Some years ago a friend of mine and I had an animated discussion with an East African Bishop about the development of Small Christian Communities (SCCs, also referred to as BCCs and CEBs).  He said that we should not move further in promoting SCCs until we had a "more developed theology of SCCs especially a clearer ecclesiology."  But we took the view that in very many instances praxis is prior to theology and that the theology of SCCs should evolve out of people’s practical grassroots experience.  So we had a basic difference about the starting point.  The bishop favored a deductive approach with theology as the starting point.  We preferred an inductive approach with the life, experience and reflections of existing SCCs as the starting point.