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This is the vision the
original AIC leaders and members had of ‘the good life’ – the kind of life God
wanted them to live in the world. These visions were often created in the fire
of historical conflict with missionary churches and colonial regimes. Our
founders spent long periods in prayer, fasting, and studying the Bible in order
to understand God’s will for his people in the midst of their struggles. The
resulting visions of ‘the good life’ were produced under the guidance and
sometimes through the revelation of the Holy Spirit. They are expressed in
African languages and in the contexts of our own cultures and traditions. More
recently founded AICs also have their own founding visions – in this case
worked out against the challenges of survival in contemporary
Africa.
The founding visions have
rarely been written down, and some things have been lost since the days of the
founders themselves. Much of the original visions and teachings can
nevertheless still be found in our songs, stories, forms of worship, dance,
church uniforms, flags, and names; in AIC laws of impurity, concepts of evil,
and the practice of exorcism; in forms, traditions, and narratives of preaching
and prayer; in dream interpretations and prophecies, and in our understandings
of healing and salvation.
OAIC seeks to stimulate AIC
leaders and members to reflect on their lives of faith. In this way, OAIC hopes
to enable its member churches to recover and articulate their original visions
(telling our stories for ourselves), and to reflect upon them as resources for
engagement in the contemporary world.
Just as these visions served
in the past to empower Christians to stand against some of the values and
oppression of colonial society, they can offer us today an alternative system
of values such as:
- ubuntu - reciprocity rather than accumulation;
- utu - the humanizing power of face-to-face community rather than the anonymity
of individualism;
- local control over our faith and values against the impact of the global media.
The founding visions of the
AICs are our foundation ‘documents’ or ‘charters’ – but we need constantly to
present the Good News of Jesus Christ afresh to each generation and to new
cultures. Therefore with the help of the Holy Spirit we must work to keep the
visions relevant to our changing lives and to contemporary society.
Note:
In earlier documents the OAIC referred to the Founders’ Visions. This was
changed to Founding Visions in order
to depersonalize the process of the vision’s creation.
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