<Theofragen>

I'm very excited to be participating in the Amahoro Africa gathering in Uganda this May. There I will be learning and listening--along with sixty or so other pastors, teachers, artists, and authors from the US and Europe--from African church leaders and theologians. I'm also extremely excited about the opportunity to work alongside two friends who are serving in the Balama region of Liberia. At this gathering we will break bread and drink wine at table together, envisioning a postcolonial African church with its myriad indigenous expressions.

Brian McLaren, one of the event's leaders, recently sent the Amahoro participants a very hopeful email. Below I've posted a few points that Brian made. For those of you stateside who are also going, drop me a line sometime so we can connect before the event. Peace.

"The old colonial missionaries came to preach and teach and fix and convert. In this postcolonial moment, we are coming ...

Not to preach, but to listen. One of the ways we show respect for human beings is by believing they have important things to say, and by asking questions, trying to appreciate and learn. That will be our "postcolonial" mission. The most important moments of your experience will be encounters with people where you ask questions, where you pay attention, where you listen. We are coming ...

Not to teach but to learn. Of course, only Africans can teach us what it's like to live in Africa. But there's so much more they can teach us - things about God, about faith, and about ourselves. We are coming ...

Not to fix, but to be fixed. As Westerners (and especially those of us from the U.S.) we often assume we are normative, normal, and native. But we are a minority, an odd minority, an odd minority with an unprecedented lack of awareness of our history and identity. Through our encounter with our African brothers and sisters, I believe we all have the opportunity to be powerfully transformed. We are coming ...

Not to convert, but to be converted. Conversion means change, and often in today's world convert means to be changed in terms of our fuel. (We speak of converting from gas to electric, or from coal to oil, for example.) As Westerners, we are fueled by many things we're hardly aware of - domination, patronization, superiority, speed, conquest, accomplishment. What would happen if we experienced conversions in some or all of these areas? What might God do in us through our experience together?

Amahoro Africa

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