Emerging Africa

I'm posting this on Luc's behalf (I hope he doesn't mind! Donate to his cause here!). It's an update that appeared here. Luc is on staff at Nieu Communities in Pretoria, South Africa.

The most intriguing conversation for me was on Transformational Gospel vs. the Evacuation Gospel. The Gospel I learned is of Evacuation. I learned that all that matters in my life is where I end up after I die. My daily needs do not matter and don’t need to be addressed because if I do a certain number of things and live in a certain way, I will go to heaven, which is the only thing to look forward to. This is the kind of gospel I identify with and I have learned to live by unsuccessfully. I learned that a Christian is a person who is living on earth waiting to be evacuated to heaven after he/she dies. This Gospel of Evacuation is being ineffective in my society, and I would suspect in the whole world. It addresses the ultimate question of the end of life while ignoring the daily necessities of living humans. Questions of poverty, racism, AIDS, genocide, war, natural and unnatural calamities, bad governance and structural injustice are not considered as territories the Gospel has a say into. An ordinary African grapples with questions that the Gospel cannot address. He/she would have to wait to be evacuated to fulfill his/her desire, goal and needs. This kind of Gospel is clearly frustrating, depressing and irrelevant in our society, yet that is the only thing we know.

There surely is a need for a Gospel that would speak into both the questions of necessity and the ultimate question, a Gospel that will be transformational. This is the challenge that was given to all of us African leaders present at that conference by an African.

Africans need to live out the Gospel in a way that is relevant to their society, in a way that would build their communities. It seems like Christians are a group of elite who do their own things that could be for or against the society. African Christians should now think about a theology that is for their families, their communities and societies. Their faith should contribute to the development of their communities. Their theology should be holistic and Good News to our brothers and sisters.

In this era of Postmodernism where pluralism is in the headlines, African Christians should be okay to be different from others. Their theologies should strive to be contextual, situational and relevant to their communities. Africans inherited a Gospel that was contextualized in the Western culture. They adopted it as it was taught and learned to live it out. It worked out most of the time and sometimes not. It is now important that African Christians come up with an authentic theology that would cover all the grounds of their realities. It is even more accurate to talk about African authentic theologies because people live in different contexts on the continent.

As an African leader, my challenge is to build my family and community. Being theologically right in the face of the world should not be my priority anymore. I am called to being good news to my community. And this means different things to different people. My African society places a high value in family, community and harmony. Trying to connect these values to the church planting movement that I have experienced, it feels like most of the churches I know, were planted as a reaction to something wrong that happened in the previous congregation the people belonged to. A group of them chose to quit and form a better group instead of resolving the conflict and bringing harmony to the group. The ecumenical movement hasn’t been fruitful yet in our continent, because there is still a lot of congregations that still believe that they detain the Truth. Churches are often seen as a sample of how intrinsically divided Africa is. In a society where harmony is valued and seen as a way of building the community, Christian groups are not seen as an ideal venue for edification.

Contextual theology should be on the front page of the agenda of African leaders. This new direction adds another dimension to discipleship, which is often seen as bringing people to become followers of Jesus. We now need to be followers of Jesus who are Good News to our communities. We need to be those who proactively participate in building and developing the communities God has placed us into.

I left the conference being both challenged and encouraged. My salvation should imply the salvation of my community in a holistic way. I need to strive to be Good News in my context. And context changes. This put me in a continual learning posture of what is needed and how God wants to use me. The encouragement is that I should be okay to be different. My context should dictate the way I follow Jesus.

I would like to thank all of you for your financial support that allowed me to attend the Amahoro conference. I appreciate your faithfulness and continued trust in how God is using me. May the Almighty bless your hearts!
Peace (=Amahoro),
Luc