Emerging Church ~ Thinking from Malaysia

I haven’t sat down to seriously put some thoughts on this yet from where I come from unless the one in the Emergent UK group blog is a try or warm up. But reading some issues brought up by some “sensitive” brothers helps and will sharpen what’s on my mind (I decided to put some comments for them):

“where are the voices of our brothers and sisters following Jesus in the developing world? How can we best represent them if they in fact need representation, in this Emerging Church Debate?” ~ From Last one for the day I swear…

“the latin/african church, i suspect, is fairly indiginous to its culture(s), and in that sense it has been emerging (in steve.taylor’s sense of the word) for many years. they are the emergent forerunners.” (by the Baldman)

“The only confusion I have with the whole deal is the way in which we have exported Christianity to the developing world. I cannot speak for South America as I have never travelled there but my work in South East Asia has taken me to many churches in a few countries in that area. The expressions of church in those places is decidedly medieval Western Europe centric in terms of ecclesiology, and while I think about it, culture, liturgy, social practices et al.”

~ From The Bald Man, The Emerging Church, and Voices from the Developing World…

“I don’t find much in the “emergent” conversation that helps me to understand the multi-cultural suburbs of Paris, as “post-modern” as this context is or might be. I have to go to Africa for that…or at least talk to my neighbors. It seems to me my “emergent” cyber-friends could also learn something about what God is doing in the world if they looked South (and I’m not talking about New Zealand) or simply opened their eyes to the “ethnic” churches springing up all over western urban centers and their understanding of “post-modern” phenomena.”

“The center piece of our epoch in church history is that the vital center of global Christianity has moved to the Southern hemisphere. This phenomenon has been called the “browning” of the church. I am precisely interested in the point of contact between Christian Africa and Post-Christian France, the place where I live and work everyday. Can anyone help me?”
~ From the metissage of the church