Our Other Faces: Amahoro Africa Gathering

When we pray, "Our Father", "Give us", "our daily bread", etc., who is the "our" and "us" in our mind's eye?

Let's be honest. Often in my mind's eye I see me. Don't you? When I do look beyond myself, because I know it is a corporate "our", I include mostly others who are like me.

It wasn't until I started facing faces different from my own that my reading of "our Father" and "us" included the others who are at first glance not like me. Others with different cultural, religious, and economic situations unlike my culture, religion and economic situation, others of emotional positions different from my own stance, others with abilities and disabilities not matching my own able or disable-ness are included in this "Our Father" prayer. We know this, but often it is hard to live this! It is more natural to exclude the other faces simply because they are other. Other-ness is not bad. We don't have to be afraid. In the end the other face is "our" and "us" and together "we" pray the same prayer to the same God.

In just a few days a gathering will begin in Uganda sponsored by Emergent. The "Our" in "Our Father" will be broadened! The gathering is called the, "Amahoro Africa Gathering". 200 people will come together from other walks of life from several continents to build friendship and to share a slice of life; we'll do this in order to widen the scope of the way we pray and live.


Those of us who are going as westerners are not going:

to teach
to preach,
to give answers, or
to solve problems.

Instead those of us who are going as westerners are going:

to learn,
to be taught,
to listen,
to see,
to experience, and
to be transformed.

This has been for me a refreshing approach to "mission". What if more of our "mission" and "mission trips" were intentionally for partnership, listening, understanding and being together? I'm not suggesting we leave out the tangible ways of helping. Of course that it still needed. Yet, it is this other side that we miss. We westerners have so much to learn from the other. And maybe praying, "Our Father" is exactly where we begin the learning, understanding, and partnering process.

The gathering begins May 7 and ends May 17. Some of the topics for discussion will be:

1) A Conversation on Transformational Gospel vs. The Evacuation Gospel
2) The Gospel of Reconciliation Vs The Gospel of Church Growth
3)Empowering Women in Post-Colonial Churches and Communities
4)Friendship, Partnership and Mission Together-- Global North and South

For me, this gathering will take the conversation regarding "post-modernity and the church" to a new level. The backbone of the conference, as I understand it, is a "hunch". The hunch is that there are parallel conversations occurring in other non-western contexts. One of those parallel conversations concerns Africa specifically. As the western church feels the cultural emergence from modernity to post-modernity and asks, "so what now?", Africa and other southern global areas find themselves emerging from colonialism into post-colonialism. So what do these "posts" mean for the global church? Many of you know much more about post-modernity and post-colonialism than I do (among other "posts") on all levels-- theological, practical, philosophical, etc.

As time permits I'll be posting reflections from the event. I invite you to participate in the gathering from a distance. For more information on the event you can go to: http://www.amahoro-africa.org

In the mean time, how about moving forward together to broaden the scope of our praying and living? Who are the other faces in your praying and living?

"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one."

Using the Wrong Measuring Stick

How do you measure your health and fitness? Often I find my feelings about my physical fitness corresponding to whomever I have recently compared myself to. If I go to the gym and lift more weights than my workout partner I feel good and strong. If I work out alone and someone else there is absolutely beasting me and lifting far more than I am I feel weak. If I hang out with people in worse shape than me I feel good about the weight I have lost and the fitness I have achieved. If I watch sports and see real athletes I begin to feel inferior and my efforts seem pathetic. In all these regards my fitness hasn’t really changed, but my attitudes towards it have.

Recently I have been struck by how easy it is for us to measure our spiritual fitness by comparing ourselves to others. In Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees he often chides them for thinking too highly of themselves. The have no “sober judgment” as Paul says, in their consideration of their own spirituality and sinfulness. They compare their righteousness to that of Gentiles and other Jews. They know more scripture, they do more good works, they worship more beautifully, and other people praise them for their spiritual lives so they feel righteous. But, the idiocy of such comparisons should be quite evident for us, because we know that God is the only measure of righteousness and holiness that we should use.

One of the specific ways these improper comparisons affect us at Christians is when we define ourselves by who we aren’t instead of who we are. It is so easy to talk about what kind of Christians we are by saying what kind of Christians we aren’t, and in that same breath we cast judgment upon those we are distancing ourselves from. In emergent circles that comes across as saying we aren’t fundamentalists. In fundamentalist circles they aren’t liberals. In liberal circles they aren’t close minded or ignorant as they believe many other Christians to be. We do this with worship preferences, our view of scripture, our social work and political views. But, the more time we spend comparing ourselves to each other, the less time we seem to spend actually working on who we are. It is important to learn from one another and often to use each other as foils, to better understand who we are, but we can’t allow those practices to stagnate our pursuit of God.

The time has come for us to celebrate who we are without the necessity of comparing ourselves to others as part of that definition. I am a sinner, redeemed, transformed, and set into the world through grace and mercy of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. My righteousness comes only through Jesus. As I seek God I find that although I love my Lord, I haven’t fully submitted my life to him. I struggle and hold onto those parts of my life that I long to control. I have a big ego. I don’t know Christ’s humility. I love the word of God and proclaim it boldly, but I am aware of my own inadequacies in fully understanding the mysteries of our faith, especially God’s word. I am a follower of Jesus Christ and that is what defines me. May we find our understanding of ourselves through the perfect image of God revealed to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Tragedy of the Modern Church

“The tragedy of the modern church is not that we have turned away from God; it is that, believing ourselves turning to Him, we have turned away from men.”

This quote is from a blog I have recently found called tali's wonderland. Tali has the ability here to sum up in one sentence something that I have been feeling and wrestling with for quite sometime. I have so much I could say about this that I am not sure where I would want to start; frankly this conviction overwhelms me some as it cuts to the core of one of the philosophical, theological, and practical shifts many of us are leaning into. This is why all we are talking about and trying to live out can not just be put in a box as a new style and methodology. A paradigm shift such as this effects and changes everything for all of us, so I thought this might be a good concept to explore as a group.

I am going to hold off on sharing the rest of my thoughts I have on this for the time being and I will share them more later in the comments with all of you; and perhaps some on my personal blog a bit latter. In the meantime, what do you think?

Peace,
James