ken wilson online

Robert Putnam is the most careful purveyor of survey data alive.  He understands religion in America as few others do, and with great appreciation for its benefits.  So when he speaks, we’re smart to listen.  And this is what he’s telling us: evangelicalism in America grew robustly in th 1970’s and 1980’s (when my church community, Vineyard, was founded.) But by 1990 it hit a wall, and since then has been in numerical decline.
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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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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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