Bonus Material: Things I Wish Were in the Book

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to listen to my daughter Christie preach on the theme of community.  She included a brief explanation of bounded, fuzzy, and centered and shared the soccer example from Centered-Set Church (47). She stated that the players had to confront the offending player and tell her to stop picking up the ball. If not, they would not be playing soccer. Then Christie asked, “What are things that do not belong here if we are to experience rich Christian community? What are things we could not allow just as the soccer players could not allow someone to use their hands?” I thought, “What a great question. I wish I had included that in the book.” A society saturated in tolerance as supreme virtue gets nervous about any sort of confrontation telling someone they are out of line. Christie’s question not only led the listeners from the generality of the illustration to their real-life situation, it also facilitated a shift from the societal default to a stance of recognizing there are times we do need to say, “that does not belong here.”  

That was not the first time I heard or read something and thought, “That’s great. I wish that was in the book.” In fact, I have kept a list of them. In this blog I share the list with you. Most of them are short, a line or two, some a bit longer. May you find them useful as I have, and please send me items you think I could add to the list.

 Brad Isaak, a youth pastor, shared with me a line he has used when confronting youth about problematic behavior at youth group. He says to them, “if you do that here then here will be no different than anywhere else.” Similar to Christie’s question, Brad’s statement communicates that standards have value. Note the difference from bounded. Brad is not communicating, “If you want to be in, if you want to avoid shame, keep the rules.” Rather his statement has an invitational quality. It invites them to be part of making something of value that they will get to experience.

 Some great sentences:

“This is the very nature of God, that we work from the place of God’s blessing and love, not for it.” Dustin Maddox, 10/23/22, North Fresno Church

 “Jesus was not killed because of who he excluded. Jesus was killed because of who he included.” John Richardson, sermon, Prodigal Church 8/3/24

 To add to list of questions on pages 164-65 in book: “What is your next step?”  When I asked Dan Serdahl what are ways his church avoids fuzziness he told me they regularly use this question.

 “Few things could be more transformational than a community that devotes less energy to policing its borders and more to elevating and celebrating its glorious center of gravity.” Meghan Good, Divine Gravity, 115.

 Karl Barth in a letter to someone who had sent him a book they wrote critiquing others’ theology.  “You say many correct things. But what is correct is not always true. Only what is said kindly is true. You do not speak kindly in a single line.” Karl Barth Letters 1961-1968, p. 328

 “bounded progressive” – a phrase Megan Good used in a Jesus Collective webinar on centered-set church (2/23/23). I find it helpful in communicating it is not just conservatives, or legalists that are bounded.

 Illustrations of distinguishing the center from things not part of the center:

In the discussion time after my presentation at a regional event of the Reformed Church of America in Omaha (7/22/23), Jon Garbison, commented on how a church’s shared center is like overlapping sections in a Venn diagram. The parts that are not shared, need to be recognized and agreed on as non-essential.

 Meghan Good uses a dart board analogy. Bull’s eye represents what is most central and where there is total accord. Each ring out less so. That is not to say those things are not important, but that there can be differences. “There are also legitimate reasons for groups to separate when it becomes apparent they are operating with different bullseyes or even different outer rings. There is no ‘rule’ for exactly how much must be shared in order to cooperate. The decision will often be affected by a group’s specific mission. Mission goes awry when the people working together are aiming at different targets, flinging their darts crossways with each other. Some forms of mission may require only the bullseye be in common. Other forms of mission directly implicate the outer rings. The important thing to keep in mind is that it is possible to recognize that missions have diverged without lighting anyone else’s dartboard on fire” (111).

 David French, on the Russell Moore Show podcast, Sept. 4, 2024, said that in a pluralistic society you have a hard core but soft edges so you do not hurt others when you bump into differences. As he said that I thought, bounded churches have hard edges. A centered church has a hard core, but can have soft edges.

 Centered approach takes time

This idea is in the book, but Greg Applequist went deeper with the idea. This is an email he sent me after I spoke at the Evangelical Covenant Church Midwest Region’s pastor and spouse retreat last October.

 “As we spoke on Tuesday, the idea of time came to my mind.  To live in a centered church requires us to recognize that things take time.  I have found that when challenge comes, most people don't want to take the necessary time to sit in the middle of the challenge.  About 18 months ago we had a youth volunteer tell us he was transgender and was going to present as female.  As you can imagine, this was difficult.  There were immediate decisions we had to make (could she continue to work with students), but there were larger discernment we had to face as well.  As I think about that specific situation, to be a centered church would be to take time to know her story, explore the Scriptures, share our concerns/fears/hopes, understand what our students were facing in terms of sexual identity and so much more.  Many in our church simply wanted an answer, is it right or wrong, or as we can see now, is she in or out?  I wonder if people today are so concerned about being right or wrong that they don't have the patience or stamina to live in the grey (not the fuzzy) as we discern together how to move forward.  To be centered is to take the necessary time together.  I wonder if the greatest challenge to being centered is the immediacy that we all live with.  The tyranny of the urgent makes it much more difficult to live in the wisdom of the center.”

 Trajectory Principle: Directional vs. positional

Meghan Good, includes just a bit of explicit bounded, fuzzy, centered language in her book Divine Gravity, but the concepts are discernable throughout. I recommend the book to you. I find her language of “trajectory” and directional vs. positional especially helpful.

 Great questions: “What would change if you valued trajectory over position? Who or what might you see differently? (115).

 She uses Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and tax collector to illustrate the trajectory principle (Luke 18:9-14). After reading her interpretation last year, I began using this parable in all my presentations of the centered-set church concept. I wish it was in the book. I commend it to you. In just a few minutes you can illustrate that Jesus was centered--not bounded or fuzzy.

 Luke makes clear that Jesus directs this parable at bounded-church types. “To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable . . .” The Pharisee in the parable displays exactly that attitude.

 If Jesus used the bounded approach, and looked at the men’s position in relation to the line, the Pharisee would be in—part of the group. The tax collector would be out—on the wrong side of the line. But referring to the tax collector Jesus says, “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God” (14). How can Jesus say it is the tax collector who is justified, included, in? Meghan Good observes that Jesus evaluated trajectory rather than position. The tax collector’s repentant attitude (“God, have mercy on me, a sinner”) displays a turning, an orientation toward God. In relation to the line, the Pharisee is compliant and in a good position, but his attitude displays that his orientation is not in line with the way of Jesus. He is headed the wrong direction. Jesus is not bounded; he is also not fuzzy. He does not say “let’s be tolerant; they are both fine.”

 Borrow, share, send me more

Please borrow and use these ideas. Please share this blog with those you know who have read the book Centered-Set Church. Are there people you know who have not read the book that would benefit from doing so?

Thoughts for Today from Reading My Old Letters

Historians often speak of spending hours in archives reading old letters filed away in boxes. As a contextual theologian, my research has focused on interviewing and observing people in the present moment, reading theology, and reading works on the context by social scientists. Yet in contrast to research for all my other books, during my sabbatical in the spring of 2023 I found myself reading through old letters filed away in boxes. The two boxes came from my parents’ garage. They were my letters. Thankfully, my father, like an archivist, had kept all the letters I had written to them during my college years and the years I lived in Honduras. I read the letters because I am working on a memoir. I will leave describing the memoir for another day (actually, it will likely be a few years). The letters provided material on themes I am exploring in the memoir, but reading them did much more than that. At times I cringed as I read statements I made in my 20’s. Other times I read with pride. Often, I felt compassion for that younger Mark Baker and, just as often, I would find myself smiling at similarities with the present--Mark Baker being Mark Baker. At times the twentysomething Mark would speak through those letters challenging my current self. From the many reflections I had reading the letters, in this blog I will share two.

Revise rather than total rejection

Living in Honduras stirred up and transformed my life in many ways. I read the letters with wonder and gratitude as I saw the many ways God used experiences to shape and mold me. In general I affirm the changes I made. Yet as I read the letters I often wondered if I abandoned more than I needed to when I left position for another. In retrospect, I can see that often revision would have been better than total rejection. I will give just one example. During my first four years in Honduras I became increasingly critical of a gospel focused only on individual spiritual future salvation. Later, some reading and experiences led me to think critically not only of the content but also methods of evangelism. Like many in my circles, I stopped doing evangelism. Thankfully, in this case, the rejection did not last long. I began working with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Syracuse University. The job description included doing evangelism. That forced me to not just critique the way some other groups did evangelism on campus, but to work at developing evangelistic methods I did feel comfortable with. Working with IVCF led me to revise how I did evangelism rather abandon it. Unfortunately, in some other areas in my life I did not have an outside influence that pushed me to evaluate whether, even if correct in my critiques, I had rejected more than I needed to. I encourage you, and myself, to revise rather than totally reject. (As I wrote that sentence, I immediately felt the need to add a caveat. A voice within me said, “But Mark there have been some things you stepped away from totally, and appropriately so.” True, so, let’s not say to always revise rather than reject, but perhaps revision would be a better default starting point. And only after further discernment, perhaps rejection.)

I have changed, others might change too

Reading the letters reminded me of many ways I changed in those years. To list a few:

- I started college with a desire to get rich. Four years later I sought to live on as little as possible and give what remained of my salary to the poor.

- I arrived in Honduras a dispensationalist and changed significantly in just a few years. The changes from my dispensationalism included: a shift from a personal-spiritual-future gospel to a more holistic gospel, a shift from the Kingdom of God being a minor theme in my theology and Christian living to it being a major theme, and a shift from a negative view of Pentecostals to being open to the gifts of the Spirit and going to a Pentecostal church.

- In college I wrote a paper affirming the just war approach (not with much conviction, but also without any doubts). A few years later, after actually being in a war zone in El Salvador, hearing stories of massacres from survivors, and reading Jacques Ellul I embraced Christian pacifism.

I could list other changes, but these few are enough to make the point that I changed in significant ways. This served as a needed reminder and challenge; if I changed others can as well. Even though I have recognized this before, I still have a tendency to categorize some people based on a piece of information. For instance, at times I make assumptions about people’s theology based on what seminary or university they attended, what denomination they are in, or, at times, even based on what Bible translation they use. That is problematic itself, most of us are more complex than one of those factors might imply. But what is more problematic is my tendency to assume what they were is what they are, and what they will be. What if I applied this to myself? I would be correct to assume that because Mark Baker went to a dispensationalist church he was dispensationalist when he was 20 years old. But wrong to think that means he is still dispensationalist. Yet, I at times do that with others. I changed, perhaps others have changed too—or perhaps they will.

I had an internal argument with myself as I wrote the previous paragraph—and not just because it is embarrassing to acknowledged this. A voice in my head was saying, “But Mark, that can’t be true. Clearly you do expect people to change. You write books, teach classes, and write blogs with the expectation that they will influence people and that people will change.” True, and I think the openness and hope I have that people will change is more prominent in my life. Yet, the reality is that vestiges of my bounded-church past still have a pull on me. In what I described above, they lead me to focus on positional thinking rather than directional thinking. This displays the laziness inherent in a bounded approach. It seizes on a particular item and draws conclusions, rather than digging deeper to discover trajectory and ask what direction the person is heading. May we avoid easy/lazy categorization and let us not give up on people.

An important caveat: change is not automatic or guaranteed. A call to not make assumptions about people because of something in their past, and to not assume people will remain in the same position they are now is not a call to passivity. I changed because of experiences I had, because of questions people asked me, because of books people put in my hands, because of observing others, etc. With an awareness that people can change, let us be open to ways the Spirit may lead us to contribute to others taking transformative steps in a journey toward our center—Jesus Christ.

How Can We As Individuals Live in a More Centered Way?

I regularly state that you can’t do a centered approach alone. A small group leader can’t by themselves make the group centered. If others in the group are bounded, the group will have a bounded character. Yet, what we do at the individual level still matters. What happens if rather than looking at the whole diagram above we look at just one individual? What can we do to treat ourselves in more centered ways? How can our individual discipleship have a more centered character? I address these questions in this 13-minute video.

Image taken from Centered-Set Church: Community and Discipleship Without Judgmentalism, by Mark D. Baker. Copyright © 2021 by Mark D. Baker. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.

Freedom from the Pull of “Everyone is Doing It”

“But Mom, everyone is doing it.” “But Dad, everyone has one, I am the only one who doesn’t.” Take a moment and think back to times you said those lines (or similar ones: wearing that, listening to that, going there, etc.). If you are a parent, take a moment and recall times your children said those lines. It takes tremendous resolve for a parent to stand firm, especially if the statement is basically true. Let’s imagine, however, that only half of the child’s peers had one, or were doing the activity in question. What changes? It is a lot easier for the parent to turn aside the plea by simply pointing out that reality. But even more significantly, the child would feel much less pressure and might not even make the plea in the first place. This dynamic is at the heart of what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls the collective action problem. . It is difficult to stand alone against a collective, but we can if we join with others. For instance, recognizing the significant mental health issues exacerbated by social media, especially for girls, a parent might want to keep their child off social media. But when the child says, “But Mom, everyone else is on social media” (and they are) it is a huge challenge. Haidt says, “but what if we join together and agree to not give our children smart phones until they are in high school and no social media until they are 16? Think how the dynamic would change if half the families in a town practiced that?” I heard Haidt say that on this podcast where he was talking about his new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness . There is much more on the podcast, well worth listening to, but I want to think about just this one idea of responding to the collective action problem. What might happen if we practiced it more explicitly in churches, and not just in relation to smart phones?

Christian communities already support each other in standing against the current of society through collective action, even if the label is not used. Even just the reality of gathering on a Sunday or in small groups during the week is collective action. It is not what most of society does, but being part of a collective that does it makes it feel less abnormal. Giving hard earned money to the church is another example. Knowing others do it helps normalize an action that many in society would view as foolish. We could, however, be more explicit. Imagine what might happens if we explicitly named the contrast between the way of Mammon and the way of Jesus, and collectively took on the challenge to spend less and give more for a certain period of time—with regular times of reflecting and sharing about the experience.

Perhaps, however, rather than choosing some action I might suggest, the best thing for your community to do is to reflect on where you have the hardest time resisting forces of alienation. Reflect and share where the current has caught you up and swept you along in societal practices that hurt you and others—that keep you from living as God created you to live. Then, together decide on collective actions in line with the way of Jesus. Together you can more easily resist the current.

This reminds me of a quote I have shared in the last class of my ethics course for many years. Lois Barrett writes, “The church as an alternative community can make a powerful witness when it chooses to live differently from the dominant society even at just a few key points. An important task of the church is to discern what are those key points at which to be different from the evil of the world” (Missional Church, ed. Guder, 127).

Collective action in a church, however, can easily slide into bounded group judgmentalism. In my high school years, the collective of church youth did make it easier for me to stand against the current of cheating at school, stealing at work, or abusing alcohol. That was positive. But, as I recount in the first chapter of Centered-Set Church, my bounded-church mentality fostered judgmentalism towards those who behaved differently. That was negative. Therefore, let us wrap these collective actions in God’s love. First, we begin with a concept of ethics as gift. God calls us to live in counter cultural ways out of love for us and others. We work from a place of God’s love, not to earn God’s love. Second, assured of God’s mercy, we treat others and ourselves with grace when we fall short.

Reconciliation: Broadening its Meaning (a video)

When many Christians encounter the word “reconciliation” in Paul’s writing they think of it only in a vertical sense—with God. An article by Miroslav Volf sparked an idea of how we might help people see that Paul had both vertical and horizontal implications in mind. I explained my idea in class through quickly-drawn images on the whiteboard. Yuya Ono, a current MA New Testament student at Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary, took my rough images and greatly improved them for this 12-minute video I made to explain my idea.

Volf’s article: “The Social Meaning of Reconciliation” Interpretation, April 2000, 158-172.

A shorter version of Volf’s essay is available at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1726&context=ree