On Emerging/Emergent church, and internet flaming

There's no such thing as a stupid question
I've been musing a bit on last week's firestorm. Boy, did I get flamed!
Some commenters (whom I don't actually know) evidently thought that I was personally attacking them, rather than musing on the work I am involved in here in Cambridge.

I learned quite a few important things through this experience. You can tell me whether you think these are helpful thoughts or whether they have any holes in them.
(Rider to this post: I am not criticising anyone. I'm thinking about things that I think are important, related to the work I actually do. Please feel free to add your thoughts. Anonymous, spiteful and rancorous comments will be removed. But all other comments are abundantly welcome, whether you agree with me, or disagree.)
 
First, on the specifics of the post.  Emerging/Emergent is a term that is used by a LOT of different people, in a LOT of different contexts.
* Some people use it to describe groups that have come out of mainstream denominations and are doing a kind of DIY church - meeting in house groups, for instance.
* Some people use it to describe a shift in theological thinking - many, many people, for instance, whose faith was born and nurtured in Evangelicalism, but who now find that they are thinking in slightly, or even dramatically, different categories. Dave Tomlinson wrote a book about this phenomenon back in the 1990's after this kind of thing became endemic in Britain. He called it "Postevangelicalism", and I wrote a chapter in the follow-up book. I was one of the founder members, along with Dave and a few others, of Holy Joe's, which features in his book. 
* Some people use Emerging/Emergent to describe a fresh wave of thinking and practice - a kind of renewal - within mainstream denominations; it's a phenomenon that is causing people to invent new liturgies, radically overhaul their organisational structures, abandon or rethink their programmes, and focus on commuity and mission in new ways.
* Some people use it to decribe particular, localised movements. There are bodies such as Emergent Village, or the Emergent Convention, where the name is primarily a description of the new and exciting things that are happening, but because it's associated with a particulr group or event, the name also operates a bit like a brand.
In the UK, a lot of us who have been involved in the Alt*Worship movement since the late 1980s, have recently also used the word "Emerging Church". Whether it sticks or not, we shall see. But when I use it I am most certainly not criticising something I know nothing about in another country. I'm talking about something I've been involved in for the last 15 years. If there is critique, it's self-critique. 

Second, on the dynamics of internet conversation.
The firestorm that occurred last week was in part, I think, because I was using the word in an all-encompassing kind of fashion - including people from all over the world, in institutional and non-institutional settings, from evangelical and non-evangelical backgrounds, who talk and write about themselves as "Emerging" or "Emergent". It was a piece of thinking-out-loud about the zeitgeist. But one or two people took it that my analysis was criticism, and that it was aimed at some specific group that calls themselves "Emergent". Or Emerging. Or whatever it was.

 The internet is a curious thing, and one thing I find interesting, quite apart from the specifics of this particular firestorm, is that people communicate online as if they are in the room with the other person, yet as often as not, they have not met in real life. If someone projects on to me an attitude they have met somewhere else (critical, destructive), and in addition reads "Anglican" at the top of my page, has no idea that I was a founder member of no fewer than three different Alt*Worship communities, and thus assumes that I am a traditionalist who is criticising all things new, then there is a fundamental misunderstanding.

If I were talking to someone I had only just met in real life and they said something I didn't think I agreed with, I would probably first ask them, "What do you mean? - say more"  - get some context about where they are coming from, let them speak, see whether we really agree or not.  This, I think, would be a good practice for internet discussions. Don't assume, if  the writer is writing in general terms, that they are being aggressive or critical, or that they have *you* in mind.  Ask some questions. Open up a conversation. It might even be a good one, and we may end up friends.

What do you think?