Moved Mountains

Banner - Mt Trio, Stirling Range National Park, Western Australia - (c) 2007

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Emerging, Emergent, Emerged?

The Blind Beggar posted a link to this blog post from Brother Maynard, who takes a critical look at the use of the word "emerging" (and it's variants) to describe alternative and new forms and expressions of Christ centred faith and faith communities.

While I have never fully understood the difference between the "emerging church" and "emergent" (this might have something to do with the fact I'm an Aussie), BM reiterates comments made by TSK on the way the term "emergent" (or should that be "Emergent") has been franchised by Emergent Village and turned into something of a marketable brand name. To the point in fact that TSK is now going to stop using "emerging" to describe any aspect of his own involvement in the movement.

Raises the question, if we abandon "missional", as some have suggested we should, and we throw out "emerging" and its variations, how are we going to end up describing ourselves? Maybe we should just go back to calling ourselves "the church"?

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