Today I am wondering about the way accepted and widely used terms get redefined and used to mean completely different things - particularly in the Church (short thread)

My long term bug bear is Missional - which does not mean 'Into Mission' but reflects a particular approach to Mission embedded in place (of which there is more than one kind) and deeply informed by Missio Dei. Bottom up (rather than top down)

This word has started to crop up related to initiatives and church roles that are completely unrelated to that methodology - 'we are looking for a Missional Vicar ... To continue to do what we do very successfully and attract more people to it'.

An actual Missional Vicar would probably stand up on their first Sunday and tell everyone 'to go home and be Christians in Place'. Which I doubt is what the church had in mind.

And now we have Emerging. A term that most of us stopped using as it already got hijacked once in the US. But a term that specifically referred to grass roots / bottom up / contextual renewal of church.

And actually the infographic it titles - well sure something probably exists like this in all church leaders heads at the moment - at whatever scale. But it is not a document of Emergence.

Why are Emerging and Missional so important? To bring in marketing language - they are about acquisition rather than retention (and here think about groups of people rather than individuals).

When a company or brand doubles down on retention that brand can quickly become increasingly irrelevant to new customers. Marks and Spencers seems to have got itself into this mess. There is confirmation bias involved here too.

The modern church (of England but we can look broader) has seen a reduced number of members increasingly focused in a smaller number of larger churches, which inevitably shape themselves around the needs/wants of those existing members.

Such larger churches (be they growing cathedrals, monsters, or resource churches) are then a symptom (and some would argue compounding cause) of wider decline. Emerging and Missional turn this tendency on its head.

They root the idea of church being acquisitional (sorry) as a key marker of discipleship (Luke 10 etc.) The first thing we are to learn in following Jesus in that the Kingdom in Place comes before our own 'Life' - our wants and needs.

Which is why these terms need to be protected and guarded - and their misuse or redefinition challenged and resisted. End of what has turned into a blog post.

Erratum. Minsters - not Monsters.