The emerging conversation - is it for real?
Tomorrow is a bit of a crunch for me.
For almost two years now I've been sniffing around the fringes of this "emerging conversation", first trying to find out what it is, then trying to find out what it is about.
I've heard a couple of fundis on it -- Brian McLaren and Alan Hirsch -- speak on various aspects of it.
And now Bishop Atanasije is here, and he knows quite a bit about some of those "forgotten ways" -- so I'm looking forward to hearing some of the emerging church people come and engage him in conversation, and see if there is any common ground. So I'm hoping some people will come along and ask come really good questions -- not "Put you on the spot bet you can't answer that one" questions; not questions that serve to show that not only are we not on the same page, we aren't even in the same library. No, questions that will move forward in a conversation, and that will show it's worth making the effort to converse.
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What is for real!!
Some of our best moments are had around a fire, or in a pub, or at a table as we really begin to open up and share at the real level. I think that one of the greatest gifts at this time is to really be able to drop our guards and maybe our 'gods' and learn to discover each other again. This is the gift of an emerging conversation and that is for real. If it's just about another fad induced by another space and caught to create a direction for it's sake then maybe it's not for real, but if at the end of the journey we are beginning to find the Christ message then heh I'm in, and have been in for the past 25 years. This is not new, it's just being discovered again and given some kind of identity. We are and always will be an emergent church as we follow One who is new every morning.
Peter, If you get, say,
Peter,
If you get, say, five people, gathered round a fire, or in a pub or wherever, and they have never met each other before, know nothing about each other's backgrounds, and start talking, they will probably just talk past each other.
We each talk out of our own experience and our own perceptions, and you would end up with five monologues.
And if you say it doesn't matter, all that matters is the "here and now", THIS is the existential moment, then all you end up doing is denying your own cultural conditioning, and imposing it on others as normative.
It has to do with that old saying about not understanding what another person is on about until you've walked a mile in their shoes.
sorry
Couldn't make it, sorry. Was at a youth camp. Invited a lot of people, hope you had some emerging folks there.
tastes real, smells real
For me the forgotton ways - past practices covered over by the silts of habit - are one element of what emergence is about. I do not see the EC as being all about the past, but it is rediscovering much that has been lost, and redeploying these things in a new context. But at the same time the Emergent must understand the times, and celebrate what good there is in them.
Most importantly Emergents should take full advantage of the fissures appearing in the modernist project. There is a new freedom, and as we might know, we are "free to" as much as we are "free from". The possiblilities open to us are magnificent.
I for one feel that those who consciously root themselves in traditions such as those of Orthodoxy have a lot to offer.
I am glad there is some questioning of the Emergent Conversation as in "Is it for real?". And for me, it is just as pertainant as anything to the progress of G-d's work today. Although admittedly, judging by this website, it seems rather ambivalent, spectral and transient.
I think Peter's enthusiastic response to the question is a very valid one. He seeks authenticity - family values over programs, and discovering G-d in the warp and weft of everyday living. Conversation of this nature is of eternal value.
I'm not as sure that 5 people would produce 5 monologs. I see this point, I think - that we need a grounding in a shared tradition, or at least a shared set of assumptions, if we are to grow a substantial community. But Steve, I think too much is being read into Peter's pro-conversation statements. I don't see that it leads to any sort of imposition or denial, as you seem to imply.
In fact, sitting around and talking is the first step to walking in the shoes of another. I don't see the conflict here, for me the emergent conversation is alive and thriving, even within a tiny minority.
Getting real
Nic,
For a long time I had read in books, and heard people talking in conversations, about someone having a "poker face".
I imagined it was a comparison to the metal rod used to stir up the embers of a fire, and meant that the person had a long thin face.
It was not until I had actually played poker that I realised what it really meant. And playing poker also meant that a whole lot of other idioms suddenly made sense to me. "Show down", for instance.
Sitting around and talking to people who used these expressions did not enable me to make sense of them. I had to actually play poker to understand what they were on about. I didn't have to play it regularly or become hooked on it. I just had to play it enough to realise what the game was about.
Or to give another example: once we went to live in Utrecht, and went to visit some of the people who belonged to the church there. My father-in-law accompanied us on one such visit -- to a thatched wattle-and-daub hut halfway up a hillside near Groenvlei, way out in the country. My father-in-law, as an urban white South African, had passed hundreds, thousands of such houses, travelling between cities, but had never once set foot in one, much less gone to have tea with the inhabitants. And when we left he expressed his amazement at the contents of the house, the way it was furnished, the way the people lived. I don't know what he had previously imagined, but it was very different from what he actually saw.
Now he could sit down and have conversations with people who lived in such houses, and yet gain very little insight into their lives until he had actually visited them in their homes where they lived.
I have visited Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Classical Pentecostal (Full Gospel, Assemblies of God, AFM), Neopentecostal (Christian City etc) Zionist and Roman Catholic services. I have visited tent crusades and Zionist baptisms in the Jukskei River. I have visited places like Nieu Communities and talked to people there on their home ground. But as far as i know none of the people who are involved in the "emerging conversation" in Gauteng has ever set foot in an Orthodox Church, much less attended a service. Like my father-in-law, they have never set foot in the house.
For a conversation to be "real", one doesn't necessarily need to share the same assumptions. But one does need to be aware that different people have different assumptions, and to be aware, at least to some extent, of where they are coming from. We may be using the same words, but we will be talking different languages.
And in my experience South African pub conversations are most unreal. I went to many British pubs, and many of them were local. They had an established clientele of people who not merely drank together, but talked to each other in the street, in shops, and perhaps even in church. South African pubs, perhaps as a hangover from the days when their clientele was limited to adult white males, had a community of a kind, but it was a one-dimensional community. People did not share other aspects of their lives, just their drinking lives. There was far more community in township shebeens. South African pubs were a bit like funeral parlour chapels, which are used for one thing only. They are not "real".
SA Pubs 0, Orthodox United 1
OK Steve as good point and well made. I agree regarding the nature of South African Pubs. Funnily enough we meet occasionally in a pub, and yes, many people there are smoky sporty boozy strereotypes.
But I think Peter is only really talking conversation that takes place in an authentic way. I don't see him as having illusions about the depth of South African pub clientele.
Your basic point as I read it is about the breadth of perception required for us to transcend our private, default cacoons, and enter into a truer more communal space. And we should know that this mode of communication - glocal and digital - is limited.
Steve - any report back on the realtionship of the emergent movments and the Orthodox church? What did you mean by a "crunch" day - are you having to decide "Orthodox or Emergent", or "Is Emergent for real"?
And all you hoardes lurking amongst the tumbleweed - who has been to an Orthodox service?
Orthodox church? Where?
Hey Steve,
I've been wanting to visit an Orthodox church for ages, problem is that I don't know where to find them. I tried searching on the internet, and struggled to find one close by (I know of one in Parktown, and I know only of a Russian one in Midrand). Well, I struggled to find English Orthodox churches as it seems most of them that I heard about were greek.
I am fascinated with many of the orthodox views, and have been wanting to attend a worship service for a long time because I hear that worship is very different to what anyone else does.
As a side note, I was really wanting to come to the Forgotten Ways but went with my fiance to her high-school reunion :)
Well, I don't classify myself as emergent, though. But the church doesn't just need conversation; some people probably need to talk less and love more :)
www.ryanpeterwrites.com
"The Glory of God is man fully alive" - St Iraneaus
Visiting Orthodox Churches
St Nicholas Orthodox Church in Brixton has Vespers in English every Saturday at 6:30 pm (except last Saturday, when they cancelled it to go to Sunninghill).
If you'd like to come, it's at 156 Fulham Road, Brixton, Johannesburg. Web page at Orthodox Church of St Nicholas of Japan.
I mentioned the St Thomas's gathering because I thought that some people interested in the forgotten ways might be interested in hearing about them from the horse's mouth, from people who haven't forgotten them.
Conversation?
Hope it went well, Steve! I was in Cape Town and am interested to hear what he had to say about new monasticism...did he touch on that subject?
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