When the New Ecclesial Movements (NEMs) burst on to the church landscape in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council they were a totally unexpected, unforeseen phenomenon. In the last fifty plus years of their existence, not only have they had a huge impact on the church’s missionary outreach but their modus operandi has impacted, albeit unintentionally, on the very structure and organisation of the church itself. Their arrival coincided more or less with the dismantling of the then dominant notion of church as a perfect society and the rediscovery of the pilgrim people of God motif in the Second Vatican Council.