Re-Centering our Faith

“So what do our churches believe anyway?” This question was asked with some humor—and with some frustration—by a friend. Amid the changing dynamics in society and in congregational practices, he wanted to know. As a lifetime member of Churches of Christ, his particular interest was with the congregations that he grew up in, but most of those churches look very different from when he was a boy. 

What do they believe? Obviously, I can’t speak for all churches across the country. However, I can speak to part of what my friend was asking. To do so means a little bit of history and a little bit of missiological theory—plus a good dose of theological imagination. Are you ready?

For our brief history, the origins of Churches of Christ can be located with two figures: Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, on what was then the western frontier (western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, Kentucky), a movement arose that gathered people and congregations with a remarkable set of convictions. Those convictions, or “principles,” to use the word of one early writer, Robert Richardson, were simple and profound. They invited persons to move toward something that most Christian people could affirm.

These principles included compelling ideas. Here’s one: there is only one church in spite of the many denominations and sects, and the one church is made up of all people who seek to follow Christ. And this one church finds expression in local congregations that are to bear witness to the fullness of the one church. 

Or there’s this: the Bible is a sure and certain guide for faith. And God really shows up in the world through practices like the Lord’s Supper and baptism. Most importantly, this movement of people believed that God faithfully receives persons through faith in the person of Jesus Christ—not because you happened to believe in a particular set of doctrines and beliefs.

Such principles guided this movement as congregations organized themselves and sought to bear witness to God’s work in Jesus Christ. Over time, however, other factors and the realities of culture broke in and began to shape what we’ve come to know as the Restoration Movement or the Stone-Campbell Movement. The single greatest social factor was the growing resistance to the evil of slavery. As the political pressures and debate gave way to civil war, the movement itself was challenged. And as time moved forward through Reconstruction and its demise, along with political upheaval and developments, America entered the twentieth century. The movement was also marked by fracture, leading to a clear demarcation in 1906 of Churches of Christ and Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). 

A watershed moment occurred in 1922 when N. B. Hardeman preached a series of sermons in the Ryman Auditorium to a filled room. That series of sermons, along with three other series of sermons, were preached in the ensuing years. The sermons were published along the way in a four-volume series called Hardeman’s Tabernacle Sermons. That material, widely heard and read, served as a significant turning point for Churches of Christ. 

In those sermons, Hardeman articulates the identifying markers for Churches of Christ. As you read these sermons, you can see shadows of the earlier principles articulated by Robert Richardson nearly 75 years before. However, something else had emerged—particular doctrines and practices. Forms of church governance, a particular name for the fellowship, a diminishment of the Holy Spirit, a certain order and practice for worship, and much more had come to be prescribed. Broad principles had given way to particularities. And those particularities had created a different dynamic or way of being for so many of our congregations.

To help describe what happened, I want to use the work of a missiologist, Paul Hiebert. Over forty years ago, Hiebert wrote an article called “Conversion, Culture, and Cognitive Categories” that provides helpful insights to the changes that emerged within the Stone-Campbell tradition.[1] In speaking about the Christian faith, Hiebert proposed two distinct ways of determining the nature of a group; those ways are either as a bounded set or a centered set. Hiebert used the term “bounded set” to describe a group defined by certain characteristics. Dogs are dogs because they possess the things that define “dog.” Thus, dogs are dogs, and foxes are not dogs, even though they may be related. Foxes are in another set or group.

Bounded set groups are common and useful in life. They help us define categories—single or married persons, paid or unpaid bills. The definition of categories might be described as boundaries. Boundaries define who is in and who is out. Once boundaries are established, they define the group.

Hiebert also posited another category: “centered set” groups. Rather than being defined by boundaries, centered set groups find definition by what is at the center of the group. Equally important to what is at the center is the direction or movement of the group in relation to the center. In other words, are the persons of the group moving toward the center or not?

I suggest that what happened within the Stone-Campbell tradition can be understood using Hiebert’s idea of bounded set and centered set groups. The movement began as a centered set group. It was defined by broad and good principles like the pursuit of unity, a commitment to reading the Bible well, a view of local congregations as independent and yet a full representation of the one church, and a valuing of the declaration of the gospel. But a century later, by the 1920s, the Churches of Christ had moved into a bounded set posture. In a bounded set posture, unity began to mean “you must think like us,” reading the Bible well became “read the Bible and come to the same conclusions as us,” congregational structures became specifically defined, and gospel preaching took on a particular pattern.

So, for the last forty years or so, I have watched Churches of Christ trying to sort out these boundaries, to adjust the boundaries, to tighten the boundaries, and sometimes simply to ignore the boundaries. Sadly, such work has been confusing and often unfruitful. Perhaps the better work would be to imagine again what gave life to the movement in the beginning. What would it mean to recover the principles that launched the movement? What would it mean for congregations to reorient toward a centered set posture? What might happen in your congregation if following a living, resurrected, ascended Jesus meant more than holding on to boundaries?

It would mean real work and hard conversations about your congregation’s life and culture. But if the gospel of Jesus Christ declares anything, it declares that God shows up in surprising places to bring renewal and transformation!

Blessings on your ministry,
Carson

P.S.: I’ll pick up on what a centered set approach might look like in a future essay.