Church MembersFinally finished reading Missional Church. But before I move on to something new, I wanted to reflect a little on what the book says about church membership.

A few months ago I had a couple posts about membership in which I questioned if there is a better way for people to become members than just going through a membership class, and if there is a better word for us to use than “member.” Here are those posts:

Anyway, Missional Church makes a helpful distinction between Bounded Set Churches and Centered Set Churches. A bounded set is any kind of organization or structure that has clear boundaries and clear entry and exit points.

Organizations like clubs and societies have initiation rites through which prospective members must move before they can join. People accept the rules of an organization before being allowed into membership. Bounded sets give mechanisms of structure and control to institutions.

Obviously, this is how most churches are organized. In order to become a member you go through a membership class. Hence, a bounded set. The problem is that most people aren’t really interested in belonging to bounded set organizations in our culture these days.

So that’s a bounded set. Here’s how they describe a centered set:

Centered-set organizations do not define membership and identity at the entrance points or boundaries. The centered-set organization invites people to enter on a journey toward a set of values and commitments.

They go on to say:

In our pluralistic context, where people search in multiple directions and struggle to understand the nature of Christian life, a centered-set represents the church as a people on the way toward the fullness of God’s reign in Jesus Christ. People are constantly being invited to move toward and into a covenant, disciple community. This kind of centered-set church is open to all who may want to be on this journey. It has a permeability that is open to others since it seeks to draw others alongside and minister to people at every level on the way.

Notice the statement that “people are constantly being invited to move toward and into a covenant, disciple community.” In other words, it’s not enough to just be a centered-set church. There comes a point at which a person, in their centered-set journey into the reign of God, has to make a deeper commitment to an alternative way of life.

Missional communities are more than centered-set congregations. A pilgrim, covenant people require an alternative way of life. This calls for bounded-set identity. Within the centered set will form a covenant community….

So there is a bounded-set character to a missional church.

The missional community must be both centered and bounded. But where does each operate? The centered-set congregation invites people onto a journey with Jesus in order to understand its contours, to hear its stories, to sort out the issues and questions of commitment and discipleship. While the direction of the journey is the reign of God, the community is where people can discover and encounter the meaning of this larger journey. This journey, as a pilgrim people, calls for commitments to practices of the reign of God that can be made only in covenant…. The covenant community is a bounded set composed of those who have chosen to take on the commitment, practices, and disciplines that make them a distinct, missionary community.

The question is, how does all this work out in practice? How does someone actually enter this journey into the reign of God in the centered-set congregation? And how does one then actually make the transition into the bounded-set covenant community? Do they go through a membership class (hopefully not!)? And how do you keep a spiritual classism of sorts from developing between the congregation and the covenant community?

In the end, I really like this concept of church. It deals with our culture’s reluctance to make a quick commitment to a bounded-set organization, as well as the importance of eventually making a deeper commitment to the practices of the church. How does this really work? I guess the only way to see if and how it works is to start trying to put it into practice. Start experimenting.