dissertation

40
tive’ path. These communities are particularly interested in mission and “value the conversation,
because it has helped them to think about how to reform church in ways
which will increase their capacity to see churches grow as they reach out to others in a
post-Christendom society.” 56
It is individuals and communities on the proactive path that converge in many ways
with the Missional Church Movement, which emphasizes that the church has to move
from a marketing mentality to a missional mentality. The missional church is seen as an
incarnational (versus an attractional) ministry, sent to engage a postmodern, post-Christendom,
globalized context. “This understanding requires every congregation to take on
a missionary posture for engaging its local context, with this missionary engagement
shaping everything a congregation does.” 57
2.3 The Theological Spectrum in the Emerging Church Movement
It is not possible to describe the theology of the Emerging Church Movement. As Dan
Kimball emphasizes, there is great diversity in belief in the Emerging Church Movement:
“There are Baptist emerging churches as well as Episcopalian, Reformed, nondenominational,
and many others. Many emerging churches would be considered conservative
and many others would be considered liberal.” 58 Speaking from his UK context,
Douglas Gay confirms this: “my experience over two decades of involvement in alt
worship and emerging church networks, blogs and conferences is that there is very significant
theological diversity within the emerging church conversation.” 59
It is difficult to do justice to the theological differences within the Emerging Church
Movement. Moreover, it is a sensitive matter, as theological labeling – especially in
terms of ‘left’ and ‘right’, ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ – is something that many participants
in the movement seek to avoid, considering it to be a leftover approach to theology
inherited from modernity. However, we may roughly categorize the theological spectrum
to help better understand the Emerging Church Movement and the controversies
surrounding it, and to identify overlap with the Missional Church Movement. This section
discusses three ‘ideal types’ 60 – relevants, reconstructionists, and revisionists – using
the typologies devised by two American commentators who are both widely cited and
and creating a particular kind of atmosphere in public meetings, characterized by mystery and creativity.”
Guest, Evangelical Identity and Contemporary Culture, 142.
56
Cray et al., New Monasticism as Fresh Expression of Church, 9.
57
Van Gelder and Zscheile, The Missional Church in Perspective, 4.
58
Dan Kimball, “The Emerging Church and Missional Theology,” in Webber, ed., Listening to the Beliefs of
the Emerging Churches, 83.
59
Gay, Remixing the Church, 104.
60
The reference here is to the Weberian notion of Idealtypus, which means that they are meant to provide a
provisional classification, allowing for some preliminary understanding; it is presumed that constants and
variables, as well as deviations from these types can be found.