I strongly support the 'emerging church' movement. There is clearly something fresh and important happening as people think adventurously about being the church in ways that are missional to the core.

But its language is sometimes confusing. What are some of its buzz words and what are their strengths and limitations?

Some labels only tell us what the emerging church is not. The terms 'emerging' or 'emergent' tell us that such groups are not fully formed but don't say what they're emerging from (I can't help thinking of slime!) nor what direction is emerging. 'Alternative worship' doesn't tell us what alternatives are being taken, nor which traditional option they reject. To be a 'post-Christendom' church only tells us that we recognise an era is over, not how to respond.

The term chosen by the Baptist Union of Victoria for the experimental faith communities it wants to encourage is 'new missional communities'. This is clear enough, but even here each word raises questions.

We want new communities so that the church grows, which is good. But why not renewed missional communities as well? I'd like to encourage newly-missional old churches too.

Some large churches start new missional communities which use old church planting methods-are they 'new' missional communities? Is newness a matter of age or approach?

Take the second word, the biggest buzz word in missiology today. 'Missional' means different things to different people and needs careful definition. Everyone wants to be missional, of course, whether seen as narrowly evangelistic or engaging more broadly in transformative ways in society.

It has grown in a decade or two to almost completely replace the adjective 'missionary', which over time has been narrowed in meaning to full-time overseas or outback mission. Properly understood, the two mean the same: The church is missionary/missional by its very nature. That is, it exists in joyful response to Good News it feels the world needs to hear and experience.

A missional church is one that is shaped in all parts of its life by its sense of mission. That is, it exists for the world more than for the comfort of its members. It is outgoing to the core. That's why the term 'mission-shaped church', the title of a recent report by the Church of England, is one of the clearest ways of expressing what the emerging church movement is on about. I like it.

You would think that the third word used by the BUV, 'communities', is clear enough. Surely a missional community is a missional church, a bunch of Jesus followers drawn together by a sense of mission to those beyond it.

But some communities are very fuzzy around the edges ('people belong before they believe') including people at all points on the faith journey. They may be missional in the sense of having a mission to the poor or addicted or lonely, something all can join in on, but they can't own a full-orbed Christian mission.

Other communities choose to distinguish between the modes of the gathered church (worship, discipleship, education) and the dispersed church (mission activities, daily life in wider society).

Behind these various understandings of community lies the ecclesiological question of what sort of church we wish to form. How fuzzy? How defined by commitment?

My observation is the 'emerging church' movement, in Australia at least, is characterised less by definitions than as a network of people with a similar analysis of our postmodern and post-Christendom context, a restlessness with 'normal' churches, some connection to the Forge Missional Training Network and a reading diet which stimulates thinking outside the square. At the centre of this deeply encouraging, though fledgling, movement is the idea of the mission-shaped communities at work incarnationally beyond church walls.

It walks a fine line between defining itself over against the 'traditional church' and saying, inclusively, that all church ought to be and can be missional. I hope the wider church can avoid being defensive and hear the strainings for the new which are embedded in this 'emerging church'.

Ross Langmead

March 2006