I must avoid doing what I did in the last post - start talking about all the various limitations of such a list, and never list anything. So here goes, no particular order and little fore-thought, just what comes to mind:

1. Evangelism. The type of “conversional” approach I used in Africa was appropriate in many ways for people sacrificing animals, but is hardly what is needed here. Nascent belief of some type seems to exist in everyone here. Certainly few are wholly ignorant of the story of the Gospel, though they maybe unaware of its meaning in any good way (at least where I am). Everything in our context here seems to be helping people along a spiritual journey which involves unlearning and relearning more than learning for the first time. I’m not much into the evangelical conversional enterprise anymore, at least for where I am.

2. Ritual. Instead of an empty and useless repetition to be discarded for something “genuine from the heart”, I am more of the opinion that ritual forms the heart.

3. Hell. Though I am not discarding “after this life” possibilities, the hell that I am more concerned about is the one people are in right here and now. To affirm that our life can be eternal now, or a hell of our own creation, is not to deny that there is a continuation of existence beyond this life. Practically, I see a confusion, chaos, isolation, and despair that shows some are truly in hell right now. I am also less inclined to belief in Hell as continuous suffering for all eternity, but open to the idea that it is final and complete eternal obliteration. How the hell will we scare people, though, if that is right?

4. Sola scriptura. I am increasingly less certain of the Protestant use of scripture that believes it speaks independently as an authority, rather than within the community and through the church. Saying we have an infallible text does not mean that any have infallible readings of it, and so is meaningless. The church may be “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15) in ways that Protestants have attempted to shift to scripture.

Four will have to suffice for now. No order, just what came to my mind this morning.