Who Says the Emerging Church Does Not Have Dogma? (333 words weekly)

by Samir Selmanovic on March 8, 2010

Every week I post 333 word summary or reflection about what I have learned last Sabbath or last week. I appreciate your comments, questions, and greetings.

I love the emerging church. I love its people, ideas, gatherings, and hopes. I am a fan, a member, a devotee.

After ten years of networking, we don’t have an organizational structure, a systematic theology, or headquarters. We might never. Things are always changing, including the emerging church.

Which is hard. Opening the boundaries, encountering the other, and deconstructing what upholds us feels overwhelming. The paradoxes are distressing. The tensions are excruciating. The uncertainty is numbing. How long can we go on like this? Can we emerge forever?

Those of us in the emerging church have been asked, “What do you stand for, really?” Do we stand on shifting sand, without commitment, without convictions about right and wrong, without truths to defend and lies to attack, without anchors, or foundations, without a rudder or a spine? Without dogmas?

I think not.

There is a hill on which we are willing to die, and it is called conversation. We don’t think of conversation as a method of communication. Or as an agent of change, or even as a virtue. We see conversation as the teaching, the truth, the doctrine. We confess it. Conversation is deeply biblical, rooted in Christian history and theology, and, importantly, in the life and teachings of Jesus. Conversation involves incarnation, life, death, and resurrection, both God’s and ours. If you think of faith as something that can be lived outside of a continual experience of living and dying through conversation with the divine and human other, we emergents maintain that you are wrong, terribly wrong.

We believe in a conversation with our God, scripture, strangers, friends, enemies, saints, heretics, committee chairpersons, evangelists, our own soul, brother sun and sister moon!

This is the linchpin of the emerging church. We are as diverse as Christianity, but we hold conversation in common. It is how we pursue justice and beauty,  how we hope, where we find comfort. We converse with God and with one another, and our relationships hold us, like prayers.

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  • http://bit.ly/gwalter gwalter

    Indeed, you say conversation, I say common-unity, it is indeed an under-practiced spiritual discipline. I’m reading Barna’s Revolution right now, he speaks of mini-movements – never quite getting organized because all their energy is going into the discipline that excites and transforms.nnIf I continue to emerge… forever? I will never get bored, now will I?

  • http://www.samirselmanovic.com/ Samir Selmanovic

    I like that Gary, we will be indeed emerging forever!

  • http://squarenomore.blogspot.com/ Phil Wyman

    It is a singular dogmatic item perhaps, but one which does encompass the totality of life. It is the discipline of fellowship. It is the art of hearing. It is the quality of abiding. It is the practice of loving. Or it should be these things. Nice post.

  • duh

    super lame

  • roncole

    Beautiful…I've seen emergence as the emerging as the relationship ” of God and neighbor ” It is humanity and God coming together as one. This will only happen when we embrace that reality with all that we have. Just as Jesus lived out his parables…we to will have to live in and out of our conversations.

  • http://www.samirselmanovic.com/ Samir Selmanovic

    Thanks Duh,

    Care to offer something stronger?

  • http://www.samirselmanovic.com/ Samir Selmanovic

    Thanks Phil, I like the words discipline and practice that you use. It is a way of life to be practiced over a lifetime.

  • http://danielleshroyer.com/2010/03/12/conversation-as-spiritual-discipline/ Conversation as Spiritual Discipline | danielleshroyer.com

    [...] I read Samir Selmanovic’s thoughts on Emerging Church dogma.  He wrote:  ”There is a hill on which we are willing to die, and it is called [...]

  • http://squarenomore.blogspot.com/ Phil Wyman

    indeed – the conversion is a way of life, and over a lifetime. That m,ust be what duh meant. :-)

  • osteven

    “In a conversation, you always expect a reply. And if you honor the other party to the conversation, if you honor the otherness of the other party, you understand that you must not expect always to receive a reply that you foresee or a reply that you will like. A conversation is immitigably two-sided and always to some degree mysterious; it requires faith.” Wendell Berry

  • http://triangulations.wordpress.com/ Sabio Lantz

    Conversation with cooperation amidst differences — there is nothing more fun!
    Well written, thanx.

  • http://www.rts.edu/ Seminary

    I agree with gwalter, “common-unity” cant say more. The seminary is interested and indeed checks out emerging churches

  • lizdyer

    This is true – conversation is dogma for the emerging church. And in order to have real, meaningful conversations I try to always remember what Dwight Friesen said:

    We value humility more than correctness, hospitality more than being set apart, curiosity more than tradition; in fact theological agreement is not a primary goal for us, we expect to disagree and do frequently. Dwight Friesen (from “Emergent Village and Full Communion”)

  • martin

    what?

  • caleb

    Powerful and true. Thank you for writing this! Thank you for introducing us to a new fruit of the Spirit (new because we didn't quite recognize it before). :)

    Folks are beginning to open their eyes to the reality that the fruits of the Spirit should be considered authoritative and indispensible elements of the Christian faith.

    These paradoxical raw elements, such as unconditional love, selfless service, relentless forgiveness, and transformational conversation, are transformational only when we approach them with deep reverence and a willing heart. Too long have we arrogantly tossed these out the window only to replace them with transient constructs that benefit our own selfish concepts of goodness; quasi truths that we can easily bullet point and proudly define.

    Finally we're beginning to realize that the fruits of the Spirit are wild, intimate, infinitely transcendent, yet closer than blood. They are the very substance of God.

  • Jeff Kursonis

    Wow, that is beautiful Samir. u00a0I love the 333 discipline.

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