Center Set Theology

Cultural Anthropologist have many lenses they use to categorize cultures.  The “Bounded Set/Centered Set” lens categorizes cultures by examining the heart of their identity.  In a bounded set culture, identity is intimately connected to their outward symbols, eg. their music, food, ceremonies, types of clothing, and spoken language.  The bounded set culture exerts a great deal of effort policing the boundaries of culture to insure the right people stay in and the wrong people stay out.  While a centered set culture has traditions and ceremonies they highly value, identity is found in the beliefs and values of the individual, not outward traditions or practices.

The Lutheran Reformation changed many things, one of the most ignored is the shift that Luther pressed away from a theology shaped by Bounded Set thinking to a theology that reflected Centered Set thinking.  The Lutheran Confessions did not introduce a new set of rituals and traditions to replace the crumbling walls of the previous rituals and traditions. Rather, they were written to define our identity from a common platform (center) of beliefs from which individual Christians and congregations lived out their faith. In this way they reflected Jesus’ discipleship making approach where he gave the disciples truths to serve as pillars of identity rather than outlining new rituals, church structures, or an organizational chart.  The New Testament church was a centered set culture.

Lately, many conservative denominations have shifted from the Reformation’s centered set theological framework to a bounded set framework.  For this reason the denominations have become too focused on building theological fences that keep the faithful within the bounds and the heathens outside the gate.

We can easily recognize the weaknesses of the bounded-set framework; we especially like the fact that it minimizes our involvement in defining and maintaining the boundaries.  The boundaries are easy to identify and there is a kind of freedom that comes from living within the fences.  The trade-off of the bounded set is the fence, and that reality that we have little power to redefine the boundaries.  In contrast, the center-set organization has the ultimate freedom, there are no fences.  Yet the price of that freedom is the commitment each member makes to stay connected to the center.

Staying connected to the center necessitates that we challenge ourselves to answer hard theological and cultural questions as we are engaged in mission and ministry.  The bounded set organization expects a Board, a Commission, or Taskforce tell them about the theology that defines the fence.  In a center-set each person needs to be involved in the collective process of determining how the center fits into the new territory of the mission field.  It is much easier to have a committee or taskforce tell us how to believe and think.  The center-set requires each person be fully engaged in theological reflection and conversation to ensure that in their freedom they have not lost touch with the center-set platform.  This website, these pages exists to enable us to engage in the necessary, and God honoring theological discourse that will give us freedom and clarity in our theological decision process.  The work of our craftsmen is not to build fences but to raise-up a new generation of Christians who are eager to leave the safety of the walls of the church to bring Jesus to the lost and dying of the world.