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Note:This article forms part of the special collection on 'Doing urban public theology in South Africa: Visions, approaches, themes and practices towards a new agenda' in HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies Volume 70, Issue 3, 2014. The collection is the result of the project 'Urban Public Theology', which was initiated by the Institute for Urban Ministry but later expanded to include several academic departments and institutes at

Social media technologies have become a prominent feature of public life, but also the personal lives of young people. The question is whether the academic discourses on the missional church in southern Africa have taken this trend into consideration adequately. This article addresses this question by introducing a postcolonial missiological perspective on social media and the new struggles of young people against marginalisation. Through a literature review, the article appropriates research from sociologists, in particular Manuel Castells, firstly to show how subjects are constructed in this new, networked world order and secondly to show how social transformation is framed and engendered. It is concluded that these findings are the basis for the notion of the missional church as a social network. It is recommended that a subtheme, which prioritises the role of social media in this age of the network society, be established in the academic discourse on the southern African missional church in order to continue the dialogue with young people in their contemporary struggles.

Taking theology to the African children needs to start with a serious engagement of the colonial experience that African Christianity, communities and families were subjected to – mostly in subdued silence. The often heard platitude of the stereotypical ‘friendly’ African children, who is so ‘open to the gospel’, needs to be deconstructed in terms of the real challenges, which leads to migration, abuse, xenophobic violence and a serious reduction in their capacity for growth and development. While one cannot reduce the notion of ‘African children’ to one experience, there remain common structural realities, which call for a serious dialogue with themselves on their own forms of theology. Children are not anymore merely seen and not heard; they speak – they disrupt hegemonic colonialist theologies. This contribution is based on a postcolonial dialogue with children’s ministries in a particular (southern) African mission church, as they transform themselves towards being an African Reformed community.

The struggles of youth and student activist movements of have radically challenged theology. For some (as an act of repentance) Theology, and in particular Missiology, are to be discarded or renamed as Intercultural Theology, for others Public Theology. This article wants to engage these proposals, by firstly affirming the particular agency of young activists, in South Africa, as they remix social activism and theology, but it probes deeper into the contemporary challenge of youth activism against Empire, in order to provide a particular perspective on this renaming. The author argues for a postcolonial theological perspective, or Postcolonial Theology, which takes serious the insights from new social movement theory, in their challenge of Empire. It is from this perspective where interculturality and youth activism, in the face of empire, is remixed towards transformation.