Centered-Set Church: Discipleship and Community without Judgmentalism

by Mark D. Baker

Publisher:

IVP Academic

, 2021

Overview

Christians can be adept at drawing lines, determining what it means to be “a good Christian” and judging those who stray out of bounds. Other times they erase all the lines in favor of a vague and inoffensive faith. Both impulses can come from positive intentions, but either can lead to stunted spiritual life and harmful relationships. Is there another option?

The late missionary anthropologist Paul Hiebert famously drew on mathematical theory to deploy the concepts of “bounded,” “fuzzy,” and “centered” sets to shed light on the nature of Christian community. Now, with Centered-Set Church, Mark D. Baker provides a unique manual for understanding and applying Hiebert’s vision. Drawing on his extensive experience in church, mission, parachurch, and higher education settings, along with interviews and stories gleaned from scores of firsthand interviews, Baker delivers practical guidance for any group that seeks to be truly centered on Jesus.

Baker shows how Scripture presents an alternative to either obsessing over boundaries or simply erasing them. Centered churches are able to affirm their beliefs and live out their values without such bitter fruit as gracelessness, shame, and self-righteousness on the one hand, or aimless “whateverism” on the other. While addressing possible concerns and barriers to the centered approach, Baker invites leaders to imagine centered alternatives in such practical areas of ministry as discipleship, church membership, leadership requirements, and evangelism. Centered-Set Church charts new paths to grow in authentic freedom and dynamic movement toward the true center: Jesus himself.

Key Features

• Explores how Scripture presents an alternative to either obsessing over boundaries or simply erasing them
• Addresses possible concerns and barriers to the centered approach
• Invites leaders to imagine centered alternatives in such practical areas of ministry as discipleship, church membership, leadership requirements, and evangelism

Contents

• 1. Drawing Lines and Erasing Lines

Part One: Defining the Paradigms

• Bounded, Fuzzy, and Centered Churches
• Responding to Questions About a Centered Church

Part Two: Foundation of a Centered-Set Church

• The God of the Center
• Foundational Elements

Part Three: Discipleship in Community

• Centered Exhortation
• Centered Character: Qualities of Jesus
• Centered Intervention: Imagining Possibilities
• Practicing Centered Intervention
• Journeying Together Toward the Center

Part Four: Centered Ministry

• Firm, Not Bounded
• Imagining Centered Alternatives
• The Richness of the Centered Way

Product Details

• Title: Centered-Set Church: Discipleship and Community without Judgmentalism
• Author: Mark D. Baker
• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2021
• Logos Release Date: 2021
• Pages: 247
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Church; Judgment › Religious aspects--Christianity; Thought and thinking › Religious aspects--Christianity; Prejudices
• ISBNs: 9781514000953, 9781514000946, 1514000954, 1514000946
• Resource ID: LLS:CNTRDSTJDGMNTLS
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T22:53:22Z

About Mark D. Baker

Mark Baker, is grateful that he has been mentored and discipled by professors and people he worked with in ministry, and grateful that he now has the opportunity to mentor students at Mennonite Brethren Biblical Theological Seminary where he began teaching in 1999. Many summers spent as a counselor at a Christian camp made a significant contribution to his leadership development. After graduating from Wheaton College in 1979 he taught four years at a bi-lingual high school in Tegucigalpa Honduras where he coordinated a youth ministry program. He then served as a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for three years in Syracuse N.Y. In 1989 he and his wife Lynn went to Honduras as missionaries. They worked with the Honduran equivalent of InterVarsity and co-operated with various Christian community development projects. Mark also taught part-time at a Bible institute. Mark and Lynn had been attracted to Anabaptism through reading, life experience and interaction with various Anabaptist believers. In 1992 when they moved to Durham N.C., for Mark to study theology at Duke University, they joined a Mennonite Church. In 1996 they returned to Honduras. Among other activities Mark taught at the Latin American Anabaptist Seminary. For a number of years Mark has been deeply involved with a church in a poor neighborhood in Tegucigalpa, walking with them as they seek to follow Jesus. He learned a great deal in the process, and received as he gave. His first book is a product of his conversations with these people. He remains actively involved with this church and other mission activities in Honduras through annual visits. Mark and his wife Lynn have two daughters, Julia and Christie.