ken wilson online

Today is the official release date for Mystically Wired.   It’s a book about intimacy, a hallmark of the spirituality I learned from John Wimber, captured in the intimate worship songs of Vineyard.  But, as the sub-title (Exploring New Realms in Prayer) infers, the book explores new forms of prayer, new ways of praying, and new experiences mediated by those new ways.  Which, of course, are mainly old ways, forgotten, neglected or left unexplored thanks to that great blinding influence: prejudice.
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Consider, young pastor, the word “reformation.”  We inherited one.   For 500 years, it’s been the ground beneath our feet.  Assumed perspectives that shape the pastoral landscape.  But the theological-pastoral ground beneath our feet isn’t a brass dance floor built on reinforced concrete anchored in unmovable moorings   It’s more like, well,  the ground beneath our feet: a set of plates that shift in response to subterranean forces.  Like the bones of a newborn’s skull, subject to, admitting of, allowing for reformation as needed.
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What drives a concern for thinking about set theory?  This is a sub-text in this ongoing conversation.  Maybe set theory is a ruse for being soft on sin.  We don’t want to obey the Bible’s teaching on sin, so we are trying to find a way around it, and set theory is a convenient sin dodge.  The bounded set seems to be driven by a concern for moral rigor or moral purity. Therefore any attempt to consider a different approach must be driven by a concern to accomodate to the surrounding culture when it comes to sin.
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I think we need to introduce another aspect of set theory that missionary Paul Heibert describes in his book, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues. I know, I know, this is not simple and we all want to cut to the chase and look at centered sets.  But it’s necessary, given the questions about “who is a Christian?” that have surfaced in the blog.
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My friend Rick pointed out wonderful summary of set theory as applied to the Christian misison in a gem of a footnote tucked away in Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, by Miroslav Volf. Volf writes from his experience in Croatia during the war there. Bert Waggoner, the National Director of Vineyard USA told me (if memory serves) that Volf has a Pentecostal background.  Not your typical ivory tower academic.
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We need some new nets.  Something more than contemporary worship music and great programs that meet needs and pastors who wear clothes from Old Navy.  It’s time to get missional, which always  means controversial.  It’s time to examine cultural assumptions that have hindered us from doing our job.  This post is the first in a series on one of those assumptions–how we in the Western world approach categories.  I learned this from John Wimber in the early Vineyard days.  He introduced me to the conversation in mission circles about “bounded set and centered set” groups.  
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My tribe on the Christian landscape, Vineyard, came to be through poetry.  A group of burned out believers gathered in a living room week after week to sing love songs to Jesus.  One of the early songs of those early days was titled, “More Love, More Power.”  It was  prophetic, because what the world needs now, and what the church has too little of, is love sweet love.
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My father-in-law, Stanley Rozell, used to talk about hitting the ball “down the center of the middle.”  What was the center of the middle of the church’s message?  They devoted themselves to “the apostles’ teaching” said Luke, the author of Acts.  What did that refer to in historical context?  It referred to the remembered words and deeds of Jesus now compiled  in the gospels and to whatever the risen Jesus taught between the first Easter Sunday and Ascension Thursday. The only references we have to this post-resurrection instruction indicate that it was focused on the messianic meaning of Moses and the Prophets and Jesus’ take on “the kingdom of God.”   That’s what they devoted themselves to.  How about us?
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