Where Everybody's Crazy

We've just had open day weekend which meant I was pretty much rushed off my feet for the past week with preparation. I have some things I need to blog, but first, a rant.

The ideal of an indigenous church, we are told, is one that is "self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating". And we tried this, but it didn't work, so now we have to add two more conditions: self-theologising and, after Iguassu, self-missiologising. We are in the curious position where Christians are suggesting that the problems of the Church be solved by adding more of "self". I would have thought that less of "self" would be more a Christian solution.

Because the aim of all this "self" is to create a church which is self-sufficient; this ideal is not taken from the Bible, which stresses the importance of interdependence and self-in-relationship, but from an individualistic Western culture, which stresses independence and autonomy. By adding more and more "self"s to free the Church of Western influence, we are actually pushing in Western thinking through the back door.

If you go and create a church which is self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating, self-theologising, self-missiologising, self-sufficient, then congratulations! You are now in a position where the hand can say to the eye "I don't need you", and you have set the course for a thousand more church splits and divisions in the years to come.