The Rio Texas Annual Conference’s Mission Vitality Center is embracing new processes and procedures to increase cultural competency through Cultural System Management Inc. (CSM), an international consultant for organizations. When the Mission Vitality Center interacts with the mission field and when people from different cultures come together, everyone needs help in understanding their differences in order move forward together. Not only do leaders need to work hand-in-hand and side-by-side with people whose upbringing and life experiences are different, we also find out ourselves reaching out in mission to people with different cultural norms and expectations.

Director of Outreach Vitality Abel Vega, was fortunate to connect with Alberto Garcia-Jurado. Garcia-Jurado is an internationally known expert in Multicultural Collaboration. Members of the District Strategy Teams from the seven Rio Texas Districts had a chance to hear from him at a presentation earlier this year. 

As this work was begun, Mission Vitality Center Executive Director Rev. Dr. Ruben Saenz, raised the question, "How can we, as annual conference staff, lead this work, if we are not working together as effectively as possible?" 

Fortunately, Alberto Garcia-Jurado was ready and willing to help with that as well through his work at CSM. 

His team at CSM has helped small businesses and large corporations like Microsoft become more efficient and effective in their work through collaboration systems that give workers a common language that crosses barriers of culture, hierarchy, and personality. 

Garcia-Jurado recently presented his initial diagnostic of the Mission Vitality Center to the staff. The staff was excited to hear his findings and learn about the next steps for working together as a collaborative team. 

Rev. Will Rice, Director of Communications for the Rio Texas Annual Conference said, "It is incredibly exciting to work with Alberto. His knowledge and experience will enable our conference to greatly improve our effectiveness. His collaboration system model is going to enable us do even more in our mission to empower local churches to reach the mission field through creating vital congregations, raising up vital leaders and engaging in vital missions."