Field Trips - Kenya Part One

During the Amahoro Gathering earlier this month, the nonAfrican participants participated in field trips to Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. Each group spent a few days "on the ground" in a particular context and got a feel for what life in Africa is really like. Over the next several days, I'll be posting reflections by a participant from each group.

The first post is from Bob Pyne, who visited Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology in Kenya. Formerly a professor of theology, Robert Pyne is Director of Leadership Development for African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries (ALARM). He is a member of the Emergent Coordinating Group and is the co-author, with Joni Powers, of LifeSpace: The Practice of Life with God, due out later this summer.

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Each of the westerners at the Amahoro Gathering went on a field trip to observe and participate in a local ministry. My group flew to Nairobi, where we had very different experiences. Half of our team served alongside Pastor Edward and others from his church, participating in AIDS support groups in Kibera. The rest of us drove out to the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology to take part in a theological conversation.

We felt a little guilty touring the beautiful campus of NEGST. Part of the discomfort came from the fact that we had just had several days of conversation about the affect of colonialism on theology. Perhaps unjustifiably, that made some of us look a little sideways at such lovely surroundings. Even more so, however, we had just visited one of Nairobi's slums, and we knew that our friends were there again while we were taking pictures of the flowers. I have read, even assigned, C. S. Lewis's essay on being a student during wartime. I knew that our task was important and that education and reflection will never feel as urgent as most other callings. But I was squirming in our comfortable classroom. Frederick Buechner wrote, "Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace and joy and freedom for me." Call it a test of connectedness.

The theological conversation went nicely. Brian McLaren was his usual eloquent and winsome self, and everyone rightly appreciated what he had to say. Naturally, I found their pleasant response disappointing. Anticipating controversy, I had been hoping that the miraculous quieting of some theological storm would justify our presence as theologians. But the reception turned out to be as lovely and placid as the campus itself. I was also disappointed that there were not more people in attendance. One of the students told me afterward that postmodern kinds of questions were simply "not on the radar screen" for most of the campus. We had seen a similar response among many of the pastors back in Uganda. Post-colonialism does not necessarily follow the same course as postmodernism, as one may doubt a colonial meta-narrative without doubting meta-narratives in general.

When we all returned to Uganda from our field trips, my story did not feel as dramatic as many of the ones I heard. Compared to theirs, my experience had been pretty routine. Looking back on it, I see that as a good thing. This trip made Africa feel less exotic . . . and more like home.

Photos

Hi,

If you'd like to see pictures from the gathering, we're creating a group of pics over at flickr. Go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/amahoro/

If you were there, please upload your pictures to flickr and tag them with "amahoro." This will add them to the above group.

If you need help using flickr, please e-mail me at luke@thedetour.net.

TIA - by Brian D. McLaren (brianmclaren.net)

Red African dirt. So red, like rust-dust, but brighter in the sun, sparkling hot, pure. Twin tire tracks make our path, short green grass between the parallel red trails, tall green foliage on either side. As we walk side by side, you in your track, I in mine, we’re surrounded by a spherical cloud of hovering dragonflies. There are a few pale olive-green ones, almost invisible against the vegetation, and scores of brown ones with four transparent wings marked by paired brown bars. They follow us as they would follow a herd of buffalo or giraffes or zebra, a squadron of mini-helicopters, hoping our footsteps will stir up some small mosquito from the grass which they can swoop down on, scoop up, and eat in flight.

When we stop walking, they hover for a five or ten seconds, and then they settle motionless on the red dirt around us, wings spread like a little girl’s barrettes. When we begin walking again, they arise as one, a cloud of whirring wings in which we move as if attended by angels. Above us, strange birds call, moving among the high branches.

This is what it is like to walk the dusty roads of rural East Africa. Overhead, the yellow-beaked kites circle and soar, constant companions. A gangly stork may fly among them, towing along its oversized feet, or a flock of weaver birds may swirl above us like smoke, chattering, yellower and blacker than bumblebees, drawn homeward to their village of hanging nests, woven grass teardrops dangling like ornaments from white-thorned acacia branches.

Everywhere, it seems, there is the distant sound of children laughing, and in many places at seemingly any time of day or evening, there will also be the sound of singing because church has a way of breaking out anywhere under an elder tree or in a windowless shelter or behind a wall of corrugated tin. Pentecostal joy is itself a revolutionary manifestation of the kingdom of God in the land of HIV, Idi Amin, civil war, genocide, and breathtaking poverty.

If we walk into town, the dusty roads give way to packed clay, mud puddles, deep ruts, sometimes slick and sometimes sticky. Shacks and ramshackle homes jostle with shops, stalls, booths: barber shops, beauty shops, little stores selling everything – phone cards, cell phones, fruits, vegetables, a goat carcass, cow stomachs, little dried fish, big smoked fish (refrigeration is not even imagined here), beer, peanuts in little paper cones, used but highly polished shoes, small stools, irons, clay ovens, charcoal, sugarcane, colorful fabric. Children scramble, goats browse, pigs sleep under a bush, a three-legged cow hobbles from tuft to tuft along the roadside, and cars and trucks and vans and buses scream by, impossibly fast, dangerously close, barely respecting the fading memory of lanes and laws, a kind of commonplace mania of frantic speed and wild trust between drivers in one another’s way.

If we visit an informal settlement – a squatter area or slum, by whatever name - the red dirt and clay often go darker and darker, sometimes turning mucky and mealy black, with greenish and yellowish puddles and smells that could make you retch on a hot, windless day. But then comes a breeze and it’s frying potatoes you smell, or roasting chicken, and there’s almost always a sweet fragrance of woodsmoke that you taste as much as smell. Not far away, a church choir has come to sing and a crowd gathers, some people singing along, others tiptoeing through the muck, holding up their skirts to dodge puddles. Fewer goats here, but lots of chickens, always scratching about, heads bobbing.

TIA – you hear it a lot these days: this is Africa, where God is alive and where Pentecost is perpetual, hope and joy jostling with hunger and fear like trucks and scooters in the chaos of Kampala’s traffic.

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 Mukono, 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.

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?

In the coming days and weeks, you’ll hear from a variety of voices sharing moments, memories, insights, questions, and choices that have arisen during and from our gathering. None of us can put our experience into words, but all of us need to try to share what we have seen, felt, thought, and learned together, for our own benefit and the benefit of others too.

Gathering - Thursday, May 10

Thursday

The last day of the Gathering was a joyful day for participants as they took their last shots together and took down each other’s contact details.




The emphasis of the day was friendships and networks and an encouragement to continue the conversation after the Gathering among the friends made this week and to network with others and so be relevant to the community and the world.




After the worship session, participants were informed that the money collected from the call for jubilee had been distributed to those who had expressed a need to cover expenses accrued from attending the Gathering. The participants were also given a 1,000 Uganda Shilling note to remind them of the challenge they had received at this conference.




Brian McLauren then spoke on friendship, partnership and mission together. He emphasized that Jesus embedded his life in community and his gospel sends us into the world. He reminded participants of the attitudes that bring us together basing on Matthew 5 – humility, meekness etc.




Brian observed that people are brought together around problems and questions and that leads to conversation to be able to face the problems. Friendships are born out of the conversation and once they become friends people can dream together and experiment. There are different reactions to these experiments and we need friends to encourage and appreciate and even criticize us or understand us when others criticize us.




Brian encouraged participants to build friendships from this conversation and continue to network after the Gathering.




After Brian’s exhortation, Claude invited participants from different parts to share their experiences and how they become involved in the conversation. Participants from United States of America, Australia, Costa Rica, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and South Africa shared. They had all gone through a period of time where they questioned their faith and practice and desired to go to a deeper level in their Christian walk by being relevant to their community.




This was followed by Group sessions in which participants discussed what they had learned during the conversation, what they had to offer to their community and what steps they would take next.




Brian returned and explained some scientific theories and characteristics of networks to guide participants in the understanding of networks. He concluded with a story about the tortoise and the baby hippo, which after being made to share a space in the zoo developed a relationship despite their differences and began to enjoy each other’s company.




The afternoon sessions were dedicated to workshops one on fund raising and another on African Philantrophy. They were able to discuss networking at that level and find out how to form partnerships for ministry.




In the evening session, groups of participants from the same countries discussed the way forward. All the countries decided they were going to meet again when they got home and fellowship together and also strategize on ways to expand the network. The conversation continues.




Friends closed the evening with a time of singing and dancing together.

Gathering - Wednesday, May 9

Throughout the Amahoro Africa Gathering in Kampala Uganda, we will be posting daily summaries of the conversation written by Aryantungyisa Otiti, a freelance journalist from Uganda. Enjoy!

Wednesday
It was ‘Women’s Day’ at the Gathering today. During the worship session, the men in the Gathering sang the song ‘Arise Shine for your Light has come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you’ to the sisters in the group. It was affirming the place of women in the church, community and in the Gathering.

The session was led by Grace McLaren (USA) and Elizabeth Elior (Uganda).

The first speaker was an amazing woman from Rwanda. Jane Kanyange pastors a church she started from her ministry to the prostitutes in Kigali. Jane said in the Bible whenever God wanted to do something new, he looked for a woman to use. God is still looking for courageous and willing women to use. Jane’s ministry has faced a lot of resistance and criticism but Jane testifies of the grace of God if we only obey him and offer ourselves to do what he has led us to do. Her challenge was that everyone would have a willing heart, to be used of God and to show the love of Jesus in our communities.

Elizabeth Elior works for African Women Economic Policy Network (AWEPON), an organization that seeks to provide economic literacy by demystifying economics for all women to understand. Women need to be a part of the discussions that take place in the boardrooms. They need to be a part of the issues their husbands are grappling with. AWEPON is meeting the need to empower women to develop the economics of the household. She emphasized that economics really begins in the household and the power of the woman at the household level cannot be ignored.

She went on to explain what empowerment of women means – equal access to opportunities, respect for one another, the opportunity to negotiate with one another and practice their rights. Elizabeth challenged participants to think about the various roles of women and their invaluable support to men, she challenged men to appreciate these roles and support the women in their lives. She stressed that we all have a role to play in the empowerment of women and challenged the Gathering to reflect and contextualise our Christian teachings on what is happening in our families and communities.

Participants were given an opportunity to make comments after Elizabeth’s presentation. The conversation then continued in small groups and participants were able to discuss their understanding of empowerment, what questions they need to ask that could empower women to impact future generations and lastly what hopes and dreams of a post colonial church in Africa where women and men were truly in partnership.

These discussions were stimulating and thought provoking and challenged participants to think about their prejudices and to think clearly on how to empower each other in the building of the Kingdom.

The conversation continued on a field trip to Gaba Community Church in the afternoon.

Gathering - Tuesday, May 8

Throughout the Amahoro Africa Gathering in Kampala Uganda, we will be posting daily summaries of the conversation written by Aryantungyisa Otiti, a freelance journalist from Uganda. Enjoy!

Monday night
The Transformational Gospel vs the Evacuation Gospel
Claude Nikondeha shared how dissatisfied he got with the gospel he grew up hearing as a son of a Free Methodist preacher. This gospel did not seem to respond to the poverty, hatred and inequality he saw in his life and yet appeared to keep Christians hopeful in these circumstances. Jesus was supposed to be coming back soon and so Christians were supposed to be ready for heaven and forget about the troubles of the world they were living in – for a short span of life.

In spite of the fact that it was presented as a choice between the church and the world, Claude felt he wanted both, he wanted to study and build a career but also be a Christian but in choosing further studies he seemed to be choosing the world.

As destiny would have it, in his pursuit of ‘the world’, he met the Jesus he had been hoping to find, the Jesus who cared about salvation and going to heaven but also cared about life here on earth. He realized that what he had wished was true, the Kingdom of heaven begins here and Jesus cares about life here too.

Claude went on to challenge the participants about the true meaning of the transformational gospel. The Jubilee in Leviticus 25 was God’s way of narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor, of curbing the greed of the rich. They could not amass much wealth because they had to give back in the fiftieth year. That was God’s vision of the kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven. In instructing the rich young ruler to sell all he possessed and follow him, Jesus was teaching the principle, ‘I am only good when you are good.’

He challenged participants to extend Jubilee to one another to give back whatever they could, to sell all they had and give to the poor because the transforming power of Jesus is at work now. Jesus is jubilee and we need to show true love and build a viable kingdom.

After Claude’s talk, participants were challenged to put in practise right away what they had and a participant felt led to remind them about the early church how they shared what they had. A love offering was taken and participants gave of their money. (This money will go to help those who experienced financial difficulties in getting to the conference.)

The evening closed with the sharing of communion.

The second day of the Amahoro Africa Gathering started on a warm note after last night’s fellowship. Participants were challenged to practise the wholistic gospel and are thinking about what it means to sell what they have and give to the poor, what it means to really follow Jesus and extend jubilee to one another, what it really means to build God’s kingdom here on earth.

Tuesday
The Gospel of Reconciliation vs the Gospel of church growth

Antoine Rutayisire who is leader of the African Evangelistic Enterprise in Rwanda and also serves on the Reconciliation Commission gave the first address after a time of praise on Tuesday morning.

Antoine emphasized that reconciliation is for every individual from every nation and not just for nations like Rwanda. Further more, reconciliation is not an event but a lifestyle, an everyday experience and should be everybody’s lifestyle.

Born a Rwandese Tutsi, Antoine calls himself a practitioner of reconciliation and not a teacher of reconciliation. His father was killed when he was five and he hated Hutus more and more with each passing year. He was however looking forward to becoming a Catholic priest and serving God and going to heaven when he died.

Antoine examined what went wrong with the gospel preached before the genocide and believed by 90% of the people in Rwanda. He suggested that the message preached was selective and partial, presented in an intellectual way and presented by messengers who themselves did not practise what they preached, they preached love and were disunited.

He emphasized the need for a new perspective of sin which is the root of alienation, a new perspective of the message of the cross. He challenged participants to be ambassadors of reconciliation, to live as a holy nation here on earth, to love each other and so let the world see that we are His.

Trevor Ntlhola – South Africa
Trevor, a black South African shared his painful experience with apartheid. He grew up in Soweto, the largest Black township in South Africa. He became a Christian in 1984 and was told politics and Christianity do not mix. His racial status demanded an engagement in politics and his heart loved Jesus but the Jesus he preached was irrelevant to life in the streets of Soweto. In 1988, at a time he thought he had no problem with racism, Trevor visited a church he thought was a black church and he found white people there too.

He noted that we need to get out of our comfort zones to really know how racist we are. ‘Reconciliation is a muddy path,’ he added, it is not easy and we cannot have it without a situation.’ As God would have it, that was the visit that started his journey of repentance and reconciliation. And on this journey Trevor has experienced the Jesus of the Bible who is relevant to all of life’s situations.

Trevor shared some of his experiences on this journey and concluded with a challenge to participants reconciliation is revolutionary and is a constant healing process and we need each other for God to use in healing us.

Jurgens Hendricks from South Africa and Faustin Ntamushobora of the African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries also addressed the Gathering before a time of questions in which participants were able to make comments on the presentations and ask questions.

Small groups continued discussions through the afternoon. Where do we go from here? What are the next steps for the Emerging Church in Africa? How do we build the Kingdom of God here and now? In what ways do we need to be reconciled one to another? The conversation continues!

Gathering - Monday, May 7

Throughout the Amahoro Africa Gathering in Kampala Uganda, we will be posting daily summaries of the conversation written by Aryantungyisa Otiti, a freelance journalist from Uganda. Enjoy!

Opening
The conversation started today with a lively time of praise led by the Worship Harvest Team.

Claude and Brian welcomed participants. Claude greeted them with ‘Amahoro’ – a wish for peace and a call to share peace.

Devotional Note – Edward Simiu – Kenya
Edward noted two aspects about the African culture that make this gathering a unique event – Africa loves conversation and Africa values presence.

The Amahoro Gathering puts these two aspects together, Edward said - we may not all be able to write books, but we can talk and presence ministers and speaks to us. Presence is worth 10,000 words in Africa as a picture is worth 1,000 in the West. He thanked all those who traveled long distances to share the ministry of presence in this conversation.

Brian invited Mabiala Justin – Robert Kenzo and noted that what is most gratifying about this conversation is that it is no longer Western voices being heard alone but now people are listening to one another.

Robert Kenzo presented the first address: On African Postcolonial Theology: The Imperative to Differ

Kenzo was frustrated with Christianity until he started reading Postcolonial theology and realized there is a different way to being Christian.

He noted that the church in Africa is at the crossroads poised to become a major player but will only do so if we have the courage to be different.

The world is becoming a global village and reason has entered its postmodern era. Post modernity is here in Africa too but is being lived under the guise of ‘post colonialism’, which is not a historical period but an attitude. Those whose history has been affected by colonialism cannot move forward until they have dealt with the demons of colonialism. There is a need to deal with colonialism even within the church, Kenzo asserted, ‘if we do not define ourselves, others will define us’ he emphasized. Identity is created and not inherited and we are free to take from the sources and recreate ourselves. Kenzo can for example be both Congolese, an African, modern and a Christian. In Christ we are being recreated.

Kenzo went on to challenge that post colonialism is in reality politics of difference and it is okay to be different as Africans. We need to have the courage to denounce Western theology for, he argued, all theology is contextual. He emphasized the need for Africa to realize the relevance of post colonialism to Africa.

The West has borrowed a lot from us and it is time we reclaimed what they took from us. Post modernity values uniqueness, distinctiveness and we in Africa need to re-state, defend and protect ourselves. Christians need to ask themselves the question ‘What does Jesus Christ mean for us today? Where is the church? And to address the challenge in Africa, Kenzo called on Christians to be bold and creative.


Participants continued the conversation in small groups the rest of the afternoon.