ken wilson online

I’d like to say more about bounded sets before moving on to other approaches to church.  Picture a bounded set approach to church as a circle in the form of a ring. Members of the group fulfill certain criteria and become members of the group thereby.  It’s pretty clear who is a member of the group and who isn’t.  People are either “all in” or “all out.”  The boundary is comprised of whatever beliefs and behaviors are viewed by the church in question as essential for membership in the group.  Keep in mind that boundaries like this include both formal statements (like creeds and defined positions on various moral-behavioral issues), cultural factors (as is the case with ethnic churches of many kinds) and other informally enforced boundaries (things which are accepted or rejected by group members through various forms of social sanction or pressure).
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My friend Rich Cizik, a prominent leader of the National Association of Evangelicals resigned recently after the proverbial firestorm of protest.   He candidly answered some questions posed by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air.“  Cizik revealed the following things about his personal views when asked: that civil unions in his view are OK, that it might be wise for the government to offer contraceptives to those who can’t afford them in order to reduce the number of babies who are aborted rather than born, and that he voted for a Democratic candidate (Barak Obama) in the Democratic primary in his state.
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