dissertation

6
Movement “because it goes beyond the older Christian terms like ‘mission’ and ‘missionary,’
and because it is being defined holistically. To be missional means to embrace a
holistic gospel – it is for the whole person (heart, soul, mind, and strength), for the
whole society (politics, economy, culture, environment), and for the whole world.” 28
The well-known writer Brian McLaren cites, among others, David Bosch and Lesslie
Newbigin as thinkers who have influenced the theology of church and missions within
the Emerging Church Movement. 29 These same theologians are at the roots of the Missional
Church Movement as well. 30 The two movements – Emerging and Missional –
can therefore be seen as having shared interests. Stated somewhat more abstractly, the
movements together form an Emerging-Missional ‘milieu’, i.e., a metaphoric landscape,
field, or space in which discourses and practices are given form around topics of common
concern, but with many local differences. 31 This Emerging-Missional milieu consists
of the discourses and practices of a variety of actors: church communities, Christian
organizations or platforms, networks (which are often digital), and individual Christians
from a wide variety of backgrounds.
The following assessment of Eddie Gibbs seems apt: “As the missional church and a
significant segment of the emerging church together represent a concern to redefine the
church in post-Christendom, missional terms, they should not be regarded as conflicting
entities, but rather as complementary and converging approaches [emphasis added]; the
former represents a more deductive approach, while the latter is more inductive. The
two streams need to meet each other rather than pass like strangers in the night.” 32 This
thesis focuses on the crossing of these streams, especially regarding visions for leadership
and leader education. To make this choice more explicit, we have coined the term
‘Emerging-Missional conversation’ (EMC). It stands for the various forms of discourse
within the Emerging-Missional milieu that can be said to converge in terms of (theolo-
28
McKnight continues: “Missional avoids the constant bantering between Evangelicals and Liberals over
social justice and evangelism, and it avoids the 20th Century political theorists regular diatribes against
colonialism.” http://www.jesuscreed.org/index.php?p=520 (accessed November 19, 2007).
29
See Brian D. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/
Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican,
Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN (Grand Rapids,
MI: Zondervan, 2004), 105-114.
30
Darrell Guder thinks that it is justified to characterize the whole missional church discussion as having
been, “at its core, a response to Lesslie Newbigin’s question: Can the church in the West become, again, a
missionary church, given the fact that its context has become a mission field?” Darrell L. Guder, “Worthy
Living: Work and Witness from the Perspective of Missional Church Theology,” Word and World 25, no. 4
(Fall 2005), 424.
31
On the word ‘milieu’, see Gordon Lynch, The New Spirituality: An Introduction to Progressive Belief in the
Twenty-first Century (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 10 and 12. Cf. Katharine Sarah Moody, “‘I Hate Your
Church; What I Want is My Kingdom’: Emerging Spiritualities in the UK Emerging Church Milieu,” The
Expository Times 10, no. 121 (2010), 497.
32
Eddie Gibbs, Church Morph: How Megatrends are Reshaping Christian Communities (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Academic, 2009), 41.