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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This question of identity and how we understand ours as Jesus followers is important.  It’s fraught for a reason. We’d like to think it’s all about convictions.  If I have X convictions then I’m an X. If my convictions are Y then I’m a Y.  As usual we think we’ve got more control over this than we do.
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