Indaba is a method of engagement, said Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba, primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, who added that it “comes from where I was born” in Makgoa Kloof in South Africa. Indaba is used by the village chief when he or she perceives a problem in the community and calls the villagers together to seek a solution.
“What needs to happen is not to rush to quick solutions. We need to come together to define what is this that is effecting the village,” he said. “We have borrowed that methodology and process for the Lambeth Conference.”
Makgoba said that the entire conference is an exercise in indaba. “The Bible studies, the walk from your room to the Bible studies, the fellowship when you have meals together — it’s part and parcel of the dialogue and the conversation of wanting to seek who we are and what is God calling us to be at this time,” he said.
He used the example of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well during which a conversation that began as a superficial discussion about drinking water became something more profound. “That is our hope that indaba holds for us,” he said.
The Rev. Ian Douglas, a member of the Lambeth Design Group, told the briefing that the aim of the conference is to equip bishops to be better leaders in God’s mission in the world. During this first week of the conference the bishops will to consider Anglican identity, the role of bishops in evangelism and social justice, ecumenical relations, abuse of power, and issues of sustaining the world in which God carries out God’s mission. The second week is meant to “come within the household of the Anglican Communion and deal with more inter-Anglican issues” such as biblical authority, human sexuality, the proposed Anglican covenant and the continuing processes of the Windsor Report.
40 participants per group x 2 hours per session = 3 minutes of intensity in sequence. O, yeah! This is engagement to a vidoe game player.