Here are the reflections of Brian McLaren on the recent Amahoro interdenominational gathering in Uganda. It’s very interesting, and worth the read.
Here’s a segment for context, then a link to the fuller article:
“…This is the context for the experience that about 40 guests shared with about 160 East Africans in early May 2007 – people from Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya. There were Pentecostals, Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, even an Eastern Orthodox sister at one of our gatherings.
We were black, white, colored … from the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Korea, Australia, Liberia, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and South Africa. We met in Mokona, Uganda, just north of Kampala, and then divided into teams to visit churches and leaders in rural Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya before returning to debrief and share our experiences.
We represented “the church that is emerging” – emerging from the colonial mindset, the modern mindset, the nationalist mentality, the denominational and sectarian assumptions, the old polarities of left and right, liberal and conservative. We came together for dialogue around the gospel of Jesus Christ….”
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This paragraph gives me great joy:
Is that gospel a message of evacuation – how God will airlift some of us out of this world and its problems, how God wants us to huddle in a holy warehouse between now and then, enjoying blessings and the joys of a church subculture? Or is that gospel a call to incarnation and transformation, to live out the message of God’s kingdom so we, like salt and light, like yeast in bread or seeds in soil, bring new possibilities to our world?
To be called away from that “gospel of evacuation” has been life-changing for me. I’m excited to know that it’s not being planted and replicated all over the world. That there is a missional, incarnational gospel winding it’s way into other countries and nations - beautiful and so hopeful! Thanks for the link Dan.
Yes, this is a wonderful, contrasting thought to much of what we consciously and subconsciously learned in our early years of faith.
The incarnational, sacramental, permeate-the-cultural life. So hopeful, and beautiful in its global reawakening. Thank you modernism for helping us to see the backend of despair inherent to the “every person for themselves” worldview.
Here’s to a human community we share and build together, and to the most human being, Jesus, who showed us the way back toward EdenLife.
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