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Universalism and Centered Sets

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Bounded vs Centered Set

In the past few posts, I have discussed Bounded Sets vs. Centered Sets, and have stated that I believe that one of the best approaches for churches in our culture and society is a Centered Set approach, where there is no “us vs. them” mentality, or trying to decide who is “in” and who is “out.” Instead, we place Jesus Christ at the center of all humanity, and then view ourselves and others in relation to our proximity to Him, and our movement either toward or away from Him. In this way, everybody is “in.” Everybody belongs. Everybody can get involved.

Some fear that a Centered Set approach leads to Universalism, that all people are “saved.”

Does Centered Set Theology Lead to Universalism?

UniversalismI don’t think a Centered Set approach leads to universalism. To the contrary, I think a Centered-Set approach best reflects biblical theology.

First, when we say that all people are “in” we don’t mean that all people are justified or have eternal life. At least, I don’t mean this.

I believe that on the cross, Jesus Christ actually paid for the sins of the entire world. Not potentially, but actually. He really did pay for the sins of the entire world. Everyone is forgiven. Every single man, woman, and child is completely forgiven for every sin, past, present, and future. (Except for the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. But I am not about to get into that issue here.)

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Bounded vs Centered Sets

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bounded sets vs centered sets

Yesterday I wrote a long article about Bounded Sets and Centered Sets. In an attempt to simplify and summarize that post, here is a brief chart which I pulled from page 50 of Shaping of Things to Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch.

Underneath the chart is a brief video which you might also find helpful, and following that is a quote from C. S. Lewis which, although he doesn’t speak of bounded sets or centered sets, seems to address the concept.  I have also written about this previously in my post, Belonging before Believing.

Bounded Set and Centered Set Approach

Bounded-Set Approach

Centered-Set Approach

The evangelizer is the expert who has special knowledge regarding God that the lost person must take in to be saved.

Each person is the expert on his or her own life and has the God-given ability to seek for the truth. The evangelizer respects this.

The “lost” person is viewed as flawed in character and sinful.

Each person is viewed as created in the image of God–precious, valuable, and loved by God.

Seeing people as simply lost or saved, it tries to paternally “fix up” sinners and make them like us.

Seeing people as seekers, it tries to stimulate others to ask, seek, and knock, while understanding we don’t know it all ourselves.

The goal is to get them to sign on, to profess belief, to become part of the team.

The goal is for the process of discovery of Christ and the search for truth to be furthered in the person.

A cataclysmic change occurs in people called “conversion.”

Conversion is a process that does not begin and end with the profession of faith in Christ, but begins with the Holy Spirit’s prevenient grace on the person’s life and continues through repentance for a lifetime–the Kingdom comes.

We Christians know and have the whole truth.

We don’t know everything about life or God–humility and wonder remain.

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Bounded Sets and Centered Sets

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Bounded Set and Centered SetOne concept that really helps grasp the concept of living and ministering without doctrinal statements is idea of bounded and centered sets. This ideas was initially developed over 30 years ago by missiologist and anthropologist Paul Hebert in his book Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues. His ideas were then popularized by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch in their book, Shaping of Things to Come, and in the book edited by Darrell Guder, Missional Church.

Below is a brief summary of Bounded and Centered Sets.

Bounded Sets

A bounded set is where we create a boundary, a theological border, a doctrinal fence, and separate those who are inside the fence from those who are out. It is an “us” versus “them” mentality where everyone on the inside is accepted, loved, and welcomed, while those outside the fence are kept away until they can change their beliefs and behaviors to fit the entry requirements.

The pastor and elders and leaders of the church or organization often serve as the gatekeepers in such situations, welcoming those who belong while admonishing those who don’t to “change their ways.”

Bounded Set Illustration

Horse Corral Bounded SetIf it helps, you can think of a bounded set as a Western style horse corral. The cowboys build the fence to keep the horses from wandering away. Outside the fence is where wild beasts and rustlers reside, just looking for a chance to kill or steal a horse.

In this situation, the fence serves to protect the property of the cowboys, and also makes it easier for them to feed and care for their herd. Occasionally, a wild animal gets into the corral, where he is summarily shot.

Sometimes, however, the cowboys go out and capture some mustangs from the wild, and bring them back to the corral. But before these wild horses can be introduced to the rest of the herd, they must be broken. They must learn to enjoy the safety of the fence.

Usually, the wild horses are tamed, and introduced to the rest of the herd. Though they may still long for the freedom of the open range, they eventually learn that life inside the corral is pretty good. There are no predators and the food is easy to obtain. It is safe, warm, and clean, and there is plenty of time for food and friendship with other horses.

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The Human Faces of God

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Human Faces of God by Thom StarkI just finished reading The Human Faces of God by Thom Stark.

This is a dangerous book… My favorite kind.

I don’t think I have ever agreed and disagreed with one book so much. I am a book scribbler and judge the worth of a book by how much I scribble in it. There are scribbles on almost every paragraph of this book.

But my scribbles are inconsistent. On one page, I crossed out an entire section, and scribble “NO! NO! NO!” all over the page. But on the very next page, I underlined and starred half of it, with “YES! YES! YES!” written in the margin.

And I’m not schizophrenic. That’s just the way this book is. It is the most troubling and helpful book I have read in a very long time.

What is the book about?

Well, the subtitle gives a hint: The Human Faces of God is about “What Scripture reveals when God gets it wrong (and why inerrancy tries to hide it).”

Whoa! For someone who received all of his education at some of the leading “Inerrantist” schools in the country, I found the book incredibly challenging. The good thing is that I had already been somewhat primed for this in my series on Bibliology where I questioned and challenged everything I had been taught about Inerrancy and Inspiration.

Book Summary

Kill the CanaanitesChapters 1-3 reveal in stark reality the difficulties with the doctrine of inerrancy. In these chapters he shows why Scripture is not divine inerrant Word of God, and argues that such a view is impossible if we deal seriously and literally with the text, the way we all claim to do. Furthermore, he argues that the view of inerrancy is detrimental to our spiritual growth as followers of Jesus.

Then, chapters 4-9, Thom Stark digs a giant hole under all of us who believe in inerrancy. And I’ll be honest. I don’t have answers to most of the issues he raises. In chapter 4, he shows fairly convincingly that early Israelite religion was polytheistic.  Chapter 5 makes you cringe with the clear explanation of several Old Testament passages where Yahweh clearly seems to be calling for human sacrifice. Then there is chapter 6, which talks about the genocides in Scripture, all of which were undertaken at God’s command. Chapter 7 deals with a famous textual issue of whether David actually killed Goliath or not (cf. 2 Sam 21:19), and chapter 8 makes the case that Jesus was wrong in many of His predictions about the future.

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What is the Truth?

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What is the Truth?
If you have a doctrinal statement, do you believe it represents truth?

Of course you do, or you wouldn’t believe it.

Your Doctrinal Statement is Not the Truth

But we must be careful. While truth can be found in doctrinal statements, they themselves are not the source of truth. They point and witness to the truth, but are not themselves “the truth.”

Let me put this another way. Everybody  who has a doctrinal statement believes that their doctrinal statement accurately represents the teaching of Scripture. But since not all doctrinal statements agree, this means that not all doctrinal statements accurately represent the teachings of Scripture. Some points on some doctrinal statements must be wrong, and we must not be so arrogant to think that our chosen doctrinal statement is 100% accurate, while everybody else is in error.

It should be pointed out that the same goes for Scripture. When we say that our doctrinal statements just follow the teachings of Scripture, what we really mean is that our doctrinal statements follow our understanding of Scripture. Yet our understanding of Scripture may not be the actual teachings of Scripture in every case.
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A More Excellent Way

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If doctrine is not the tie that binds churches together in unity, what is?

Love

A More Excellent WayIn his letters to the Corinthians, Paul corrects numerous practical and doctrinal issues within the church. But at one point, in the middle of dealing with the divisive doctrine of spiritual gifts, and after begging with the Corinthian believers to live in unity with one another, he shows them the key to unity.

The key to unity, says Paul, is not doctrinal precision or even ethical perfection, but love. Though 1 Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings, it has very little to do with the love between a man and a wife, and everything to do with how a church can function as the Body of Christ. The secret is not spiritual gifts, but love. The secret is not prophecy, or preaching and teaching, but love. The secret is not accurate knowledge of theology and faith that moves mountains, but love. The secret is not abundant generosity to the poor, or becoming a martyr for the faith, but love.

Without Love, Theology is Worthless

What does this mean for our churches? It means that how we treat one another and what we do for our neighbors matters more than what we write down on our doctrinal statement. Sure, right believing is important, but according to Paul, all the doctrine and theology in the world is worthless if we do not love.

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Simple Doctrinal Statements are Best

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Simple Doctrinal StatementIn a previous post, I listed three ways doctrinal statements can be helpful. They can help us understand Scripture, let people know what to expect in our churches, and help guide leadership decisions.

If you develop a doctrinal statement for these reasons, I would urge you to keep the the statement as basic as possible.

The length and complexity of a doctrinal statement is directly proportional to the amount of control, power, abuse, and disunity within the church that the doctrinal statement creates.

Do you really need that point about “Seven Day Creationism”? Or the paragraph about the Tribulation and the Millennium? Is the section on Tongues and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit really necessary? Must you really explain that the Five Points of Calvinism are the true Gospel as taught by Paul? Is it really that important to clarify that women and homosexuals are not allowed to be pastors in your church?

About ten years ago, when I started this website, I included a doctrinal statement on it. I updated and tweaked it until about 2007. Then I forgot about it. Just for kicks, I went and looked at it the other day, and while I still agree with almost everything on it, I decided to follow my own advice and radically simplify it.

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I Have a Dream

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The following is written with thanks to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a dream

One hundred score years ago, a great servant, in whose sacrficial life we now stand, died on the cross and rose again from the dead. This momentous event came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of enslaved humans who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But two thousand years later, humanity still is not free. Two thousand years later, the lives of most people are still sadly crippled by the manacles of religion and the chains of spiritual blindness. Two thousand years later, the average person lives on a lonely island of separation in the midst of a vast ocean of the divine offer of community. Two thousand years later, the average person still languished in the corners of dark despair and finds himself an exile in his own mind and home and neighborhood. And so we’ve come here today to imagine a way out of this shameful condition.

In a sense we’ve come to hold God true to His promises in Scripture. When the architects of Christianity wrote the magnificent words of the Gospels and the Letters to the Early Churches, they were giving evidence to a promissory note to which every person in the world is heir. This note was a promise that all people, yes, men as well as women, of any race, and tribe, and tongue, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Faith, Hope, and Love” in a community of other believers. It is obvious today that the church has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as most of her members are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, the church has given the people s cheap substitute, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of true community is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity for the church. And so, we’ve come to pursue change, a change that will release the riches of freedom and the security of righteousness.

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How NOT to do a Trunk-or-Treat for Halloween

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[Note: This is a post from a few years ago… but it is appropriate for this year as we near the celebration of Halloween.]

I really want to like the institutional church. Honestly, I do. I want to see all the good it does for people and for the community.

But it seems like every time I give traditional church another chance to reveal Jesus, I get the opposite instead.

Here is what happened:

Tonight was Halloween

We take our girls Trick-or-Treating tonight. We stayed conservative, so no big witch hats or anything scary. Just 3 innocent cow-girls. If you condemn that sort of thing, you should probably just stop reading here. Or you could go read this post about why Christians SHOULD celebrate Halloween.

Here is a picture of my girls before we left:

Trunk or Treat

And though there is six inches of snow on the ground, and it was only 35 degrees, we planned on going to two locations:

First, we went Trick-or-Treating in the neighborhood of a friend of ours. After that, we went to a “Trunk-or-Treat” at a megachurch in town.

Think of it as a competition between the secular version of Halloween and the Christian alternative…

Here is how both went:

“Secular” Trick-or-Treating: Warm Smiles, Lots of Candy, and Free Pizza

Handful of CandyWe met Monica and her daughter at her house at about 4:30. She instantly introduced us to several of her neighborhood friends and their kids, and together, we all walked around the neighborhood, chatting, laughing, telling jokes, meeting people, and petting dogs, while our girls got handfuls of candy from almost every door.

We did meet some ghouls and goblins, ghosts and witches, and even Satan’s bride, but none of them tried to kill us, convert us, or even cast a spell on us (that I’m aware of).

We got pretty cold after about an hour, so Monica invited us back to her place for pizza and hot chocolate. We tried to offer her some money, but she refused.

While we waited for the pizza to arrive, Trick-or-Treaters continued to come to her door. She knew about half of them by name, and chatted with several parents while giving out handfuls of candy to their kids.

At around 7:00, we were planning on going to the church Trunk-or-Treat, and asked Monica if she and her daughter wanted to join us. They are not “Christians” and so we thought maybe this might be a good opportunity to introduce her to church. But she said she had a night class she had to go to, and so we said our good-byes, and left for the megachurch and their Trunk-or-Treat.

How glad I am that she did not come!

Church Trunk-or-Treat: Night of the Living Dead

A Trunk-or-Treat, in case you don’t know, is where a church offers an alternative to Trick-or-Treating. The church gets a hundred people or so to park their cars in the church parking lot, and then they hand out candy from the trunks of their cars. Usually, the church also has games and other activities for the kids.

At this church, here is how the Trunk-or-Treat worked: They had about fifty cars in the parking lot all of them weare covered by a cheap van insurance, and at about half of them, you had to stand in a line for about 10 minutes while kids played little games. When you finally got up to the car trunk, and played the game, the church members standing there gave each kid one piece of candy.

Yes. You read that right. One piece of candy.

And not snack-size candy bars, or little individual-size boxes or bags of candy, but a single piece of candy. Like a single Jolly Rancher. Or a single, individually-wrapped Lifesaver. Or a Dum-dum. Or one of those tiny Tootsie Rolls. The most substantial item was probably the Hershey Miniature bars. Not the Snack Size bars. The Miniatures. Like this one:

Hershey MiniatureBut of course, every single car had a “Jesus Loves You” sign next the candy. And I think we got invited to church about four or five times. We also received several Gospel Tracts along with the tiny piece of candy.

This whole time, remember, it was 35 degrees. We were freezing. So we went over to where they had some food like hotdogs and hamburgers, but they were selling these for $2 each. We didn’t need to warm up that bad, and so went inside the church gymnasium where there were supposed to be some better games where kids could win some bigger pieces of candy.

As we entered, there was a little booth where church members invited us to “sign up” for the church newsletter so they could contact us and invite us to their church. They also had a “Donations Accepted” box. I refused to sign up for junk mail, and refused to give a donation. I couldn’t help remembering that Monica had given our cold children free pizza and hot chocolate, and when I tried to give her money, she refused.

We went in to the church and discovered that at least in here, the pieces of candy were bigger. They had the actual Snack-Size pieces of candy at these games. So the girls stood in line for the first game, which required them to drop a penny into a fish tank. If the penny landed in a little glass dish on the bottom, they won a piece of candy.

Kahlea, our youngest daughter, went first. She dropped a penny into the fish tank, and the penny did not land in the glass dish. So the church lady looked at my five year-old little girl and said, “I’m sorry. You didn’t win. I can’t give you a piece of candy.”

My wife and I looked at each other in disbelief. WHAT?

So our other two daughters gave it a try, and both of them were able to get a penny onto the dish. They both got a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. I looked at Kahlea. She was about to burst into tears. Thankfully, the lady behind the fishtank noticed this and gave Kahlea a second try, and much to my relief, Kahlea got the penny on the dish and got a Peanut Butter Cup.

At the second game, they had to toss some large rings made of straw onto a bale of hay which had some little stakes in it. To win a piece of candy, they had to get a ring around a stake. At this game, only Kahlea was successful, and so only she was given a piece of candy. The older two girls were not given a second chance. They walked away looking disappointed.

At the third game, they had to toss some stuffed pumpkins into a basket, which had been turned sideways and was already half-full of pumpkins. None of the girls were successful here, and so nobody got candy. I was starting to get frustrated. I wanted to yell, “Just give the kids some damn candy!” Hmmm… Maybe that witch from the neighborhood did cast a spell on me…

Then we noticed a large crowd of parents and children at a big game table in the center of the Gymnasium. We walked over there, and on the table sat every child’s dream: buckets and buckets of candy. There were three tables set up around a “Wheel-of-Fortune” spinning wheel, and on each table sat four buckets, each one overflowing with candy. This looked promising.

I should not have got my hopes up. I forgot where I was: In the land that promises much, but gives little.

The game was a Roulette type game. Six children got to play each round, two at each table. Each one was given a little beanbag pumpkin, and set it on a number from 1 to 12. Then when all six children had made their choice, a church lady spun the wheel, which also had the numbers 1 to 12 on it, and if any child had chosen the number which the wheel landed on, they got to pick one piece of candy from the overflowing buckets.

We waited in line for five rounds before our girls got their turn. In those five rounds, not a single child won a piece of candy. The odds of winning here at the megachurch seemed lower than the odds of winning in Vegas. Not surprisingly, when our girls got their chance, nobody won again.

At this point, Wendy and I decided to leave. Before we did, she took the younger two girls to the bathroom, where two church ladies yelled at them for “cutting in line” when, by all appearances, there was no line.

As I waited for her to come out from the bathroom, I overheard two mothers talking about how disappointed their children were at not winning any candy.

Yes. Mine too.

On our way back out the car, my wife looked over at me and said, “Well, at least it’s better than the crusades.”

We had a good laugh.

Happy Halloween

Look … I don’t care if your church wants to host an alternative to Halloween, such as a “Trunk-or-Treat” or “Harvest Party” or even a “Hallelujah Party” (gag).

But if you do, try to make your Halloween alternative better than anything the world has to offer.

If you have “Jesus loves you” plastered on every vehicle at your Trunk-or-Treat, you better be giving out truckloads of candy. If you have silly little games, fine. But don’t ever make kids walk away from them empty-handed.

If you think Halloween is some sort of contest between Jesus and the devil, just think of candy as the way children keep score.

Revelation, 144,000, and the Millennium

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Book of RevelationMaybe I haven’t studied eschatology (the study of the End Times) as much as I should have, or maybe I just don’t care about it too much (the world has enough problems today for me to worry about the problems in the future), but as I read The Theology of the Book of Revelation, which presents a Preterist reading of Revelation, I just find myself shrugging, and saying, “I don’t really care if he is right or wrong, this way of understanding Revelation makes it much more teachable and applicable.”

Is that bad?

I have never taught through the Book of Revelation, and frankly, until I started reading this book, I never really wanted to. Why not? Well, I like science fiction, and I like Scripture, but I don’t like Scripture to sound like science fiction. And for me, that is how the book of Revelation usually sounded.

But Bauckham’s way of reading Revelation actually excites me. It seems to bring the  book of Revelation into real life.

This week, those of us who are reading the book (see the list below), read chapters 3-4. Here is some of what these chapters contained.

The Lamb on the Throne

I was a bit confused initially with chapter 3, since it seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with Preterism. Instead, it dealt with how Revelation reveals John’s belief that Jesus was divine and therefore, worthy of Christian worship. It is a great point, and a definite theme in all of John’s writings, but what does it have to do with Preterism?

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