just caught up with tallskinnykiwi answering questions about emerging church from steve for an article for a christian magazine in the uk. i got asked some questions for the article aswell! here’s what i said – briefer and less thoughtful than andrew’s but i didn’t have much time

1. Do you view the whole emerging church phenomena as having depth, or not? Why?

I think it is a helpful descriptor.
Emerging sounds like it’s a work in progress which is good.
It sounds like it’s a bottom up thing which it should be.
But it is also a catch all – so people are using it to talk about tweaking an existing church service, to describe a church plant in a pub, or a youth initiative on an estate that hopefully will lead to indigenous church there. The reason it is helpful is because it is a catch all – i.e. there is scope for a wide diversity of expressions of stuff to relate together. So it gives a language say for alt worship to relate to youth ministry which may be helpful?… For my own tastes/preferences I am interested in stuff that is genuinely new and missional but it is equally valid it seems for people to be about renewing the existing structures and if emerging church is a helpful concept for this then I guess that’s ok.
As for depth, that varies. But there is increasingly good thinking and writing around (e.g. two latest things I have read – anglican ‘mission shaped church’ report and ‘shaping of things to come’ – they are both deep). I think what needs to happen is that this stuff needs to join up with the best thinking about missiology and cross cultural mission – that is what will give it an edge.

2. Have you seen examples you think are worthy of the title? Or some which may not be?

Both. www.emergingchurch.info is a site we set up to catch stories and reflections on emerging church. When things are new there has to be room for experimental stuff and new ideas and stuff that will fail, but I have no doubt that good new things are emerging.

3. As a veteran Alt Worship person can you see some of what’s being done as mirroring what you did years ago in the Alt Worship sector?

I honestly think that alt worship was well ahead of the curve on this stuff and still has loads to offer to the church. But sometimes groups are not connected very well with the wider church movements so I have specifically tried to offer some of alt worship’s insights as a gift to the wider church. Greenbelt has also been a public space where this has happened well.

4. To your mind, what do you think a truly emerging church would be defined by – what would be its distinctives from whats happening already?

I think there are some good pointers to this in the anglican report – five values they identify are – focused on God the trinity, incarnational, transformational, makes disciples, relational. I think I would add or emphasise that it needs to be a grass roots up thing i.e. it’s not imposed from above but comes up from below – I think this is covered in ‘incarnational’ but I want to emphasise it…