Local pastor teaches class on “Understanding Cultural Differences”

During his time in Billings, Montana, he taught classes for more than a decade with the aim of bringing people from different cultural backgrounds together – of teaching them how much more alike than different they were.

The pastor is now doing something very similar in Cheyenne. In two weeks, McClendon will kick off the November installment of “Understanding Cultural Differences,” a class he’s teaching through Laramie County Community College’s Life Enrichment program, which holds noncredit classes for community members. McClendon’s class will run for an hour and a half on two consecutive Tuesday nights, Nov. 15 and 22. Attendees can participate in a potluck on Nov. 22.

“I know I can teach this. I can teach this because I lived it,” he said in a recent interview with the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. “I lived it each and every day.”

McClendon is also the Cheyenne Police Department’s chaplain and president of the United Christian Minsters Alliance, a group made up of Cheyenne’s Black pastors.

In March, McClendon pulled together several local leaders for what they called a ”unity forum.” They each spoke briefly about the need to combat discrimination in the city.

The forum was sparked by then-recent debate over an anti-bias city ordinance aimed at preventing identity based-harassment, which ultimately passed, as well as stories from U.S. Air Force families stationed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base who said they’d experienced racism in Cheyenne.

In a column from late September, Mayor Patrick Collins said an Air Force commander had informed him a fourth family had relocated from Cheyenne to another base “because their children have been routinely racially harassed at school.”

Before and during this spring’s unity forum, McClendon vowed to keep the conversation going.

This class, he said, is just the beginning of the fulfillment of that promise. He said he’s also been asked by businesses and other churches to teach similar workshops.

It is open to all members of the public and free of charge. (A catalog for fall classes lists the fee for McClendon’s class as $20, but LCCC’s program manager for Life Enrichment, Christie Goertel, said the course fee was later waived.)

“Even though we have differences, we are much alike,” the class’s tagline reads.

“I’ve come to the conclusion of, we can talk all day long, but let’s come together and fellowship and get to know each other, and then get an understanding,” McClendon said.

The pastor begins the class with two songs: “Bleed the Same” and “What the World Needs Now.” Each is an example of the message McClendon wants to convey to students.

The basis of the class, he said, is that coming together as people from different backgrounds and reducing division requires honesty.

Without honesty, there can be no change and no true dialogue, which is the key to breaking down prejudices each of us holds, the pastor explains in class materials. Prejudices – whether they are held knowingly or unknowingly – can lead to discrimination on the basis of things like race, age, gender, sexual orientation and other identities.

McClendon also talks about why culture is so important in human life, why cultural diversity makes society stronger, and how people can grow their “cultural intelligence.” He also warns against casting all members of a particular group in the same light.

“Understanding different cultures is not only critical, but it also promotes ample coexistence. As we learn about diverse cultures, it is worth noting that all of us are individuals,” he writes. “Rather than generalizing, we should treat each other as individuals.”

Life Enrichment’s Goertel said McClendon approached LCCC with the desire to create and teach a course with the theme of cultural diversity.

In an earlier version of the class, held in mid-October, McClendon said he had participants do hands-on exercises and, above all, encouraged conversation.

“We just don’t always see the other person’s experiences and where they’re coming from,” Goertel told the WTE. “Whether it’s women or it’s based on, you know, economic status, or based on racial background or religion, you’d be hard pressed to find everybody agreeing. ... Connecting with people one on one, I think, is the better way to really overcome that.”

Goertel said LCCC plans to have McClendon back for its spring Life Enrichment series to teach the same class.