Amahoro Emergent/C

Tim Hartman, the chairman of the Amahoro board of directors, asked me to write a brief account of my experience as a participant in the last two Amahoro gatherings for the Emergent Village weekly e-newsletter Emergent/C. I was happy to comply and what I wrote went out this morning in this week's issue. If you don't subscribe to it, here are the opening three paragraphs with a link to the rest of the article that is also posted on the Emergent Village blog.

In May 2007, I traveled with five companions from my church in the United States to Kampala, Uganda. We journeyed there to attend the first gathering of Amahoro-Africa. We didn't know exactly what to expect. We weren't sure what we'd find. We weren't exactly clear why we were even going. What did we know? We knew that an important conversation was happening in and around Africa—and we wanted to be a part of it as both observers and participants.

Brian McLaren's book, Everything Must Change, tells the story of his relationship with an Burundian man named Claude Nikondeha. Through their conversations and subsequent friendship, a dream called Amahoro was born and eventually realized: to create a space for young African leaders to gather for relationships and connection, theological reflection, and transformation.

Just as the emerging church conversation has been a vital space for western leaders to process the many aspects of our changing landscape, so leaders in Africa have likewise needed a parallel space to process the many ways their environment has shifted and continues to shift.

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