Student opinion: The CQ Assessment
With the increase of woke-ism and liberal agendas, some language regarding the understanding of different cultures could lead to uncomfortable responses from those who remain uncertain about politics in conjunction with their faith. The Left consistently pushes unhealthy division by recognizing differences between one American and the other. This goal of theirs spurs a conundrum in the minds of those who desire the recognition of differences but seeks the opposite effect.
One of the things that proved difficult for me to grasp was the CQ test. A CQ test, as derived from IQ, assesses your cultural intelligence. Placing things in perspective, I grew up in upstate New York in a small town where finding a cow on the road was a regular occurrence. I’ve never traveled outside of the country, and the farthest west I’ve been is to Nashville, Tennessee.
From this information, you could likely gather, “This guy’s CQ must be embarrassingly low.” You would be totally correct. I only experienced one culture growing up — blue collar and white. While this isn’t inherently a problem, I honestly lacked healthy experience with differing cultures.
When I took the CQ assessment for the first time as a Resident Assistant at Liberty University, I remember immediate discouragement and a growing distaste for the test. I thought, “How useless could an assessment be? I’m an intentional person, but this test may as well tell me I’m a racist.”
My thought process was surely mistaken. As I learned more about the goal of the CQ test, I understood the usefulness it can prove for the mission field. As a Christian, I’m called to meet the lost where they’re at so the gospel can be shared on a personal level.
When a believer shares the gospel from a distant perspective, the message loses its personability. The lost need to see Christ through his people, and if I don’t show personability to someone I’m sharing the gospel with, I lack effectiveness in that conversation. While Scripture tells us the gospel itself is sufficient to save lives, this gospel must be clearly evident in the lives of those saved by Christ. The Cultural Intelligence Center didn’t design the assessment directly for this purpose. The mission statement for the test is to “assess and improve effectiveness in culturally diverse situations.”
The assessment supplies realistic results centering around personal adjustment and adaptability, judgment and decision-making, negotiation effectiveness, trust, idea-sharing and innovation, leadership effectiveness, profitability and cost savings.
From a Christian perspective, this assessment allows passionate missionaries to look at their possible effectiveness within a specific culture. Cultures from over 100 countries are gathered to form the test, which offers even better results for anyone interested in entering the field. Before traveling to another country, missionaries are typically trained by churches or outside organizations. After the training, looking at a prospective missionary’s CQ could save time and energy on whether the preparation paid off.
Understanding culture is what Christ calls us to as believers so that every person may hear the gospel. Romans 10:14 says, “How will they believe in him whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”
The lost around the globe need to hear the gospel so that they may believe in the savior who died on a cross for the sake of his father’s kingdom. The CQ assessment should be used as a tool for increasing the effectiveness of that preaching.
DuVall is the opinion editor for the Liberty Champion. Follow him on Twitter
