Emerging Africa

Is the Emergent Church a religious version of the Tea Party? Part I | Civil Religion:What I do find intriguing are some striking similarities in structure and style between these movements, as opposed to deeper any issues of substance that might hold them together. “Tea Party” is a label given to an amorphous, fast-growing populist movement that resists being affiliated with a particular political party and denies being led by any one of a number of well-known spokespeople who have been affiliated with it (Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck being obvious examples).

Missional Conversation Disappearing? | The Blind Beggar: "There has been a noticeable downward trend in the number of posts in the blogosphere related to the missional paradigm. Used to be that I’d have a dozen posts daily in my RSS feeds, but for the last few months it’s been just a couple a day."

The same thing seems to be happening here. It used to be quite active, now nothing for weeks on end. Where's everyone gone?

Are you bored that there seems to be so little new content here?

The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization is to be held in Cape Town, South Africa, from 16-24 October 2010.

In order to prepare for it, there is a "conversation" web site at

http://conversation.lausanne.org/conversations

there is probably some overlap between the "emerging conversation" and the "world evangelization" conversation, so there could be some useful cross-fertilization.

Emerging Africa is now running off a new server. If you've visited the site in the last few days, you may have noticed it wasn't working optimally. My host had accidentally upgraded php to 5.3, and broke some sites in doing so (this site too, alas). There wasn't any way to roll that upgrade back, so I decided to do something I've wanted to do for ages anyway - migrate it to a server which I have more control on.

My apologies if you visited here in the last few days and couldn't read/post anything. We're back up and running now - if you notice anything weird, please let me know.

I just received the most extraordinary e-main from one James Sundquist:

=== begin quote ===
I give you my highest commendation to Deborah of Discerning the World and
Steven Hayes for exposing Peter Veysie, Senior Pastor of Ridgeway
Ministries. I am grateful that you were able to warn as many saints as
possible on your Discerning the World site. I will try to help expand
your warning about Mr. Veysie and other Emergent Church plague pied pipers
in our own media database and various radio ministries we frequent. We
will sound the alarm on His Holy Hill reflecting the following letter to
Peter Veysie.
=== end quote ===

I see from my diary that Scot McKnight, an Emerging Church fundi from overseas, is due to be speaking at Tukkies on Wednesday 12 May at 10:30 am, the topic being "Conversion and why folks walk away from the faith". It is in the Information Technology Building (where's that), Room 2-27.

Is anyone else planning to go to it?

Where's the best place to park, and find the IT building?

It seems that a number of people are blogging about evangelism and social justice, and this seems a good place to link them together.

Here are links to some of the posts:

• Theological Approaches to Social Action and Transformation
  
• Prologue to #MissionShift: Friendship
  
• Monday is for Missiology: Evangelism and Social Justice

I have set up a blog at http://truthisthewordblog.blogspot where I am posting recent articles, video clips, and comments. Check it out.

Richard Rohr will be in Cape Town in May 2010, organised by Sergio Milandri. Here's what you can join in.

From Wild Man To Wise Man

May 7 to May 9, 2010 at the Mizpah Retreat Centre, near Grabouw.

A wilderness retreat for men on the spiritual journey. As men, we are a pivotal influence in our family and society in bringing healing and restoration to relationships. Richard Rohr is an exceptional author, speaker, teacher and retreat director and has taught and guided retreats around the world for the past 30 years. He has a passion for developing and rooting men's spirituality. It is our hope that men will not only engage and deepen the experience of their own spirituality but also be involved in the formation and mentoring of other men. This retreat is for men who are on that journey.

Restoring Male Spirituality in family and community

May 10 to May 12, 2010 at the Schoenstatt Centre, Constantia.

A workshop for men and woman on re-affirming the male soul in social relationship. A must for anyone involved in engaging and developing masculine sprituality - especially for men, women, community leaders and pastors. Richard Rohr is an international author, speaker and retreat director and has taught and guided retreats for the past thirty years. Richard brings a wealth of experience and wisdom to the everyday issues we face as men and women.