Models of emerging churches

I’m not entirely clear on why it would be helpful to characterize various “types” of emerging churches. Maybe to connect with like-minded efforts? or to help push people’s imagination beyond what they are seeing locally? But whatever the impetus, the blog “gathering in light” has an interesting post about possible ways to “type” emerging churches, and there’s a long chain of comments attached that are interesting, too. (Hat tip to Fernando’s desk.)

I’m still left wondering how one would distinguish between “emerging” church and “deeply contextualized” church, or between “neighborhood” church and “house” church. I think sometimes these distinctions are in the eye of the beholder, but I suppose that simply points to how contextualized the distinctions really are?