Small Christian communities are a new way of being Church and they can play an important role in the rebuilding of the Church in South Sudan.
This is the position of Joseph Healey, a Maryknoll Missionary who lectures about small Christian communities at several Catholic universities in Nairobi, Kenya.Fr. Healey is in Juba to preach the annual retreat to the St. Martin de Porres Brothers. This morning he held a session with Church staff at Comboni House.
He told CSR News that small Christian communities are bringing new life and energy to many parishes in East Africa.
Fr. Healey explained that the small Christian communities can have up to 20 members, mostly lay people, who meet once a week at home to read the Bible together and take some practical action from the Word of God.
Fr. Healey said the small Christian communities started in East Africa in 1973 and were established in the Sudan in the eighties but they died during the war.
He added that the small communalities are having a new beginning in South Sudan and they can help to rebuild the Church because all pastoral activities pass through them.
Fr. Healey is a member of St. Kizito, a small Christian community in Nairobi.
He said that through the community he is able to share in the daily life of its members and learn with them.
He explained that the small Christian communities are for lay people to be led by lay people.
Priests and religious should be animators and facilitators but not leaders.
Fr. Healey said there are some 90 thousand small Christian communities in the nine countries of East Africa.