Emerging Africa

Following my previous post, I would like to bring these next powerfull words to our conversation.
Im not one to just forward any and every email and document I receive. I do however think that this might be a modern-day version of Martin Luther’s 95 theses.
Make the effort to read through it – and let the Word (who is a Person) speak to you….

(CHECK OUT: http://ajesusmanifesto.wordpress.com/
We also suggest listening to the YouTube song Give Me Jesus while reading this manifesto.

A Magna Carta
for Restoring the Supremacy of
Jesus Christ
a.k.a.
A Jesus Manifesto
for the 21st Century Church
by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola

Christians have made the gospel about so many things … things other than Christ.

I read this article by Dan Kimball today.
Food for thought!
You can read the original at http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2009/spring/doitdon%27tblogit.html?start=1

I was a guest speaker at a church, waiting for my time to go up to the platform. That's when I saw something curious. The staff person responsible for coordinating the worship service was busy typing away on her laptop. Perhaps a last minute change to the PowerPoint, I thought. But as I walked behind her, I saw that she was consumed with typing a message on someone's Facebook wall. It felt out of place to me, given that she was the person responsible for leading God's people in worship but she seemed mentally someplace else.

I am so grateful to be able to write this post. A week ago my wife and I, together with 2 other friends, had dinner at friends home, and were involved in an armed burglary.

I have written about this on www.roadtalk.blogspot.com but would love to share our story with this community...

What would happen if we removed the "check and balances" of the hell from our theology? How would we live if we removed the fear of punishment from our view of spirituality. Dallas Willard writes in his book "The divine conspiracy" that we have reduced the good news Gospel-story to sin management. Its all about sinning less and less. Which leaves us with very boring lives - lives that isnt really so much filled with anything, rather just empty of certain things. I've heard Erwin McManus say that certain fires can be put out with water, sand, etc. But some fires can only be extinguished by another fire that is burning on another fuel. I think something beautiful happen when we are freed from our sinful nature, and we can live in the identity of how God created us to be.

At times the gap between what we imagine church can be and what it has become is so frustrating. There is so much going on in church that is driven more by an industrial-modern model than an organic way of being church. Church has bought into the concept of consumerism – offering products and spiritual goods for spiritual clients. We are so far away from really being communities of Jesus’ disciples who is out to change the world. We are happy enough just to attend church on Sunday, get our “fix” and “go on” with our lives. How can we get people to really follow Jesus, to be radical followers of Him?

Another way I think we have bought into the industrial model is that we think that a one church can be adequate for very different people. Because we few church from a purely organizational metaphor, we believe that a church can grow without any end. When we think of church in terms of an organization we assume that a church can continue to expand as long as it has strong leadership, healthy finances, etc. A company (or church) can expand its numbers with more and better products, services and programmes for potential consumers. As long as there is a demand, the company can expand. And the thinking goes that one size fits all.

HI!The month of May/June was a memorable, and ultimately life-changing, one for me! On the 25th of May I got married to the most beautiful woman in the world (really, you should check out the photos!). We spend two amazing weeks' together on honeymoon! Thank you for all the emails and sms'!

So the movie-version of the controversial book "The Da Vinci Code" at last hit the big screen. I read the book over a year ago, and thoroughly enjoyed the STORY. The movie wasnt took bad, but I think the book was better...Yup I am not one of those guys that want to speak about something which I havent experienced myself....

Hi! Recently I had this idea/brainwave/stirring in my mind/heart/soul as to what the source of my frustrations with the church might be. Let me state from the start that I do not think that the church is everything it could/should/ought to BE. There is much to be learned/de-learned and re-learned. Part of my involvement with this blog, is to try and imagine what a new kind of church would BE like where new kind of Christians would be part of.

Was it Gandhi who said that we must become the change we seek? I sometimes wonder if that might not be were part of my frustrations comes from. May it be that when I/we look at where we as a church is missing the point, we do it because it is easier to look to something outward and not at ourselves? May it be that when I am frustrated at how little the church resembles the church in Acts, or how few people really live as disciples of Jesus, that it might be that I am not living it myself? When I critize the shallowness of "community" is it a reflection of my own unwillingness to open my lives to others?

During last week's MissioNet Brian suggested that we should rethink the "Kingdom of God" metaphor. He writes in an article for SOjo-magazine (which is mentioned elsewhere on emergentaffrica.com) that "when Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God, his language was charged with urgent political, religious, and cultural electricity. But if we speak of the kingdom of God today, the original electricity is largely gone, and in its place we often find a tired familiarity that inspires not hope and excitement, but anxiety and boredom."

I have suggested on www.roadtalk.blogspot.com that we work with the metaphor of "Tribe" as I think that it indegenious. I think however that the metaphor is limited when it comes to the general western mindset.

Brian have suggested a few alternatives, but would lov

Reading and thinking about what Brian and others are saying about new ways of being church, and the emerging culture, strucks a deep chord within me. There is a growing realization that church could and should be more than an hour's service on a Sunday, a smallgroup on Wednesday and being on a few committees. There is a call to again be an organic movement of people following in the Way of Jesus.

As I've said in my previous entries - I am not interested in new ways of DOING church. It's about BEING church in our emerging world - which would then lead to new ways of doing things.

The task at hand at times seem too big, too complex. The attractional, modern church is so ingrained in our thinking that it is difficult to imagine what a new kind of church would like. How can one be incarnational and still be inclusive and open? How does one make the change to become missional?

Maybe there is someone with advice, ideas, who is on the road of turning a congregatrion around? Would love to hear from you and start a conversation? Maybe Brian can help?

Recently I havde done some hard thinking of what I believe, who I am and what I do. To really be true to that which God is calling me, I have to look at my own context and how the gospel can be good news to it.

I am a white South African 24 year old male, and my grandparents’ generation and before that was responsible for the pain and destruction of the apartheid ideology and practices. I grew up with a feeling and sense of superiority over black, Indian and coloured people. “We” were better than “them”, and “they” where portrait as the enemy (something to which the “we” and “them” language is prone to do.) When we then did outreaches to the townships etc it was to calm our conscience and we were going to help the “barbarians”. We were the boss (in the native Afrikaans language – “baas”” and they were the slaves.