• Theologically conservative - radical
• Sociologically conservative - radical

So there are some people called emerging church leaders who are both theologically and sociologically radical. There are others who are sociologically radical - they are experimenting with new forms - but theologically they are conservative. And still others are theologically radical but sociologically quite conservative. (I’m trying to make up my mind whether the new monastic movement fits this description…)

This seems to me to be one of the most helpful accounts of the emerging church that I’ve come across. It recognises the huge diversity of the movement (in a way that Carson does not, while Gibbs and Bolger do, and Sine does to some extent, although he muddies the waters by limiting the description ‘emerging’ one of the streams he describes.)

It’s precisely because of this massive diversity that I don’t really think ‘emerging’ is a very useful tag. Some people will want to be called ‘emerging’ or ‘missional,’ just because it sounds trendy and hip. Others, especially following Carson, will use ‘emerging’ as a kind of theological cuss-word to condemn any contemporary expression of church life that they don’t like.

‘Emerging’ has become a bit like ‘evangelical.’ It’s one of those words that has become all things to all people - and because of that, it doesn’t mean very much to anyone. ‘When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean. Nothing more. Nothing less.’ (From Alice in Wonderland - Humpty Dumpty, I think.)

‘Very early on I felt God said to me, ‘Your first calling is to be a worshipper, and you must always remember that as a priority.’ So there are many difficulties, challenges and so on that one faces, but see yourself first of all as giving yourself to God. That puts everything in proportion…’

‘Slipstream,‘ the leaders’ podcast, produced by Focus for the Evangelical Alliance, was launched at the beginning of May. Our first guest is Terry Virgo, founder and leader of New Frontiers International. Listen to the podcast here:

OK. The first thing to say about Tom Sine’s recent book ‘The New Conspirators: creating the future one mustard seed at a time,’ is that it isn’t a book about emerging church, and if you want to understand emerging church, you don’t need to read it.

But a lot of people will read this book for other good reasons, and Tom Sine talks about four different strands or streams of new church life. He calls these strands ‘emerging,’ ‘missional, ‘monastic,’ and ‘mosaic.’

Here’s the problem: a lot of people use ‘emerging church’ today to describe new expressions of church life, including those which fit in at least three of the strands Sine talks about (emerging, missional, and monastic).

So there’s a kind of broad use of ‘emerging church,’ which covers all three, and there’s a narrower use, which is what Sine calls ‘emerging church.’ All this does is to confuse things. Next time I’m in a conversation with someone and they talk about ‘emerging church,’ I won’t know - until I ask them - whether they’re using this in a broad generic sense, or in Sine’s more restricted sense.

The net effect is just to muddy the waters, and this is unfortunate.

Order from the USA
Order from the UK

My Amazon store