Missional, Emerging, Emergent…unknotting confusing lingo

“In light of my previous post, I offer the following attempt at clarifying conusing lingo:

Missional” means that the church is part of the larger mission of God. Mission isn’t, therefore, something the church DOES, it is what the church IS. The church participates, and is part of, the larger mission of God (or as fancy folks like to call it, the “missio Dei”). While the term “missional” has been around in mainline circles for decades, it has crept into evangelical lexicons largely through the emerging church movement. Some folks mistakenly lump the emerging church and the missional church into the same category, as though they were synonomous. Au contraire–”missional” is a much bigger category than “emerging.”

For example, my church (called Missio Dei) is missional in its identity and also emerging within our specific North American context. Missional describes our “essence” whereas “emerging” describes our particular relationship with our context. To make things more confusing for folks, the word “emerging” isn’t the same as the word “Emergent.” Emergent is the sort of flagship “emerging” organization–it is an organization that fosters discussions about the “emerging” church. Emergent is an organization that I have ties to but I don’t know if it comes into play when thinking of the identity of our church or which category we fall into. Another way of saying this is that our church IS missional by its nature, is emerging within its context, while it is affiliated (in a sense) with Emergent.

MISSIONAL is about more than being contextual, it is about the nature of the church and how it relates not only to culture, but also to God. Missional means that the church participates in mission instead of being the souce of mission. EMERGING means that the way in which church is done is changing in light of a changing context. EMERGENT is simply the main organization wihtin the United States which seeks to encourage the emerging church phenomenon. Though emerging churches would primarily think of themselves as missional and while most within Emergent would also think of themselves as missional, one can be emerging without being missional and vice versa.

for further reading . . .

• None Found