Labels, labels and more labels

I read a post last night that I’ve been chewing on ever since:
http://http//www.jordoncooper.com/2008/01/collapse-of-emerging-church.html

Until early last year, I had not even heard the terms “emerging church” or “emergent”, and now already the emerging church is collapsing?? Actually, the post is more about people within the movement growing weary of the term and what it stands for; some may already be starting to look for something else.

At first, I felt my heart sinking, simply because this term is new to me and it represents a whole new stream of revelation and a way of looking at church that I never knew before. I don’t want this to go away before I can even get acquainted with it. At the same time, I have to admit I’ve been quietly leery of the term “emergent church” and hesitant to come under that banner, even though a lot of what I’m doing in ministry is of a kindred spirit to this movement.

The point is, it shouldn’t be another “movement”. The dilemma with labels is that we sort of need them to help identify or define what we’re doing, but it doesn’t take long at all for the label to become a stereotype that starts boxing us in. People start associating the label, and the people who wear it, with all sorts of presumptions that may or may not be true. And now, it seems even some institutional churches are spawning emergent churches. Some of these church plants are legitimate attempts to adapt to a changing culture–I’m good friends with one such emergent leader. Others, I think, are now trying to hop on a bandwagon to try the latest trend–which is sort of missing the point, since the emergent community is not about establishing new institutions but re-thinking the whole way we have things set up. And that, I think, may be part of what is causing the term “emergent church” to have a stale taste in the mouths of some of its own proponents.

Institutional Christianity in my home town is rife with labels; it seems we have almost as many camps as we do people. Seems to me we’re missing an important point.

Jesus used very few labels to define his followers and what they would become. The two that come to mind are “disciples” and “church.” Scripture uses other analogies to describe us: the Body of Christ, God’s building, the Bride of Christ.

I guess what I’m saying is we shouldn’t be as concerned about the labels as we are about the relationship, the journey we’re all on to be Jesus’ followers. It’s necessary sometimes to use labels, but we need to stop overusing them. Perhaps we should let labels define what we do, rather than who we are.