the contexts for emerging church conversation

somewhere I had written:

"i think that one of the things that this kind of question brings out is the extent to which the ec really is a conversation that occurs to a large extent online. (i'm not depreciating the potential significance of online relationships)."

Bradley Grinnen asks:

"i've been asking myself this same question for a little while now. [could] you take the lead and help us unpack this? could we start a new conversation about this? [i'm] not sure of the protocol, but i think this is a conversation that deserves length and many views."

There are four primary contexts for the emerging church conversation in North America (though some of below applies to the worldwide movement) and, generally, each context has its own unique flavor.

• 1st Context - actual groups of folks who call themselves a local church and gather,
  
  
• 2nd Context - actual groups of folks who don't call themselves a local church but gather regularly,
  
  
• 3rd Context - the community of those who publish books on the emerging church,
  
  
• 4th Context - the community of those who publish blogs (and articles) dealing with the emerging church.

I'll suggest these broad observations with notable exceptions:

• It seems to me that, generally, the 1st Context tends to be the most wedded to historic orthodoxy. By the nature of the case these folks are seeking to operationalize emerging church concepts and to explore new approaches.
  
  
• In terms of the 2nd Context, I'm only aware of the Emergent Cohorts. They would tend to reflect emergent village's interest in theological revisionism, missional Christianity, and social justice
  
  
• In the 3rd Context, you have some books which are more descriptive - the best of which is probably Gibbs and Bolger's Emerging Churches - and some which are more provocative - such as Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian. In this context, the more revisionist books tend to get the most attention and, moreover, this attention leads many outside of the emerging church community to tend to think of the entire conversation as being about theological revisionism.
  
  
• Most of the actual emerging church conversation takes place online in the 4th Context in discussion groups, such as John O'Keefe's Ginkworld forum, and blogs (including comments). Two of the most active of these are Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed and Andrew Jones' Tall Skinny Kiwi. In terms of Stetzer's emerging church taxonomy of relevants, reconstructionists, and revisionists, you can find blogs in all three categories.