FutureChurch

Amahoro: a gathering exploring post-colonial Christianity in Africa

Roger Saner — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:03:03 +0000

2010 is a big year for us South Africans - World Cup and all. It's also the 4th Amahoro Gathering, in Mombasa from May 3 - 10. I've been to two Amahoro Gatherings and have found them immensely significant, since Amahoro is on the other side of the coin to the emerging conversation (taking place in Western contexts) as it looks at the impact of the colonial narrative on the Gospel, and where that leaves us now.

Brian McLaren spoke about "Post-modern and post-colonial": two sides of the same coin, in Johannesburg just before the first Amahoro Gathering, in 2007. It's one of the 3 best talks I heard that year.

There are many things I like about Amahoro: the family reunion feel, the people, the diversity, the topics we address, and that we're taking theology developed in Africa by Africans seriously. Kenzo Mabiala is the resident theologian of Amahoro; he completed his doctorate under D.A. Carson before returning to the Congo to head up a theological college.

Carson asked him why he was interested in the emerging church conversation (primarily happening in the West), and Kenzo answered that the emerging church is asking the right questions.

For more information: The Amahoro website.

And now to encouraging comments on this post: why is it important to understand how the Gospel was shaped by the rise of the colonialism, and what are the implications for those who live in post-colonial contexts?

The emerging church blends into the mainstream?

Roger Saner — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:37:34 +0000

I like Andrew Jones. He's a missionary who's been around for ages, and probably has the most complete history of the emerging church movement (blogged, not in a book).

I'd like to draw a few quotes from him, firstly from Emerging Church Movement (1989 - 2009)?:

"In my opinion, 2009 marks the year when the emerging church suddenly and decisively ceased to be a radical and controversial movement in global Christianity. In many places around the world, the movement has already been either adopted, adapted, or made redundant through the traditional church catching up or duplicating EC efforts."

"In 2009, the emerging church either grew up, stopped being offensive, switched gear from experimental to normal, became the new mainstream, or a bit of each."

Andrew fleshes it out a bit more in his 10 types of emerging church that will no longer upset your grandfather, which he lists as:

Culture-based communities
GenX, Postmodern, and "Emergent"
The new-monastic orders and intentional communities, as well as Celtic churches
House churches, simple churches, organic churches
Cyberchurch and virtual online communities
Alternative worship/fresh expression/new-liturgical churches
Pub churches and coffee shop churches
The contemplative prayer movement
Christians who dont go to church, sometimes called "Churchless" Christians" or "believers who don't belong"
Social enterprises leading to missional communities

Andrew is wondering what the contribution of the emerging church is now, or if its contribution has already been made (by affecting the mainstream) and that now there isn't a necessity for its existence.

I've always thought that the value of the emerging church conversation is because it operates at a higher/more abstract/more general level than theology/church/practice. The conversation (at its best) is about how we have a conversation with others who are different to us, about how we hold our faith, about how we approach our theology, and about how the bigger stories which we live within shape us and our faith.

I'm glad the conversation has helped contribute to new forms of church, but the conversation isn't done.

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church

How faith is different from action

Roger Saner — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:17:03 +0000

Telling someone to simply believe and it will be so seems problematic to me, and an awful lot like The Secret. Initially it might seem like an encouragement to believe in the power of G-d as a demonstration of childlike faith and a refutation to the wisdom of the world because we are entering into a trusting relationship with G-d the same way a child would. However, if/when G-d doesn't do what the person is trusting Him to do, the person is left to draw the following conclusions: either G-d doesn't love me (or worse), or I do not have enough faith (because "he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind" - James 1:6), or G-d is saying "No" or "Not yet."

None of these are good options, except perhaps the last one, which at least assumes that the person has a strong enough frame of belief to know that G-d loves them and that they have enough faith.

In addition, we cannot have faith that G-d will help bring about what we're asking for without us doing something to help bring it about ourselves. I do not understand why some Christians say that "God does all of the work; we do none of it." I do not know why these same Christians pray, "Thine Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven," as if the only role of the Church is to pray for G-d's kingdom to come on earth while doing nothing to help usher that kingdom in themselves.

I define faith as the hope that G-d is who He says He is and He will do what He says He will do (filtered through subjectivity and postmodern criticism, of course). I do not see faith as something to be employed in asking for a skill which G-d then imparts, which is why we make a category mistake if we pray, "Lord, help me score 100 runs today," when we haven't been to cricket practice in 3 years! It's also a category mistake thinking it's "faith" to ask G-d for knowledge: "Lord, give me the knowledge to pass my maths exam." (Pity, that last one - maybe I wouldn't have failed 2nd year maths at varsity then!).

So what is faith, then? "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." - Hebrews 11:1. Faith is a belief, and as such is operating at a higher logical level than an intervention (which is a skill), which is why we can involve G-d (via faith) in a modality (like coaching or therapy) and have that process be consistent with Christianity.

Prayer is an action we can take which can be imbued with faith (again, they're operating at two different levels).

Now, if only there was a model we could use to explain this...

Modalities of (transformative) intervention

Roger Saner — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:22:03 +0000

Continuing from my last post on transformation I'd like to suggest that are different methods of intervention (or "modalities") when we're talking about a person intervening (professionally) with another person/s. These are: training, consulting, therapy, mentoring, coaching.

Consulting is when I have the skills and am hired to do the job (and there's no imparting of skills/knowledge).
Training is when I can't necessarily do it, but can show other people how to do it (like an international rugby coach who's an excellent coach but hasn't played at international level before).
Mentoring is when I know how to do it, and I show you how to do it, ideally by walking alongside you for a period of time.
Therapy is when some part of you needs healing, and we fix it.
Coaching is the process of answering the question, "What do you want, and how will you get there?"

(Note: these are the definitions I use, and I've heard plenty of others use some of these words interchangeably, so feel free to disagree with my usage).

I've listed some modalities of professional interventions above (if you'd like to add anything to the list please do so in the comments) which I hope makes the following point: when somebody wants to be transformed, it's important to know which modality is appropriate to use.

For instance, asking someone the core coaching question, "What are you going to do about that?" when they've just uncovered a traumatic childhood memory is an inappropriate application of the wrong tool - therapy would be better suited to address that issue.

Or making sure you've trained someone to have the skill of presenting better without addressing their beliefs around their capability when in front of an audience (which a good coach would check) might impart the skill, but do nothing to ensure the person actually ends up presenting!

Which brings me back to the role of G-d in transformation. Assuming that G-d has some influence on the process (i.e. it's not something that lies 100% with us), how might we address the question of faith? Is faith about believing that what we want is in accordance with G-d's will and will therefore come to pass? And what is the relationship between faith and transformation?

Technorati Tags: coaching consulting God intervention mentoring therapy training Transformation

Transformation - two approaches

Roger Saner — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:57:30 +0000

The whole concept of "transformation" has fascinated me for a while now. To transform is to make a thorough or dramatic change in the form, appearance, or character of something. The field of personal development is focused on personal transformation and many Christians speak about transformation: of people, of society and of the planet.

In addition Christians believe that G-d transforms human lives when He is invited to co-habit "inside" someone.

I'm not so much interested in the fact of transformation as I am in the process and in the "how". How does somebody get transformed? Does it happen very quickly or much slower? Should we count on instant transformation of lives as something to be expected of God (and call it "faith") or is there some kind of "working with" G-d which happens - and if so, how does that "working with" G-d work? What sorts of things should we expect to happen, and how will we know once they have? Can we ask G-d to work specific things in us, or is the outcome completely determined by Him and Him only?

In particular, I'm interested in Christian approaches to specific issues in people who've requested transformation. Like, "I want to stop being an alcoholic," or "I want to stop my addiction to porn," or "I want to stop emotionally abusing my wife."

These are things which are specific enough to be measurable, which means we know when any sort of intervention has worked, which gives us a good way to assess the effectiveness of different approaches.

The Christian approach to these which I have experienced is twofold. The first is to attempt prayer, Bible-reading and an appeal to willpower (masquerading as "faith"). The second is to send the person for some sort of counseling (which is sometimes seen as a failure of the first option). Some Christians view any kind of psychology as non-Christian, and since lightness and the dark have no fellowship together, Christians therefore have no business going to psychologists (and "Christian psychologists" are oxymorons).

After all, if we believe that "only G-d transforms people" then why bother with any other approaches? It's like a guy I heard about some years back who said that if he's in a terrible car accident, everyone should gather around and pray for him to recover, rather than trying to get him to hospital. A marvelous demonstration of faith, right? The first approach puts faith in G-d (through prayer, the Church and the Bible) and the second approach puts faith in man (through human interventions like counseling and psychology).

The "how" of the first approach mystifies me. It seems to be saying, "Read your Bible, pray every day, and somehow G-d will transform you. You will somehow start having the mind of Christ." The "somehow"'s in there bother me because I'd like to understand those more than simply sticking them in a box of "We don't know" and leaving it at that. The "somehow" isn't very comforting when someone is looking for a specific transformative intervention (i.e. "Help me to stop smoking") and a Christian says, "Well, I know that G-d transforms people but He does it in His own time, and you just need to be close to Him and (barring an instant miracle) at some unspecified point in the future which may or may not occur, He might transform you."

If I asked someone about a specific counselor and they told me that about them, I'd look for someone else!

Technorati Tags: faith psychology Transformation

The Archbishop of Canterbury on Global Warming

Graeme Codrington — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:44:06 +0000

This post has now moved to: http://www.futurechurchnow.com/2010/02/06/the-archbishop-of-canterbury-on-global-warming/

Technorati Tags: climate change creation environment ethics future global warming

Finally, a decent explanation of emergence

Roger Saner — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:14:36 +0000

Do you know what emergence is? Finally, a cartoon which explains it!

Inter-generational vs youth ministry

Graeme Codrington — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:24:40 +0000

Every now again, I interact with youth pastors on an issue that doesn't seem to get resolved. Simply put, it goes like this: should we abandon youth ministry in favour of inter-generational ministry? Or, at other times: should we abandon inter-generational ministry in favour of youth ministry? It's one that goes around one - as long as you're looking for a binary answer (i.e. "yes" or "no").

The truth is that there are at least two keys to solving this one once and for all. Firstly, we need to change our mindset about "models of church". Sure, we should have a model for church, but we should have a mindset that says these models are always fluid, always up for change, always morphing, growing, evolving... whatever verb you're most comfortable with. So, at some stages in your church's lifecycle, there might be a stronger emphasis on family ministry. But, then at another stage, later, there might be a focus on youth ministry. It should ebb and flow.

The second key to resolving this is to realise that church mimics the family (its one of the strongest analogies used in the New Testament, afterall). And in a family, there are some activities that are done together, and some that are done separately. This is true in the church. We need to have both family and youth ministries - some activities together and others apart. Some based on age and lifestage, and some based on our shared identity in Christ.

For some further in depth discussions on this topic, see a great blog post here.

For one of the best new books on youth ministry, check out Andrew Root's "Relationships Unfiltered" (buy at Amazon.co.uk) - and see a review of the book here. For the most amazing set of youth ministry resources, check out my good friend, Mark Tittley's Youth Ministry resourcer website.

Technorati Tags: adult youth youth ministry

(D)Tuning the heart strings

Roger Saner — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:03:26 +0000

My friend Jacques posted a great article comparing the heart with a guitar (in the category "reasonate" - I love that!). He writes,

We can make music in such a way that it draws others in — in creating a loving space where all contribute and get a chance to shine. May we learn to listen to the Music. May we learn to listen to our hearts again, and learn to play again. May we learn to make music together!

I find it interesting that many guitarists (myself included) seem to stop learning after a while, like we’re happy with the set number of chords and songs we can play, and we settle into a rhythm of predictability. It’s like, “I’m good enough for now...” And then there are others who go on to discover alternate tunings, and jazz chords, and what playing in a duet is like, and perhaps a band...and maybe going on to record...or even playing next to the campfire, singing the heart out.

And so the metaphor is complete :)

Technorati Tags: music

The Adoption Option

Graeme Codrington — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:35:43 +0000

This post has been moved to our new blog site, and is now available here.

Technorati Tags: adoption testimony theology