Great video from the Bruderhof, a group of Anabaptist Christians who live with all their goods held in common. I love this line: â[Christians] have a community that is defined not by a firm perimeter running along the length of the communityâs land, but in terms of those who recognize their need for the water and willingly go to the well.â
Hereâs the Mere Orthodoxy piece heâs referencing:
The right, [Jim Belcher] said, errs by setting up a perimeter around the church that one must pass through, which is done by articulating the âcorrectâ theological view on a wide range of topics, in order to be part of the Christian faith. Belcher called this a bounded-set approach to church: There are a number of clearly defined boundaries and if you transgress any of them, you cannot be part of the group. For their part, the emergent crowd essentially dispensed with the boundaries altogether in favor of building and maintaining relationships. Belcher said both of these approaches are inadequate.
As an alternative, he proposed what he termed a center-set approach to the question. To explain, he used the analogy of Australian shepherds who, faced with the enormous amount of land their herds can roam, simply gave up on the possibility of fencing it all in. Instead, they simply dug wells near the center of their lands. They knew the sheep needed to drink and, therefore, couldnât afford to wander too far from the center.
A number of critics have noted that Belcherâs formulation is somewhat misleading. It is not really a true via media between conservatism and emergent. Belcher is not taking elements of both the bounded-set and relationally set churches and forming a third way. Rather, he is essentially assuming a bounded set, but radically redefining the function of the boundaries, which also has the effect of changing the extent of the boundaries. Donât protect all of the land with fences and boundaries; just protect the well.
