This isn’t the most accurate model of a centered set network. I’m still researching that and hope to find a clear model soon. However, this representation of the connections between flickr users based on their testimonials (comments about one another), does a good job of demonstrating how conections between people tend to gravitate toward a center.
Follow the link to learn more.
Everyday I’m learning more about what a centered set church might look and feel like. I keep on running into quotes from The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church by Michael Frost. So that is now on the top of my “tobuy” list.
here are a few quotations:
It is important here to distinguish betwen centered sets and bounded sets, for that goes to the heart of the two modes of church we’ve been discussing. The attractional church is a bounded set. That is, it is a set of people clearly marked off from those who do not belong to it. Churches thus mark themselves in a variety of ways. Having a church membership roll is an obvious one. This mechanism determins who’s in and who’s out.
The missional-incarnational church, though, is a centered set. This means that rather than drawing a border to determine who belongs and who doesn’t, a centered set is defined by its core values and people are not seen as in or out, but as closer or further away from the center. In that sense, everyone is in and no one is out. Though some people are close to the center and others far from it, everyone is potentially part of the community in its broadest sense.
…If we return to the metaphor of the net, we might see a group of very committed Christian people befriending a number of not-yet-Christians in a variety of settings. Some will know each other, others will not, but the network of friendships will intersect at a variety of levels and degrees. Some of these not-yet-Christians will be close to identifying themselves as Christian, and others will not want to at all. But it’s in the committment to strengthening these bonds that the missional-incarnational mode functions best….
For us, the center should be Jesus Himself. The gospel is the central imperative for Christian mission. Since the core of a centered set is Christ, a church should be concerned with fostering increasing closeness to Jesus in the lives of all involved. We believe that a centered-set church must have a very clear set of beliefs, rooted in Christ and His teaching. This belief system must be non-negotiable and strongly held by the community closest to its center. A centered-set church is not concerned with artificial boundaries that bounded-set churches have traditionally added. In bounded-set churches all sorts of criteria are determined for the acceptance or rejection of prospective members (smoking, drinking alcohol, living together outside of marriage, differing views on Christ’s return). In a centered-set church it is recognized that we are all sinners, all struggling to be the best people we can be. But we also believe that the closer one gets to the center (Christ), the more Christlike one’s behavior should become. Therefore core members of the church will exhibit the features of Christ’s radical lifestyle (love, generosity, healing, hospitality, forgiveness, mercy, peace, and more), and those who have just begun the journey toward Christ (and whose lives may not exhibit such traits) are still seen as “belonging.” No one is considered unworthy of belonging because they happen to be addicted to tobacco, or because they’re not married to their live-in partner.
Belonging is a key value. The growth toward the center of the set is tha same as the process of discipleship.
Let’s face it, there are many paid-up members of respectable churches who might not “live in sin,” but whose lives are marked by greed or gluttony. The bounded-set church has determined a socially acceptable standard by which to exclude certain peoples. The centered-set church will see everyone as equally fallen. It will accept all people but will make Christlikeness a key community goal…
I’ve been doing a little thinking, and a little talking, and it seems that centered-set is more reflective of the idea I’m trying to understand here. While, as one of my friends said, “smart mob church sounds cooler” that is really the method, not the message. And “methods distort the message (via)
What I really want to find out is what it looks like to have a church that defines the core and allows the loose-ties to give strength to the center rather than defining the boundaries and pushing strong-ties. I believe that in this time and in this culture smart mobs might be the best way to achieve this goal, but they themselves are not the goal.
house2house has a great grasp on simplicity:
Some call them house churches. Some call them organic churches. Some call them simple churches. We prefer to just call them churches. They are rapidly multiplying, simple communities of believers, meeting in homes, offices, campuses, wherever God is moving. This is the pattern common to many parts of the globe, and is now becoming more and more common in the U.S. as well.
Where are two or more are gathered in His name, there is church.
Where “DNA” is present among people, there is church.
“D” stands for Divine Truth (loving God/Jesus)
“N” stands for Nurturing Relationships (loving one another deeply)
“A” stands for Apostolic Mission (being on Jesus’ mission to the world)Buildings, programs, and professional clergy are not essential elements of a church.
By ‘simple church’, we mean a way of doing and being church that is so simple that any believer would respond by saying, “I could do that!”
By ‘simple church’, we mean the kind of church that is described in the New Testament. Not constrained by structure but by the needs of the extended family, and a desire to extend the Kingdom of God.
By ‘simple church’, we mean a church that listens to God, follows His leading and obeys His commands.
By ‘simple church’, we mean spiritual parents raising spiritual sons and daughters to establish their own families.
I just ran across No Church? No Problem on Christianity Today Magazine. Kevin Miller reviews George Barna’s new book, REVOLUTION: Finding Vibrant Faith Beyond the Walls of the Sanctuary.
Unlike the Great Awakenings, which brought people into the church, this new movement “entails drawing people away from reliance upon a local church into a deeper connection with and reliance upon God.” Already “millions of believers have stopped going to church,” so Barna expects that in 20 years “only about one-third of the population will rely upon a local congregation as the primary or exclusive means for experiencing and expressing their faith.” Down will go the number of churches, donations to churches, and the cultural influence of churches.
1. Is it necessary for the local church to have walls?
2. What do we lose by not having a building?
3. How can the established church minister to the two thirds of the population who will probably never ‘join’ a congregation?
Hey party people!
(Primarily my TwinCities friends–but also you long distance mentors)
For quite some time now, I have had this intersection of ideas
amassing in my mind. I have not developed it by any means, but I have
decided to ‘externalize the problem’ [1]. And I would like to invite
you into my journey of making sense of the intersection of all these
nodes. Your involvement is entirely voluntary and does not require
anything of you. However, I would love to get your feedback via your
comments and or participation.
I cannot describe the intersection itself so let me briefly tell you
about a couple of the crossroads:
Social Networks:
The study of social networks has turned into a full-blown science [2],
applying graph theory to economics, ecology, sociology, and even
missiology. This is bigger than Friendster, Orkut, MySpace, Xanga,
Tribe.net, etc. [3], though those are prime examples of how social
networking is hitting the main stream.
Centered Sets:
One aspect of social networks that is most intriguing to me is the
idea of centered sets (vs bounded sets). Bounded sets (think of
billiard balls in the rack) are ‘hard at the edges, soft at the
center’. Centered sets (think of the population around a major city)
are ‘soft at the edges, hard at the center) [4].
Urban Tribes:
Wikipedia defines urban tribes this way:
“Urban tribes are the rapidly growing groups of never-married’s
between the ages of 25 and 39 who gather in common-interest groups and
enjoy the urban lifestyle. Urban lifestyle communities offer a viable
alternative to traditional family structures.” [5] I’m not so sure
that this phenomenon is limited to never-married persons.
Smartmobs:
Smartmobs and flashmobs are groups of people that come together for a
specific event without any advertising or RSVPs. (For example, a
pillow fight that is scheduled simply by text messages [6]).
Alone-together neo-monasticism:
Many monasteries are shrinking. There just aren’t many people who want
to go celibate and live their whole lives in monasteries. But the
number of people who are becoming ‘friends of monasteris’, people who
want to learn how to live out the rule in their daily lives, are
rapidly growing. These oblates experience solitude in different ways
than vows of silence, or hours alone in meditation… rather they
experience solitude through being alone together.
“So what does all of this mean, and why are you writing me this
ridiculously long email?”
I believe that there is a place in this culture/time/generation for a
centered-set/smart-mob/social-network church. Recently the church has
been very ‘bounded set’ focused… needing to clarify the boundaries
more than the center. I believe that a group of people who have Christ
as their center–their gravity–can be drawn together as a church. And
I believe that people who are drawn together by Christ will live their
faith out into the world more easily when they don’t feel bound to an
organization or structure.
I am inviting you to be a part of this experiment. This doesn’t mean
you leave your church–there is nothing to leave it for. I work at one
church and am helping plant another. This is an experiment in ‘being’
the church. There are several different ways to be involved, and you
can do any/all/none of these:
- http://twincities.dodgeball.com is a site that lets us know about
events via text messages. By sending one text message to dodgeball,
the whole group will be notified. You can send a message for a major
upcoming event, or just to let everyone know you’re going to a bar
tonight. There aren’t going to be regular worship services (though you
can let the group know when you’re going to a church service… and a
group might show up). In fact, there won’t be ANY set/regular
gatherings. There will only be a group of people drawn to and centered
around Christ. This is how we end up together. Are you getting a feel?
- http://smartmobchurch.blogspot.com is where we can talk theory and
theology. So, you
might not be interested in ever meeting up with anyone else in the
group, but I’d still love your input on the concepts. This is your
place. If you would like to contribute more than comments on other
posts, let me know, and I will make you a full-fledged posting-member.
- http://groups.google.com/group/smartmobchurch is an email group/list
for just keeping in touch, or to send out invites that might need more
than a simple text message to explain them. You can sign up without
ever having to say anything (though we would love your input).
I’m going to stop for now. If you have any questions, feel unsure
about the technology, are scared of the ‘intar-web’, or want to tell
me I’m brilliant or stupid–please please give me a call at
{removed} or drop me an email at {removed}.
FINALLY, please forward this to anyone you think might be
interested… I’ve probably missed some people, and didn’t have email
address for several people. Just make sure that whoever you forward
this to won’t consider it spam.
God’s peace,
Thomas Knoll
===[FOOTNOTES]===================
I will be exploring all of these topics more, but this enough for this
introductory letter.
[1] “To help Tom get a perspective on what the problem was in his
life, we decided to look at the problem using the narrative therapy
technique of externalizing the problem. We used a simplified fourfold
approach of naming the problem, mapping the influence of the problem,
looking for unique outcomes, and planning for the future (Nixon, 2000;
White, 1995)
[2] You can read much more about social networks on Wikipedia.
[3] (Just google them if you don’t know what they are)
[4] Len Hjalmarson explores the implications of this for the church in
‘Centered Sets, Bounded Sets and the Search for Ekklesia‘
‘Ishmael’ pokes at the concept a little bit, and gives a different
perspective in Is Everyone Set?
[5]
You can read more about Urban Tribes on wikipedia or the website that goes
along with the book Urban Tribes.
[6] Pillow Fight; Smart Mobs; Flash Mobs
