Emerging Africa

I had the good fortune of attending the Amahoro Conference in Kigali, Rwanda, from 19-23 May and wanted to share how for me it captured so much of what I believe the Emerging Africa conversation is all about.

- It involved listening to a lot of stories from ordinary people
- It involved listening to stories from marginalised people
- There were strong African women leaders and speakers
- We spent a lot of time in small groups discussing the implications of what we heard for our own contexts
- There were VERY few talks and almost none of the talks were speechy/preachy
- We shared spiritual practices such as communion together
- We worshipped together in unexpected, non-traditional ways
- There was a lot of sharing of our lives with each other

How do we integrate our minds and hearts and spirituality holistically when we engage our faith?

It seems really easy in Christian circles to engage our heads in discussion, in exegesis of the Word, in analyzing and studying different concepts and terminology. In small groups, we can begin to explore issues of the heart and share of our personal lives. But that part of us that deeply connects with God (our spirituality?) so often seems to remain a private affair, divorced from the other head and heart stuff.

In 2001 I visited a missionary in Paraguay who was doing some tremendously interesting things in a little town in Paraguay. This missionary worked as a vet and through his work made friends with local people in and around the town. He developed friendships with some and they became interested in the Bible. They started reading the Bible together on an irregular basis. After some time these new friends asked Dave if they couldn't start reading the Bible together on a more regular basis. As they read through the New Testament they started asking Dave if they couldn't start a church and what should it look like. Dave's response in every case was that they should decide based on what they read in the Bible and what they thought would be the right thing to do.

My last blog entry discussed some ways in which the emerging conversation in South Africa has become many of the things we criticize the mainstream church for being, and that the emerging Africa site doesn’t represent the desired or actual emerging Africa conversation. At the end of that entry some people asked, what should we do? Arthur made the great suggestion of taking the conversation further, with people over coffee, with people who might not have access to this blog or who might not already be part of the conversation.

In this post I’d like to suggest a couple of very practical changes I suggest could happen to this site (some of which I already discussed with Roger!).

I’m just coming out of a phase of disappointment with the emergent movement in South Africa (as I’ve experienced it) and wanted to share some of those on this site for us to think around and perhaps to watch out for.

Some of the claims I’ve heard emergents in South Africa make are around being inclusive, culture-sensitive and reaching to the poor. I’ve heard emergents in South Africa critique mainstream churches for being building-bound, program-obsessed, expert-driven and inner-looking.

I’m reading Brian McLaren’s 'The Secret Message of Jesus' and I am finding it really difficult to connect with his writing. The only other book of his that I’ve read is 'A New Kind of Christian' which I connected with much more. I’ve been trying to identify why I don’t connect with this more recent book, and I think the thing for me is where the latter book described a journey the former discusses ideas.

This is purely a technical post with a technical question/comment... Every now and then I get sent an email through this site. Often I can't reply as the sender hasn't 'okayed' the setting for receiving emails back. (Greg - I do remember you, would love to reply, can't for the above reason and no, I don't have skype!). Is there anything I can do in this situation from my side?

Thanks, and you're still doing a great job Roger! When will we see you in PTA again??

So we had a great weekend at Neiu Communities, Pangani over this past weekend (1-3 September) with Alan and his wife, Debs.

Alan co-authored the book 'The Shaping of Things to Come' which examines where the church is now, where it could be and how it might get there.

It was a relaxed time together, where Alan talked to the 20-odd of us that were there around the most (or only?) growing church on the planet, which is the Chinese church. We looked at how a church that had no buildings, theologians, prominant leaders, big group gatherings, easily circulating Christian literature etc etc still had the fastest growing church.

Some ideas as to why this was the case included the tight communities that were formed, the focussing on core rather than peripheral issues, the success of the small group with one hundred percent buy-in and participation as opposed to big groups with a lot of pew warmers, and, most importantly, an absolute focus on Jesus as the centre and starting point of everything.

A group of ‘missional leaders’ from around the country met in Melville for a couple of days last week to discuss the emerging conversation in South Africa, with Tony Jones, coordinator of the emergent conversation in the US, in attendance. I’m hesitant to say too much about it as I wouldn’t want my view to become any sort of ‘official version’ of events. For more on my experience of the two days’ conversation one can visit http://allaboutcori.blogspot.com and for Tony Jones reflections of his visit to SA so far, one can visit http://www.emergentvillage.com.

I just want to highlight a couple of things from our conversation, though. The first is that I had the strong sense from both Tony and the disparate crowd of twenty or so who were there (from a variety of denominational backgrounds) that the emerging conversation never started and has not been taken up here by any desire to start a new movement, to kick against an old movement, or to create a new denomination, church or doctrine. In fact, a characteristic of the typical person participating in the emerging conversation is desperation; as I wrote on my blog: desperately wanting to follow Jesus but desperately not knowing how in the current church reality. Thus the question arose, are there perhaps other ways of being Christian?

I'm busy reading Brian McLaren's 'A New Kind of Christian' (my first introduction to McLaren!). In the light of that, emergent thinking generally, and my philosophy that we need to acknowledge our shared humanity over and above our differences ... I've been wondering what I would answer to the question: Are you first a Christian or first a part of our 'shared humanity'. In other words, do I primarily find my identity in Jesus or in being part of this 'human community'. It seems more important to me that we find a meeting point in the turmoil of the human condition than that I identify myself as a follower of Jesus, as separate from people walking on a different journey in a different direction. Is emphasising our shared humanity a humanist idea or a deeply Biblical one?

A have a feeling that Neo (from McLaren's book) or others entrenched in emergent thinking might gently ask me at this point, "But wasn't Jesus human? Wasn't he part of the 'turmoil of the human condition'?"