Emerging Africa

In his book A new kind of Christianity Brian McLaren poses 10 questions that he thinks Christians should be asking.

1. What is the overarching story line of the Bible?

2. How should the Bible be understood?

3. Is God violent?

4. Who is Jesus and why is he important?

5. What is the Gospel?

6. What do we do about the Church?

7. Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?

8. Can we find a better way of viewing the future?

9. How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?

10. How can we translate our quest into action?

Some time ago some people said they would like to know more of the history of the apartheid period and Christian responses to it. So I've been writing a series of "Tales from Dystopia" for anyone whose interested in that sort of thing, and the latest in the series is Tales from Dystopia V: Sophiatown and ethnic cleansing on my Khanya blog.

This post is very much like the original purpose of a blog -- an annotated log of web sites visited. This one is copied from my Khanya blog

When I first encountered the Emerging Church movement about four years ago I was puzzled about what it was. Today I encountered one of the best descriptions I've seen: Some thoughts on the definition of 'emerging church':

Reclaiming the Mission: Why is the Emergent/Missional Church So White?:The lack of diversity in the Missional Church (and for that matter the Emerging Church) is a main topic at this year’s Missional Learning Commons coming up here the first week of January in Ft. Wayne.

That blog post is well worth reading, and I think it could lead to some discussion here, if we ask how true it is of Southern Africa, and what it means in this part of the world.

So here's my comment on that post - what do others think?

Matt Stone has just been reading Scot McKnight's summary of the Three Central Missional Conversations according to Alan Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren. Matt's transliteration:

Conversation 1: Understanding the West is now a mission field

Conversation 2: Rethinking the gospel in terms of God's mission

Conversation 3: Recasting the church as a contrast community

And Scot's addition:

Conversation 4: It's home brewed nature

And my response:

I suppose I'm sufficiently postmodern to want to question 2 and 3. I don't understand 4.

Concerning 1 - when *wasn't* the West a mission field?

My blogging friend Matt Stone of Glocal Christianity tagged me: Summarise the Bible in five statements, the first one word long, the second two, the third three, the fourth four and the last five words long. Or possibly you could do this in descending order. Tag five people.

My answer is on my blog at The Bible in five statements, and I've tagged five specific people there, but since no one has posted anything in a fortnight, I thought it might prompt some action if I posted it here with an open tag and said anyone can have a go.

Well, Frank Viola has been and gone. I understand he's an emerging church fundi, so did anyone go to hear him? Can anyone give a summary of what he said, and whether or not you found it useful?

Hey everyone,

Ok, this may seem like a shameless plug for my story published at The Times titled "The African Way" (in a way, it is), but the story was written out of the Amaharo conference and the discussions there on post-colonialism etc., so I thought it may be of interest to you guys.

Read it at The Times Live.

Things seem to be very quet here, so how about stirring them up with a discussion on Christian piracy. Check out that series of posts and discuss them here?

Last night I spoke about how our suburb is changing, but not our church. In the Afrikaans South-African story, churches became the last place of safety and comfort. Apart from our high-tech security that changed our streets into base camps and our houses into prisons, the church became that one place where everything must be familiar and predictable.

We do this with language and cultural theology.

The idea is (although we don’t admit it) that when outsiders stumble in, only those that look, think and talk like us will come again. The rest must keep on looking for a church with people of their kind.