Hopefully we’ll get there someday.

thus, for him, a biblical community is a community of revelation (and i would add in a kerygmatic, demonstrative, and embodied way). brueggemann takes this further to say that if communities mediate revelation from God, different communities in different circumstances/contexts will mediate different disclosures of the Divine. i find this wonderfully freeing and this “localized, embedded revelation” is perhaps a key aspect/ingredient of any biblical community…in another conversation, we claimed that to get on the Spirit’s agenda globally, we need to get on His Agenda locally…

Thanks, too, for bringing up the Quakers. Being in the Vineyard I imagine we both share an affection of the Quaker movement : )

Travis,

Thank you so much for unpacking that for me. I’m really fascinated by how we negotiate boundaries in community and you’ve done a great job of describing how you guys are doing it. Also, couldn’t agree more with your priesthood comments.

I think we’d say that centered and bounded sets each have their appropriate place. Marriage is obviously a bounded set. The small group my wife and I are part of is a bounded set, since we’re committed to meeting regularly and we aren’t adding more people at this point. Our church’s overall membership (for lack of a better term) is a centered set, but our leadership is probably more of a bounded set. For instance, we recently hired for a part-time children’s ministry position, and we declined to consider a few Unitarians who applied. But they would certainly be welcome to attend worship, join community groups, be involved in mission, etc.

Right now we have kind of a consensus-driven elder model for leadership, as well as a small (and woefully underpaid, to our chagrin) staff. How that leadership team (which we call Lead Team, because we’re very imaginative) is chosen is organic in the sense that there aren’t a lot of structures in place yet. I’m on it because I was asked to be. We don’t vote or anything. That may change as we grow.

I really like the way we’ve use ordination as our ritual of joining. I think many in the Protestant world have taken “the priesthood of all believers” to mean that each person is his or her own priest. Nope. We are all each others’ priests. That doesn’t, of course, mean that we can’t access God alone, but to fully know and serve him, we need others.

regarding those who have movements that have cultivated spontenaity and deep committment, having some experience and contact with them, i would point towards the Friends/Quakers. their patience with and committment to one another in community can be quite astounding at-times. whether it is a discernment circle or waiting on the Holy Spirit…they are some of the most open people to what the Spirit is saying, and ready to discern and move with what the Spirit is saying to the community. (of course, i also am in tune with their historic passion for biblical jstice, social, economic and environmental!). i believe your covenant statement above is right in line with what any society of friends would commit to.

The difference is that they have less of a “shaping” voice in how we structure ourselves. All of our initial leaders, too, will be people from the core team. some were worried that we were creating a two-tiered system and would end up with first- and second-class citizens, but so far I don’t think that has been the case.

Seriously, I’ve never considered borrowing from ordination rites. It strikes me as delightfully subversive. Love it! I would be curious, since your ecclesiology is intentionally shaped by a centered-set paradigm, do you have any kind of identity marker at all for “full participation” belonging? For example, do you have leaders, and if so, are there any kind of boundaries regarding who qualifies to be a leader?

Michael,

Well said, and I agree. Ego is always a major trap, especially concerning leadership and however that is defined. I might gently push back a bit and say that while defining these terms is critical, that’s still relatively easy compared to actually living it out.

I like your basic covenant outline. At my church (http://www.emmausway.net/), instead of membership we do a “minister’s liturgy” that borrows heavily from Anglican/Catholic ordination rites. But, since we see ourselves as a centered-set rather than bounded-set community, the minister’s liturgy is offered as a public way for people to declare their commitment to the community, not as an entryway to full participation in the community.

I agree with Ben about structure. It is good and necessary. But to paraphrase a line from Rob Bell, it is a wonderful servant and a horrible master.

I think you already how I feel about the role of a gift-economy in the community of God : )

I appreciate your words about structure (and your metaphor). I think there’s tremendous wisdom there. Thanks, too, for the link to Life Mission Fellowship. I’m intrigued by what you describe. Sounds an awful lot like the catechism process of the very early church.

Blessing to you and the others at Christ Church Ben!