My feed reader today brought me an interesting coincidence of two widely (overused?) terms that have effectively lost their technical definitions because they have become “generic” terms and the original meaning has become blurred.

The first is the term “evangelical,” a term that I have regularly mused upon what it truly means.  (January 2007, June 2008)  Today one of my regular reads, GetReligion, has a post “Who’s calling who an evangelical?”  The article is an analysis of a news article from the Associated Press about the overnight raid on the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries headquarters in Arkansas.  In the AP article the organization is referred to as “evangelical” to which Danial Pulliam, the author of the GetReligion article comments:

You may have heard that the Bible Society (the full name is The British and Foreign Bible Society) has recently released a Bible Style Guide to give journalists in our increasingly Bible illiterate society more background when they cover religious, particularly Christian, news stories.  I find it interesting that the Style Guide stays clear of defining “evangelical” but rather under “evangelist” (and the associated term evangelism) simply clarifies that “These terms are often confused with being ‘Evangelical’, which means belonging to a particular form of Christianity.” What that “form of Christianity” is the Style Guide appears to avoid.  The approach seems to be to use these categories of Christians like “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” in the guide without defining them.

(In defense of the Style Guide (sort of) it is put forward as a Bible style guide and so concepts not directly related to the Bible would not be expected to be covered.  However, the term “denomination” is in the dictionary section and the term “Pentecostal” is defined in the context of “Pentecost.”)

The second term which is getting coverage today is “emergent.”  (A term that, as far as I can tell, never appears in the Style Guide.)  The current buzz around the use of emergent is occasioned by an article on the blog Out of Ur titled R.I.P. Emerging Church.  The article says “Now comes word from recognized leaders and voices within the emerging
church movement that the term has become so polluted that it is being
dropped.”

The article cites two of the prominent voices, Dan Kimball and Andrew Jones.  The Out of Ur article points to a post on Dan Kimball’s blog Vintage Faith where he talks about the history of the term.  In particular he says:

I suppose by the very nature of the word “emerging” it naturally would
be expected grow, morph, develop and change. But what it has grown into
(in my perspective), is different in its focus than what it was when I
first was drawn into it all. Although I will still be talking about
“the emerging church” and still using the terms when I speak at
conferences (if it is the topic of discussion), I will be using it more
retrospectively than futuristically.

It is interesting that he also says “I am using “missional” more these days, although that term has
different meanings too and knowing human tendencies that will prpbably
[sic] go through definition changes.” (In my watching the term it seems to be almost at the point now where there are as many different ideas and nuances associated with “missional” as “evangelical” and “emergent.”)

The Out of Ur article also talks about Andrew Jones and a poll and article he has on his Tall Skinny Kiwi blog titled “Emerging Church: You Say Dump It.”  Andrew’s readers that responded favored dumping the “emerging church” terminology by a 60/40 ratio.  He gives several personal examples of why the term should be dumped because of differences in understanding, to put it mildly, about the meaning of the term.  He also cites some examples where it may be too deeply entrenched.  Going forward, he says that it will disappear from his direct ministries, but he will continue to support the concept and others that are still using the term.

The Out of Ur article concludes with this:

In reading through these posts about the “emerging” church it struck me how much energy and intellectual capital are currently invested in that term that is suddenly being sidelined, if not abandoned.  These efforts include the PresbyMergent group and the soon-to-be-released book by Phyllis Tickle The Great Emergence.  But that is also the way of human language, for words and phrases to evolve and take on different meanings.  Just ask my son who is learning his lines of Shakespeare for the fall play.