People often associate my name with the emerging church or emergent church. It's actually a term I'm not totally comfortable with because in my mind the last thing we need is to slice the pie up: 'We have all these different kinds of churches, and now we have emerging or emergent churches too.'

I actually look at it differently. Instead of thinking of a slice of the pie, I think of a tree. If you think of a cross-section of a tree, the outermost ring of the tree is the part of the tree that represents its current life in relation to today's weather conditions. So if you think of a big historic beautiful tree, maybe this part is the Catholic part of the tree, and this part is the Anglican part, and here's the Presbyterian part and the Pentecostal part. There are all these different parts of the tree.

But the whole tree in today's world is living in a time of great change. We don't even know how to describe it, so we stick the prefix 'post' on things. We say post-modern, post-colonial, post-enlightenment, post-Christendom. We use this word 'post' because we can tell it's changing, but we don't exactly have a handle on what the change is and means. But it's putting stress on the whole tree.

So a Catholic who's part of that outer ring in a certain sense has more in common with a Pentecostal on the outer ring than he might have with a Catholic who's dealing with the issues of the institution that are two or three rings in. So ... I like to talk about the emergent conversation. It's a conversation among Christians in many sectors of the church about what it means to be faithful to Jesus Christ in this time of change.

The beautiful thing about a conversation is it's not a programme. We're not saying: 'Here's the way to do church. For £40 we'll give you the programme.' We're saying, 'No, let's get together. Let's talk. Let's experiment. Let's share our ideas. Let's look for fresh expressions and what it means to be followers of Christ, and let's learn from one another.'

Another thing I like about the idea of a conversation: it's not a monologue. More than ever before we need to get out of the idea of the big hero, or the big model in this or that place and everybody will imitate it. There's a place for that, but the kind of creativity we need now means we need to listen to our brothers and sisters from Africa, Asia, Latin America. In the west we need to listen to the folks who are working in poor neighbourhoods and rough communities and people with high unemployment rates and high poverty rates. What are they doing to live out the kingdom?

There won't be a 'one size fits all' answer in this, but what we will find then is the growing edge, the green edge of the life of the church. And that's not against what's happened before. It's being faithful to the tradition of the church. If we were to think of a cross-section of a tree, each of those rings represents the emerging church of our various eras and we're just continuing that tradition.

Highlights of Brian McLaren's interview will be included in the February edition of the Fresh Expressions podcast, available in the podcasts area of the Fresh Expressions site from 1st February. An accompanying podcast extra, containing a fuller version of the interview, will also be available.

For too long the church has been bound to unhelpful binaries: lay and ordained, Catholic and Protestant, activist or personal piety, radical and mainstream, and so on. The truth is, if we stand a chance of ever making an impact with the de- and unchurched who are interested in spirituality as a mission imperative, then we will need to draw on variant elements of the wide traditions of our Christian inheritance.

We need to get away from this ridiculous 'them and us' which finds its foundation in misunderstanding, lack of love and fear. I think practitioners of emerging and fresh expressions of church in a post-modern context understand the post-binary holistic need for this more acutely than their predecessors. So, as practitioners, we can draw on 2,000 years of resources of the church to assist us in this task.

Many people interested in spirituality today trawl the internet seeking spiritual communities that do - and are - what they say they are. They seek communities of integrity where there is love, openness, honesty, inclusion and participation. Unfortunately, too many churches feel like incredibly dysfunctional families where few of these qualities are evident. They are, in effect, spiritually impoverished. The prevailing church culture remains cognitive and propositional rather than experiential.

At the same time, many people are seeking something that goes beyond materialism, consumption and technology. Many have become aware of this need through personal tragedy, addiction, life stages, illness or study. So the challenge is: how to provide opportunities for authentic worship, mission and community for people who are seeking to become more deeply human, unaware that this is a spiritual quest. Such people often do not know who they are, let alone that they have a need for God!

How do you engage with spiritual tourists whilst being authentically Christian? Well, I would encourage people here to really consider models of church. Why? Because if you don't your project will end up with something that is dumbed down, individualistic and consumptive as a default position. This is where the new monastic or new friar model can really help if you are engaging with spiritual tourists.

One of the main mistakes we made with the Epicentre Network is that it was held captive to deconstruction, consumption, individualism and was somewhat anti-theological. Yes, it was very participative, but the lack of a model made it difficult to have a healthy basis. It was a collective of individuals that was never fully able to become a community because of its inability to re-envision or reconstruct. We ended Epicentre after ten good years of exciting and innovative mission activity because it was impossible for it to grow into being fully church. This was a painful lesson.

With Moot in its early days, we focused on the need to balance hospitality and inclusion with the authentic practice of the faith. Yes, experimental and contextual, but authentically Christian all the same. We were struck with the question: 'How do we have a community that allows people to belong who do not believe; that allows them to experience the community; that is authentic and life-giving without dumbing down on the faith?' It was Steve Croft who suggested to me the use of a rhythm of life as a focus to the community, so that it be Christ-centred.

Moot, inspired by the monastic pre-modern rules, crafted a rhythm of life through a communal bottom-up process to form an aspiration for how we wanted to live. Its language was not churchy but spiritual and embodied the gospel. So now we have a mixed community of both committed Christians and those who are spiritually searching, all desiring to live out these aspirations as a form of discipleship, where people are at different stages of the journey.

The pre-modern model of the monastics - and in particular the friars who had a spiritual rhythm of life and were sent to service particular localities - enables us to reframe new monasticism as a helpful model for an open, accessible Christian community with a focus on experience and exploration, that assists people to shift from being spiritual tourists to communitarian co-travelling pilgrims. Moot has developed sacramental (focusing on God's presence with us) and experiential forms of worship, mission and community drawing on this new monastic basis.

So, ancient forms of Christian contemplation reframed into post-modern language and sensibilities become the resources for prayer that work in terms of bringing centredness and peace. Mission then becomes seeking to catch up with what God is already doing in loving service by the whole community through social justice projects, the arts and other imaginative pursuits, and worship becomes an event of encounter of God and other pilgrims as a place of inspiration and hope-sharing.

If you are interested in going deeper with this, check out my two books: The Becoming of G-d and Emerging & Fresh Expressions of Church, both available here.

Bio: Ian Mobsby, author, priest missioner, fresh expressions core team member and associate lecturer in theological education

Blog: www.ianmobsby.net

Moot: www.moot.uk.net

Jonny writes: 'i sometimes get asked about the relationship between fresh expressions and emerging church. it's all part of the wider change in response to mission in postmodern cultures. fresh expressions is the anglican/methodist initiative. emerging church was the name given to the earlier experiments at the edges that was not denominational that inspired the c of e to write mission shaped church. the edges are blurred and it's not really that important. i know of very few other mainline denominations around the world that have been so prepared to pave the way for newness in response to the changing mission context. it's very encouraging.'

Jonny's blog is in response to the announcement that the Fresh Expressions initiative is to continue for a further period of five years. The Rt Revd Graham Cray, currently the Bishop of Maidstone, is to be the next Archbishops' Missioner and leader of the Fresh Expressions team. The Methodist Connexional Missioner for Fresh Expressions is to be the Revd Stephen Lindridge, currently Evangelism Enabler in the Newcastle District.

Jonny's full blog is here.

The media release for phase 2 of Fresh Expressions is here.