, yes, definitely.
00:09:08
Speaker
I don't want to bombard you with examples.
00:09:10
Speaker
We have a lot of them, but I'm going to give you just one more example.
00:09:14
Speaker
In Blackwell, which is a segregated school in Texas that was designated for children of Mexican ancestry, a symbolic burial, going back to the graveyard metaphor, a burial of the Spanish language was performed.
00:09:31
Speaker
And it was called the Burial of Mr. Spanish.
00:09:34
Speaker
And students were asked to write notes of their favorite Spanish words in
00:09:39
Speaker
I'm sorry, I'm getting emotional.
00:09:42
Speaker
That were then inserted in cigar boxes and buried at the base of the American flag.
00:09:48
Speaker
It was as if to achieve true American-ness, students had to literally bury parts of their identity.
00:09:55
Speaker
And of course, there's hundreds of accounts of how students were physically punished at school all over the country for speaking Spanish.
00:10:04
Speaker
Unfortunately, the English-only ideology tends to be very attractive to certain segments of the population, particularly those that are anti-immigrant.
00:10:14
Speaker
And we saw that just a few weeks ago, Trump designated English the official language of the United States.
00:10:20
Speaker
In its nearly 250-year history, the U.S. had never had an official language at the federal level.
00:10:26
Speaker
And there is absolutely no benefit in designating English the official language of the U.S., right?
00:10:32
Speaker
It's meant to exclude people.
00:10:35
Speaker
However, for many of us, this wasn't surprising.
00:10:38
Speaker
Trump has often criticized politicians who use Spanish, stating that only English should be used in the U.S., and has gone so far as to say that there is a language invasion, as he calls it, happening.
00:10:52
Speaker
Here's the thing, though, that these are unfounded fears, fears that are grounded in ideologies of racism.
00:11:00
Speaker
God gave us this amazing ability to learn multiple languages.
00:11:04
Speaker
We don't have to lose our home languages, those languages that connect us to our ancestors and to our communities to learn English.
00:11:13
Speaker
For each sister.
00:11:15
Speaker
I just want to add the kinds of ruptures that Itzel is talking about, they get exported from the U.S. And so, for instance, when the U.S. took over possession of Puerto Rico in 1898,
00:11:27
Speaker
They did designate English as the language of the island, of the archipelago, I should say.
00:11:34
Speaker
And it wasn't until the 1950s when Puerto Ricans had really had enough of that, that that was removed.
00:11:40
Speaker
And Spanish became a formal option for folks in school systems and in legal systems.
00:11:47
Speaker
And so the U.S. has had a propensity to export this monolingualism that our government perceives to be
00:11:57
Speaker
the best solution to integrating diverse peoples, right?
00:12:01
Speaker
It's worth stressing what he said, that this is an expression of a kind of nationalism, a kind of imperialism, right?
00:12:08
Speaker
This is built from a belief that assumes some things that are quite false and actually quite unnatural.
00:12:14
Speaker
That there's a whole segment of the globe where this is not normal, right?
00:12:19
Speaker
And so I just think that that's worth stressing, especially for us that are in the CCDA community.
00:12:25
Speaker
we often are doing work around issues of race and racism in the CCDA community.
00:12:31
Speaker
But for reasons of pragmatism, we've chosen a language, right?
00:12:36
Speaker
Or if some of us are church folks, if we're pastors in the CCDA community, right?
00:12:41
Speaker
Our CCD work, right?
00:12:43
Speaker
It often hinges on a specific language, often English, or some version of kind of pragmatic translation, right?
00:12:50
Speaker
So in-ear translation, if you're doing a Sunday sermon,
00:12:54
Speaker
or having services in two different languages.
00:12:56
Speaker
But those very practical ways of getting around this often don't address the histories that shape the kind of racial hierarchies that now are cemented in our communities, right?
00:13:09
Speaker
And so for the CCDA, it's really interesting to me that while we are very committed to addressing and confronting issues of race
Theological Perspectives on Multilingualism
00:13:18
Speaker
and racism, language is often
00:13:21
Speaker
kind of tertiary or very practically addressed.
00:13:24
Speaker
And the questions around multilingualism often don't come up or emerge outside of practical concerns.
00:13:30
Speaker
The history that it said just showed us, just taught us, right?
00:13:34
Speaker
Suggests that as part of our CCD, as part of our community development work,
00:13:40
Speaker
It's actually quite Christian to also think about multilingualism and speaking in multiple tongues.
00:13:46
Speaker
So that's all I wanted to stress as we thought about some of these questions of race and the history that got us all the way to the point where President Trump would exert the kind of influence that he has to make English the formal language of the land.
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, thank you both so much for sharing all of that and giving us a peek into the history of monolingualism here in the U.S. So, Ricky, as you said, this should be something that is important to us at CCDA who are caring for people and working for the flourishing of our communities and neighborhoods.
00:14:24
Speaker
But this still might be like a new concept to some of the people listening.
00:14:28
Speaker
So can you share a little bit more about what multilingualism can look like in the church instead of monolingualism?
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll speak to the theological pieces.
00:14:40
Speaker
I think it's worth noting that Itzel can also give us some kind of the practical insights as well.
00:14:46
Speaker
But
00:14:47
Speaker
But, you know, I'm going to borrow an example from someone that we all know and love in the CCDA community, Sandra Maria Van Obstel, right?
00:14:53
Speaker
In her book, The Next Worship, she tells the story so you can also read it there, right?
00:14:58
Speaker
But I'll also share some examples from my own communities as well.
00:15:03
Speaker
Itzel has already talked about the ruptures and alienations that come up, right?
00:15:07
Speaker
The ways in which forcing people toward a kind of monolingualism can break
00:15:13
Speaker
significant breaks, generational breaks, community breaks, breaks that can really negatively and even to some degree traumatically hurt people, right?
00:15:22
Speaker
So I think that has been clearly stated.
00:15:24
Speaker
But there are other ways in which the kind of racial hierarchy around languages can really shape congregations.
00:15:30
Speaker
So to draw the example that Sandra talks about in her book, a suburban Anglo church that primarily sings in English in the worship service might hear Middle Eastern languages.
00:15:43
Speaker
And because of the ways those languages get portrayed and imagined in the news cycle, they might fill in all kinds of images, but the kinds of people that speak those languages, right?
00:15:54
Speaker
So for a church to choose to sing, for instance, a worship song in Urdu or Arabic, in one of these Middle Eastern languages that most of the suburban community around them would fill in certain images with, right?
00:16:08
Speaker
To sing those worship songs and to say they're actually practicing siblings,
00:16:13
Speaker
on that side of the world, Christian things that we are singing in solidarity with.
00:16:17
Speaker
Speaking of solidarity in these moments and these times is really important when it comes to questions of the Middle East, right?
00:16:23
Speaker
But to sing that way is an act of discipleship.
00:16:27
Speaker
It's a way of re-narrating that language for the congregation, right?
00:16:31
Speaker
For people to start to hear the language and have very different kinds of images come up to their minds.
00:16:37
Speaker
So it's an act of discipleship as much as it's an act of resistance, right?
00:16:41
Speaker
as much as it is a declaration that actually these languages should not be demonized, nor should the people that speak them.
00:16:50
Speaker
And so those are some of the practical concerns.
00:16:51
Speaker
Again, like I said before, as part of the CCDA philosophy, right, we often address issues of race.
00:17:02
Speaker
Language is a key component of those issues.
00:17:05
Speaker
The racial hierarchies that we're working to resist assume something about language too,
00:17:11
Speaker
not just about phenotype, right?
00:17:13
Speaker
The way that people look, not just about physical differences or even cultural or ethnic ones.
00:17:18
Speaker
Language is also a part of that.
00:17:20
Speaker
And that's why it's important that we think about language even when we are in spaces that feel more homogenous or more single language in their output, right?
00:17:31
Speaker
Even in suburban places where we're only addressing English speakers, there might be good reason to sing in other languages or good reason to encourage people.
00:17:40
Speaker
to speak more than one language.
00:17:42
Speaker
It's it.
00:17:42
Speaker
I don't know if you wanted to add to that or if I've missed something in sharing that.
00:17:46
Speaker
I wanted to talk a bit about my Latino students and my SPAN 100 and 200 classes.
00:17:53
Speaker
So these are classes that are for beginner Spanish students who don't
00:17:58
Speaker
don't know the language, they're learning, you know, the basics.
00:18:02
Speaker
And many Latino, we know that in the States, 30% of Latinos don't speak Spanish.
00:18:08
Speaker
So of course, along with my white, Asian, and other students, I have some Latino students in my SPAN 100 class, and they come in, those students, with usually a lot of shame.
00:18:19
Speaker
Like, I look a certain way, I have this last name, but I don't speak Spanish.
00:18:24
Speaker
And please don't expect me to, right?
00:18:26
Speaker
Because
00:18:27
Speaker
Many times in society, they are expected to know the language.
00:18:32
Speaker
And they carry that shame with them, not understanding the histories of
00:18:38
Speaker
that might've contributed to the fact that their language was lost, right?
00:18:45
Speaker
And many times I encourage them to have these conversations with their family members and they find out, yes, that their grandma was punished at school for speaking Spanish.
00:18:56
Speaker
And so in order to protect the children and grandchildren, these families decided not to teach Spanish to their children and other languages as well.
00:19:07
Speaker
The other part, Ricky, was how egocentric we are in our nationalist views, right?
00:19:14
Speaker
And how instead of seeing languages and people from diverse parts of the world as real opportunities, assets, we view them as threats, right?
00:19:29
Speaker
We think that they have much that they can learn from us, but that we have nothing to learn from them.
00:19:35
Speaker
This lack of humility.
00:19:37
Speaker
That's a really good point.
00:19:40
Speaker
And so this is very relevant for the church, you know, as we are serving people, caring for people.
00:19:47
Speaker
Humility is such a central part of the Christian life.
00:19:51
Speaker
And so I'm curious, though, because you mentioned that
00:19:55
Speaker
America is kind of unique in our monolingualism.
00:20:00
Speaker
So what does this look like in other countries?
00:20:04
Speaker
Do you have examples of multilingualism practices in other countries that embrace these other languages and these other cultures?
00:20:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question.
00:20:17
Speaker
And before answering that, I want to stress that first we have to start by addressing and combating these harmful linguistic ideologies, right?
00:20:26
Speaker
That we might hold subconsciously.
00:20:29
Speaker
We need to recognize that multilingualism is not a threat to unity, but a bridge that helps us achieve true unity as one beautiful, right?
00:20:39
Speaker
Diverse, multilingual body.
00:20:42
Speaker
Jesus himself was multilingual.
00:20:45
Speaker
We need to normalize multilingualism and understand that it's very common human experience.
00:20:51
Speaker
It's not exceptional.
00:20:52
Speaker
It's not different.
00:20:53
Speaker
It's not odd.
00:20:54
Speaker
And that it is not only a skill or a resume booster, but an integral part of our identities.
Global Examples of Linguistic Diversity
00:21:01
Speaker
And so once we've done that work of acknowledging those ideologies, of recognizing the history, I think that we can move forward in good faith.
00:21:10
Speaker
Well, what's happening in other countries, you've asked, right?
00:21:13
Speaker
Let's talk a bit about Papua New Guinea, which is the most linguistically diverse country in the world.
00:21:19
Speaker
So 840 languages are spoken there in a population of 11 million people.
00:21:25
Speaker
So for comparison, the U.S. ranks fifth amongst most linguistically diverse countries with 340 languages and 340 million residents.
00:21:38
Speaker
In Papua New Guinea and other countries, multilingualism is widely embraced in churches as part of religious practices.
00:21:46
Speaker
It's just normal.
00:21:47
Speaker
It's normalized, right?
00:21:50
Speaker
Worship, community engagement.
00:21:52
Speaker
So this looks like having multilingual worship music, preaching in multiple languages, code switching between different languages.
00:22:01
Speaker
So for those who are familiar with the term code switching, I'm talking about Spanglish, for example, right, in our context.
00:22:08
Speaker
They've just normalized the use of more than one language in all church affairs.
00:22:13
Speaker
And recently I gave a presentation about this very subject to a group of colleagues and students.
00:22:18
Speaker
And one of the students present there was from Indonesia.
00:22:21
Speaker
And Indonesia actually happens to be the second most linguistically diverse country in the world.
00:22:27
Speaker
And he seemed puzzled.
00:22:29
Speaker
It seems so obvious to him, right?
00:22:31
Speaker
And even the questions that the audience was asking, he was so confused.
00:22:36
Speaker
His life.
00:22:37
Speaker
He probably lived that joke, right?
00:22:39
Speaker
Oh, this monolingualism, these Americans, his life is an example of that joke.
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:44
Speaker
Yes, indeed.
00:22:46
Speaker
He said, you know, he perceived my multilingualism in society and in churches as normal.
00:22:51
Speaker
Like, this is so normal.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, you guys are way behind.
00:22:53
Speaker
What are you talking about?
00:22:56
Speaker
You know, again, I want to stress this is normal.
00:22:59
Speaker
This is not abnormal.
00:23:01
Speaker
These ideologies are important.
00:23:03
Speaker
And understanding that different languages are not disruptive to our unity.
00:23:10
Speaker
They actually help.
00:23:12
Speaker
in achieving true biblical unity.
00:23:14
Speaker
It's that picture in Revelation of everyone worshiping in their own tongue.
00:23:21
Speaker
It's not divided, but we are united together, even though it looks different from person to person.
00:23:26
Speaker
That's such a beautiful image.
00:23:29
Speaker
Hey, Sarah, if I might add to that image, I was in Spain some 15 years ago, and I went to a church that was a Brazilian diaspora church.
00:23:39
Speaker
And so a big chunk of the service was in Portuguese, but parts of it were in Spanish and parts of it were also in English.
00:23:48
Speaker
I bring that up because one of the assumptions of that service was that everyone was in the practice of learning a language.
00:23:57
Speaker
So I bring that up because in our church practice here in the U.S., we don't often think of church community as
00:24:05
Speaker
as a space or place where language formation is part of the practice.
00:24:09
Speaker
For instance, I experienced this in the U.S. accidentally.
00:24:13
Speaker
I'm Puerto Rican.
00:24:14
Speaker
I went to a Pentecostal church growing up that was primarily Puerto Ricans.
00:24:19
Speaker
And it was actually the church space that helped Spanish to survive in me, right?
00:24:25
Speaker
As schools were still operating out of that Barry Mr. Spanish mindset that Dr. Ameduri earlier raised,
00:24:34
Speaker
As schools were sort of forcing language out of a certain body of people while also encouraging a very different body of people to learn that same language, right?
00:24:42
Speaker
White students should learn a second language.
00:24:45
Speaker
Brown students should get rid of that language, right?
00:24:48
Speaker
While that was happening in school, church actually helped to keep the language alive.
00:24:52
Speaker
Most diaspora churches, like the one that I grew up with, don't often think out loud about that aspect of church experience.
00:25:01
Speaker
And yet it is an important aspect, right?
00:25:04
Speaker
The church community can, in fact, participate.
00:25:07
Speaker
Like that Brazilian church that I went to, the Brazilian Diaspora Church in Spain, the church community can actually be an implicit language teacher, right?
00:25:16
Speaker
So every time that that service, when they brought up English, it was a way of
00:25:21
Speaker
teaching some English, right?
00:25:23
Speaker
Maybe teaching an English song or a phrase that would get repeated in the church.
00:25:28
Speaker
And so one of the kind of practical things that happens beyond the regular experiences here in the U.S. is that churches become language instruction spaces.
00:25:37
Speaker
And I just want to add a comment, piggybacking on what you said, Ricky, that, you know, when Latinos speak Spanish, it's perceived as a threat to the country, right?
00:25:47
Speaker
But when white people speak Spanish, it's considered an asset.
00:25:52
Speaker
So when I share about these histories, often my white students are confused, like,
00:25:57
Speaker
What?
00:25:58
Speaker
Like, I was encouraged to learn Spanish, right?
00:26:01
Speaker
And then we hear from our Latino students and their experience was completely different given these histories.
Challenges and Importance of Language Learning
00:26:08
Speaker
That's so helpful to have that history named so that we can acknowledge it and better understand where we find ourselves today and then inform how we can move forward.
00:26:20
Speaker
So there could be some people listening to this conversation that might be thinking, okay, that sounds great.
00:26:26
Speaker
Multilingualism, that sounds great.
00:26:28
Speaker
But it also might feel a little overwhelming if we have just existed in this monolinguistic space.
00:26:34
Speaker
So kind of how do you combat that feeling of overwhelm or anxiety that might come when trying to create a more multilingual space?
00:26:45
Speaker
Yeah, so before Itzel, who's the language expert here between us, right, before she lays some groundwork for how people might say those things, it's worth noting two things.
00:26:55
Speaker
I just want to say two brief things about that.
00:26:57
Speaker
First, because churches have made language a kind of practical concern, we often don't think of church discipleship as a way of naming the kinds of histories and ideologies that we've already discussed, right?
00:27:10
Speaker
Henry Harris Jessup, one of the most famous U.S. missionaries to leave the U.S.,
00:27:15
Speaker
one time here in Chicago said, there's been no greater mission given to any other part of the church than the mission that God has given to the English-speaking part of the church, right?
00:27:25
Speaker
In other words, we are the leads in all of this, right?
00:27:28
Speaker
So churches need to do more than think of this as just a practical concern because the church has been involved in establishing the kind of language hierarchy that we've been talking about.
00:27:38
Speaker
So that's the first thing.
00:27:39
Speaker
The second thing,
00:27:40
Speaker
the very fact that our palms get sweaty and our anxieties go up when we say something like, when Dr. Meduri and I say something like, churches can be places of language learning and churches should be encouraging people to practice languages they don't yet know or control very flexibly.
00:28:02
Speaker
Whenever you say that and someone goes, oh my gosh, that's
00:28:05
Speaker
You're asking too much.
00:28:07
Speaker
That's too overwhelming.
00:28:08
Speaker
We don't have the structures.
00:28:09
Speaker
We are not ready.
00:28:10
Speaker
That would take too long.
00:28:12
Speaker
All those anxieties that come up, the very fact that those things come up, it implicitly suggests something about the history that's been shaping that person, right?
00:28:20
Speaker
To say, you've actually been shaped such that you actually think that it is more normal to struggle learning a language and that that is an impossibility.
00:28:32
Speaker
Then the idea that you can actually speak more than one language and that you can spend a life learning more than one language, gaining a few useful phrases here and there, that you don't feel uncomfortable when you can only speak a handful of phrases in a language, that that actually is kind of like, hey, I've got the gift to do that this far, right?
00:28:53
Speaker
That we don't enjoy or delight in language learning, but that our palms get sweaty, that we stutter, that
00:29:00
Speaker
that we gain an anxiety, that we're too uncomfortable to biff it, right, to stutter or say something wrong.
00:29:08
Speaker
There's something about the malformation of the U.S. at play when that comes up for us as Christians trying to navigate this in church.
00:29:17
Speaker
And to speak from my area of expertise, the theology of all of this, right, it's worth noting that
00:29:24
Speaker
Pentecostal Spanish speakers in the US and in Puerto Rico, they actually, when reading things like Acts 2, for instance, they found Acts 2 to be especially liberative to non-English speakers.
00:29:39
Speaker
So within churches and denominations that assume the language hierarchy, that assume that English was preeminent over all of the things, Spanish speakers within those denominations that had a charismatic or Pentecostal bend
00:29:53
Speaker
started to see in what happened in Acts 2, in the fact that when the Holy Spirit descended, the apostles and everyone else present stepped out onto the streets and they were sharing the message of the gospel.
00:30:04
Speaker
And those that were around that were in un-pilgrimage in Jerusalem heard the message in their tongue, is what Acts 2 says.
00:30:12
Speaker
It's not that they understood all of a sudden the classic Hebrew that might have been spoken by the apostles.
00:30:17
Speaker
It was actually the other way around, right?
00:30:19
Speaker
The apostles spoke and they heard it in their tongue, Acts 2 says.
00:30:23
Speaker
For Pentecostals, think, for instance, 1933, the revival that happened in Puerto Rico.
00:30:28
Speaker
They read something like that and go, actually, we have the right to speak our tongue.
00:30:34
Speaker
And in 1933, as part of that revival, they started creating a hymnal that was specific to the Puerto Rican Spanish being spoken, to the histories and contexts that shape them, right?
00:30:47
Speaker
to speak to hurricanes and hell crises that had affected Puerto Rico in 1932 and the years prior.
00:30:53
Speaker
The theology bit is as important as the ideology bit, right?
00:30:58
Speaker
To say, actually, there's something in our Christian tradition that prompts us, that invites us to be the kind of neighbors that will speak the tongue of the other.
00:31:09
Speaker
And for Puerto Ricans and other Latinos, this gave them a kind of liberative self-determination, the kind of agency that said,
00:31:16
Speaker
We can speak our own tongue, and that is actually good.
00:31:20
Speaker
And speaking the tongue of the other is actually part of the Christian practice of hospitality.
00:31:25
Speaker
Okay, I'm done preaching.
00:31:28
Speaker
I'm sure that there's some kind of practical groundwork that people are going to want to know.
00:31:32
Speaker
No, that's great.
00:31:35
Speaker
I don't want to dismiss the fact that learning a new language is an arduous task, right?
00:31:41
Speaker
I just want to acknowledge that it takes time, but it also helps us flex our cognitive muscle for one.
00:31:48
Speaker
Void aging, is that what you're saying?
00:31:50
Speaker
Void aging?
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:52
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:31:54
Speaker
It also helps us practice humility, right?
00:31:58
Speaker
Compassion.
00:31:59
Speaker
We become more empathetic listeners.
00:32:01
Speaker
So ironically, a lot of the people that criticize immigrants for not learning English in the time that they think they should, they're monolinguals.
00:32:11
Speaker
Right.
00:32:11
Speaker
They haven't experienced learning another language.
00:32:14
Speaker
And so they don't realize that it takes time and it takes effort and a lot of practice.
00:32:21
Speaker
And so when we enter that space of learning another language, we realize that it doesn't occur overnight.
00:32:29
Speaker
Right.
00:32:30
Speaker
We realize that we can be considered also legitimate speakers of a language without speaking as a native speaker.
00:32:37
Speaker
Can I give a quick example of that?
00:32:39
Speaker
Yes.
00:32:39
Speaker
The kind of humility that you're describing?
00:32:41
Speaker
Yes.
00:32:41
Speaker
You know, a lot of churches will do the in-ear translation thing as a kind of practical way of getting around translation.
00:32:47
Speaker
And there are very good reasons why churches have moved in that direction.
00:32:50
Speaker
I don't want to dismiss some of the economics around that and some of the challenges that come up when churches are trying to practice in a multilingual space.
00:32:58
Speaker
But one of the things that we've encouraged that world that spoke in
00:33:02
Speaker
is to do what, I don't have a better word for it, we've called it dynamic inversions, right?
00:33:06
Speaker
Where you literally flip it.
00:33:09
Speaker
And you have a Sunday where actually the least dominant language is the one that's dominant on stage, where everything is sung in Spanish, preached in Spanish.
00:33:17
Speaker
I'm using Spanish because that's the language of our context, right?
00:33:21
Speaker
And the people with the things in their ears are the ones that are the English speakers, right?
00:33:26
Speaker
And all of a sudden, they are experiencing the kind of discomfort of having the thing in their ears signal that they're not the ones that speak the language from the stage.
00:33:36
Speaker
They're experiencing the kind of awkwardness of having to hear one language in one ear while having to focus on another to understand what's happening, right?
00:33:44
Speaker
So that's some of the humility from a practical kind of discipleship perspective that churches can practice as a community that kind of gives an example of that.
00:33:54
Speaker
To offer a practical example or an idea of what can be implemented in churches, I had students, so at university context, I had students pair up with people that were learning English.
00:34:08
Speaker
So my students were learning Spanish.
00:34:11
Speaker
Their conversation partners were learning English.
00:34:13
Speaker
And so for 15 minutes, for the first 15 minutes, they would speak exclusively in Spanish.
00:34:19
Speaker
For the next 15 minutes, exclusively in English.
00:34:23
Speaker
And that helped, of course, to develop their skills, but it also put them in positions both of power in some ways and powerlessness, right?
00:34:34
Speaker
Where they felt very comfortable speaking their native tongue.
00:34:37
Speaker
And then right after they felt the discomfort that the other person felt right before, right?
00:34:43
Speaker
And
00:34:44
Speaker
Ultimately, we learn languages to be in community with one another, right?
00:34:50
Speaker
We learn languages in community.
00:34:52
Speaker
So any opportunity we can have to foster these spaces, whether it's movie nights, also getting people comfortable with just hearing other languages, moving them away from this attitude that it's threatening me or my country in some way.
00:35:11
Speaker
normalizing them listening and hearing to other languages is important.
00:35:17
Speaker
So I call this language exchange partners, where we give a language and we take a language.
00:35:23
Speaker
Churches can do that in testimony nights, right?
00:35:25
Speaker
They can have people sit down for a small group and share their testimonies in the language that they least control.
00:35:31
Speaker
Or, you know, that exact activity can be practiced in a church setting.
00:35:34
Speaker
Sorry, it's a
00:35:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:35:36
Speaker
No, no, that's great.
00:35:37
Speaker
And guess what?
00:35:38
Speaker
It's not only instrumental.
00:35:39
Speaker
It's not really like, OK, I'm just talking to this person to learn this language.
00:35:42
Speaker
I'm also connecting.
00:35:44
Speaker
I'm also connecting with that person, pursuing shalom.
00:35:47
Speaker
And I love how much of that touches on, like you've said, humility and empathy and all of these
00:35:55
Speaker
things that are so instrumental to not only the Christian walk, but to us as CCDA practitioners who are working in our communities.
00:36:05
Speaker
And I think another piece of all of this, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I am not the expert, but it sounds like all of this
00:36:13
Speaker
It takes a long time.
00:36:15
Speaker
This is not something that's going to happen overnight, just like you don't learn a language overnight.
00:36:21
Speaker
This process of going from monolingualism to multilingualism is going to take time, just like CCDA work takes time.
00:36:30
Speaker
In the CCDA communities, we talk about being in a community for a long time, for the long haul, right?
00:36:37
Speaker
And language is a part of that.
00:36:39
Speaker
No one should expect what Itzel and I are describing, the kind of multilingualism we're advocating for, to happen quickly.
00:36:47
Speaker
In fact, we've had people who have sought services from World Outspoken assume that it would happen quickly and get somewhat frustrated when they come up to the realization that this is not going to happen fast, that this needs to be a part of the long-term discipleship vision that the churches take up.
00:37:04
Speaker
When you learn a new language, you'll learn a new way of speaking about things of God, of your relationship.
00:37:11
Speaker
Perhaps certain phrases might be socially acceptable in English that are not in Spanish and vice versa, right?
00:37:20
Speaker
So we have to be aware of all these nuances.
00:37:22
Speaker
And it is not as easy as, well, I'll just use Google Translate to communicate and connect with others.
00:37:29
Speaker
So it takes a lot of time to learn a new language.
00:37:32
Speaker
We have to be benevolent listeners as well.
00:37:36
Speaker
We have to be empathetic, humble, compassionate, and realize that we miss a great opportunity when we bury these languages.
00:37:47
Speaker
Many immigrants have the great gift of being able to pass on the languages not only to their children and grandchildren, but to their neighbors as well.
00:37:57
Speaker
And if we would focus on how beautiful that is instead of, again, viewing them as threats, I think that we could do a much better job at maintaining and increasing the number of people that are raised as multilingual speakers.
Practical Steps for Integrating Multilingualism in Churches
00:38:19
Speaker
Before we wrap, I want to remind folks, some folks might be listening to this that were present at our workshop at the last CCDA conference.
00:38:27
Speaker
And we had a brother pastor from a church.
00:38:29
Speaker
I don't remember his name.
00:38:30
Speaker
Forgive me.
00:38:31
Speaker
But he raised his hand.
00:38:33
Speaker
He was like, this is not possible in my church.
00:38:36
Speaker
There's just no way.
00:38:37
Speaker
I'm never going to get up in front and preach a sermon fully in another language.
00:38:45
Speaker
That's just not going to happen.
00:38:47
Speaker
I struggle with language learning.
00:38:49
Speaker
Something like that was what he said.
00:38:51
Speaker
And I want to give a quick shout out to the senior pastor at my church, Eric Rivera.
00:38:56
Speaker
He's Puerto Rican, a couple generations into being born here in Chicago, so Spanish is not native to him in the ways that it might have been to previous generations, right?
00:39:08
Speaker
And something I love that Eric has done is he's committed to saying things like the big idea of his sermon in Spanish and in English, right?
00:39:17
Speaker
A couple key phrases that he repeats over several Sundays so that they get comfortable for him.
00:39:24
Speaker
Even those things are gains toward the vision we are describing that is a long-term discipleship vision, right?
00:39:33
Speaker
And so we're certainly not saying that even in 10 years, in 15 years, that a pastor, it would be delightful if a pastor could, in that time, take serious learning of another language, make room for it, take some kind of formal education, do some kind of immersion.
00:39:50
Speaker
Those things would be all amazing if pastors can do it.
00:39:54
Speaker
But some pastors won't be able to.
00:39:56
Speaker
So some pastors might only get as far as a kind of working knowledge of the language and the capacity to go up there and integrate the language into their sermons.
00:40:08
Speaker
Those things are testifying to the kinds of belonging to the other that I think Acts 2 invites us to, right?
00:40:16
Speaker
And so there are other glimpses of that.
00:40:19
Speaker
And I would also encourage the use of fluid language practices.
00:40:24
Speaker
So things like Spanglish, which I would say is my native language.
00:40:28
Speaker
If I could have it my way, I would always speak Spanglish in every way and context.
00:40:33
Speaker
And some people are like, whoa, like respect Spanish, right?
00:40:37
Speaker
Or respect English by only speaking.
00:40:40
Speaker
Like languages don't have feelings.
00:40:42
Speaker
We don't have to respect.
00:40:44
Speaker
We have to respect the people that speak those languages.
00:40:48
Speaker
And so many times those Spanglishes, the Kanglish, they're how people speak in our communities.
00:40:58
Speaker
And that should also be embraced and celebrated and modeled for us.
00:41:02
Speaker
Yeah, I love that.
00:41:03
Speaker
That's so great.
00:41:04
Speaker
So you guys have given us so much information to digest.
00:41:09
Speaker
We got the history of multilingualism, the theology behind why we should care about it, and some practical tools that people can start to apply to their churches, to their organizations.
00:41:23
Speaker
Are there any other
00:41:25
Speaker
tools or any other, like if somebody is listening to this and they want to take a next step, is there any other kind of thoughts or tools or steps that you think somebody can take who might just be starting out on this journey?
00:41:38
Speaker
Two things I'd say you can add as well.
00:41:41
Speaker
The first is we do have a, one of the things that World of Spoken offers is online courses that are short, they're contextual, meaning they address specific contexts that the questions emerge from.
00:41:53
Speaker
And we do have one specifically on the kinds of multilingualism that we're advocating for.
00:41:59
Speaker
The course can be found at learn.worldoutspoken.com.
00:42:04
Speaker
The course is titled Lingua Franca.
00:42:06
Speaker
So very easy, I'm sure, that we can add the link of that to the show notes and those kinds of things.
00:42:11
Speaker
But learn.worldoutspoken.com, you'll find a course that gives you even more practical tools, some exercises to practice at your church, some ways that you might start heading toward
00:42:23
Speaker
the kinds of discipleship that integrates language questions into the formation of your believers.
00:42:28
Speaker
So that's the first thing, the kind of practical thing.
00:42:31
Speaker
The second thing I want to say is for those pastors that are thinking, I just need to hire an associate pastor that speaks that language of that, you know, that other group that we're trying to read.
00:42:42
Speaker
I never want to discourage having pastors on staff that can support people.
00:42:46
Speaker
But I do want to discourage the rush to that, right?
00:42:52
Speaker
The speed to which we want to do those kinds of things.
00:42:56
Speaker
We at World Outspoken have been trying to convince, from a practical economic perspective, instead of hiring another pastor, split that salary that you would have paid that pastor and get two
00:43:09
Speaker
part-time staffers at the church that are language instructors in the two languages that, you know, are the kind of question in terms of just the two leading ones, right?
00:43:19
Speaker
So if it's Spanish and English, okay, have an English language instructor that's working part-time at the church offering classes in English to the Spanish speakers, that is still a benefit to them, right?
00:43:29
Speaker
And then have a Spanish language instructor at the church that is helping people think and practice Spanish, right?
00:43:35
Speaker
That's a very practical economic decision a church can take.
00:43:39
Speaker
before they rush to let's just get a pastor who speaks that language.
00:43:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:44
Speaker
And I want to stress again, the importance of uncovering those language ideologies, right?
00:43:50
Speaker
That have guided our thinking.
00:43:52
Speaker
So without those conversations, people might not be motivated.
00:43:56
Speaker
It takes a lot of work to learn a new language.
00:43:58
Speaker
People might not be motivated.
00:44:00
Speaker
People might not see the value of it.
00:44:03
Speaker
People might still view multilingualism as a threat.
00:44:07
Speaker
to give you a personal example, my son was about 10 years old when he told me that he didn't want to learn Spanish because he was an American.
00:44:16
Speaker
Those are his exact words.
00:44:18
Speaker
I don't want to learn Spanish.
00:44:19
Speaker
I'm an American.
00:44:19
Speaker
I don't want to speak Spanish.
00:44:20
Speaker
I'm an American.
00:44:22
Speaker
And, you know, that was offensive to me initially.
00:44:24
Speaker
Like, what do you mean?
00:44:24
Speaker
I'm a Spanish professor.
00:44:26
Speaker
Like,
00:44:27
Speaker
I told them like, el español te da de comer, like Spanish feeds you.
00:44:30
Speaker
What are you talking about?
00:44:31
Speaker
Right.
00:44:32
Speaker
In quite literal ways.
00:44:33
Speaker
But I had to take a step back.
00:44:36
Speaker
Right.
00:44:36
Speaker
Because where did this 10 year old, where did he absorb, from where did he absorb these ideologies?
00:44:44
Speaker
Right.
00:44:44
Speaker
Right.
00:44:45
Speaker
So I made very intentional moves to see, to help him see the value of knowing Spanish, to help him understand that to be considered a quote unquote American does not mean to be
00:45:01
Speaker
monolingual in the English language.
00:45:04
Speaker
And ultimately, that would fragment him not speaking Spanish would fragment his relationships with family members and people abroad.
00:45:14
Speaker
So it's very important to do that work where we're uncovering and we're helping people uncover those ideologies.
00:45:22
Speaker
That is so helpful.
00:45:24
Speaker
Those are practical steps that we can take
00:45:28
Speaker
Now.
00:45:30
Speaker
That's incredible.
00:45:30
Speaker
So thank you so much for sharing all of that breadth of information with us.
00:45:36
Speaker
And before we go, I just I want to ask one more question for both of you.
00:45:41
Speaker
So how do you see the CCD philosophy at work in your community?
00:45:46
Speaker
And
00:45:47
Speaker
Here's my curveball that I'm going to throw you guys.
00:45:49
Speaker
This is a podcast talking about multilingualism, and we've done most of it in English.
00:45:54
Speaker
So if you feel comfortable or would like, feel free to answer the question in English or Spanish or Spanglish.
00:46:00
Speaker
But how have you seen the CCD philosophy at work in your community?
00:46:05
Speaker
Pues, she made it a little tricky for us by saying, okay, it needs to be en los dos lenguajes.
00:46:12
Speaker
You don't have to, but I'm just giving you the opportunity.
Reflections and Long-term Commitment to Multilingualism
00:46:16
Speaker
I think it's fair.
00:46:16
Speaker
I like it.
00:46:17
Speaker
I like the curveball.
00:46:18
Speaker
It's always good to keep a curveball in a podcast as the host, right?
00:46:22
Speaker
You hide that until you're ready, right?
00:46:24
Speaker
It's a clever move.
00:46:25
Speaker
It's a clever move.
00:46:26
Speaker
No, creo que ya lo dije.
00:46:27
Speaker
I think I've already said it on some level.
00:46:30
Speaker
Les recuerdo que parte de la filosofía del CCDA, part of the philosophy at the CCDA, is relocation, right?
00:46:39
Speaker
Llegar a un lugar y permanecer en ese lugar por un largo periodo, come to a place and to be at that place for the long haul, right?
00:46:47
Speaker
And I think for CCD practitioners,
00:46:52
Speaker
it becomes immensely important to apply that long-form vision to questions of race generally, but questions of language specifically, right?
00:47:06
Speaker
So that we don't think we're going to overcome those ideologies that Itzel has named and those histories we've been discussing overnight.
00:47:13
Speaker
Esto se tarda y es una lucha y es parte de nuestra resistencia día a día a día over many days.
00:47:22
Speaker
Tener el entendimiento that people are not empty vessels, right?
00:47:27
Speaker
Y que las personas no son nuestros discípulos, son discípulos de Cristo, como dijo el reverendo Justo González.
00:47:37
Speaker
And so it's not only what we're bringing or offering, no, but it's truly about being in community.
00:47:45
Speaker
with one another, right?
00:47:47
Speaker
And putting ourselves in positions where we might represent the majority language, but I'm going to speak in minoritized languages, even here in the U.S., right?
00:48:00
Speaker
Where I have the privilege of I might only speak English.
00:48:05
Speaker
Muy intencionalmente ahora, I'm going to take that step y adoptar el lenguaje de nuestro prójimo.
Conclusion and Further Resources
00:48:13
Speaker
Thank you so much for sharing that.
00:48:16
Speaker
Sorry to put you on the spot.
00:48:17
Speaker
Oh, Sarah, wait, wait, wait.
00:48:18
Speaker
You don't get away with it by yourself.
00:48:20
Speaker
You got to say some things in Spanish too now.
00:48:23
Speaker
Lo siento.
00:48:26
Speaker
No habla español.
00:48:28
Speaker
I'm learning very slowly.
00:48:32
Speaker
It is actually one of my goals of 2025 to finally learn Spanish.
00:48:37
Speaker
That was not the language that I took in high school.
00:48:40
Speaker
And so that is one of my goals for 2025, even before we started talking about having this conversation on the podcast.
00:48:47
Speaker
So we'll talk at the conference and hopefully I will be able to actually speak some Spanish phrases.
00:48:55
Speaker
All right.
00:48:56
Speaker
I'll see you in Grand Rapids.
00:48:58
Speaker
And it takes a lot of courage, I want to say.
00:49:01
Speaker
It takes a lot of courage to learn Spanish, to learn another language, especially as an adult, right?
00:49:07
Speaker
I started learning Italian as an adult and I wanted to tell people, I promise I'm smart.
00:49:14
Speaker
I just don't sound smart in this language.
00:49:18
Speaker
So that again, the humility and just, you know, courage and love to be able to speak to people
00:49:26
Speaker
to a community of speakers that doesn't represent your community or where you're not truly comfortable in.
00:49:32
Speaker
If people are wanting to connect with you more on this topic or more of your work, is there anywhere that they can go to find more?
00:49:42
Speaker
We will include the link to that World Outspoken course in the show notes, but is there any other way that people can connect with you and your work?
00:49:50
Speaker
Folks can check out World Outspoken on social media, at least the millennial social medias.
00:49:54
Speaker
I'm not on TikTok and neither is World Outspoken, sadly.
00:49:59
Speaker
Yeah, you can follow World Outspoken on social media.
00:50:01
Speaker
You can always contact us using the contact us page on our website, worldoutspoken.com.
00:50:07
Speaker
World as in globe, outspoken as in someone who's got something to say.com.
00:50:12
Speaker
Those are the easiest ways.
00:50:14
Speaker
We are constantly doing workshops and trainings around this issue.
00:50:17
Speaker
So you can be kind of following Itzel and I on social media as well.
00:50:22
Speaker
where we'll sort of share where we are, what we're up to.
00:50:25
Speaker
And so those are the easiest ways.
00:50:28
Speaker
If people want to get more resources from us, I encourage them to contact us.
00:50:31
Speaker
We would love to support you as you head toward the vision we've been describing.
00:50:36
Speaker
Awesome.
00:50:36
Speaker
And all of those links are in the show notes of this episode.
00:50:40
Speaker
So be sure to follow World Outspoken for more just awesome content and training and practical tools that you can apply to your context.
00:50:49
Speaker
So thank you so much for listening to the CCDA podcast.
00:50:52
Speaker
Ricky and Itzel, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.
00:50:55
Speaker
It was so rich, informative.
00:50:58
Speaker
Thank you for being here.
00:50:59
Speaker
Thanks for having us.
00:51:01
Speaker
If you'd like to learn more about CCDA and get involved, check out the show notes of this episode.
00:51:06
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.
00:51:12
Speaker
This episode is produced by me, Sarah Callen, in association with Christina Fore.
00:51:17
Speaker
We will be back soon with another episode featuring CCD practitioners who are committed to seeing people and communities experience God's shalom.
00:51:26
Speaker
We'll see you then.