Spring 2025 · Vol. 54 No. 1 · pp. 98–109
Response to “A Centered-Set Paradigm for Being Church” by Mark D. Baker 54/1 (2025): 84–97. Response by Mark D. Baker 54/1 (2025): 110–115.
Centered-Set Church: A Review and Critique
When I was a seminary student, my classmates and I valued our interactions with faculty members who combined educational credentials with hands-on ministry experience. We wanted to know that what we were being taught had not only academic rigor but also real-world credibility.
While I resonate with Baker’s open-handed approach, it seems that it does not do justice to the full witness of biblical texts that speak to church discipleship and maintaining discipline. In Baker’s work, any insistence upon specific expectations related to Christian discipleship seems inevitably to be associated with judgmentalism and religiosity.
It is for that reason that I found Mark Baker’s statement in the first chapter of Centered-Set Church promising. 1 He says that he “wrote this book for practitioners—pastors, small group leaders, parachurch workers, youth group leaders, and Sunday school teachers.” He adds, “Much of the content of the book also comes from practitioners” (14). These clarifications would seem to bode well for the utility of this book as a missional handbook for people seeking to ground their efforts in a faithful methodology. The p. 99 pastor in me took heart in these descriptions of the process that guided the book’s author.
Defining Terms
Mark Baker’s book does many things very well. Much of the first quarter of the book is devoted to defining his terminology and the details of the paradigms he outlines around which he sees church and churches organized. The theology professor in me applauded the clarity and thoroughness of Baker’s careful foundational work in setting the stage for his thesis in the book.
The message of the book is that there are three basic patterns for church mission, three different types of definitional sets around which churches organize themselves. These different patterns shape not only self-understanding but also approaches to mission.
The first set Baker describes is the bounded set. Bounded sets “have a clear, static boundary line that allows for a uniform definition of those who are within the group” (21). Using sports imagery, Baker emphasizes the importance of playing ability and the use of team tryouts to illustrate who is—and is not—on the team.
Next, Baker describes fuzzy sets, which are also groups, but in this case “the boundary line is removed—or at least less clear” (21). This type of group Baker compares to people playing pickup games in a public park. Membership in the group is far more fluid than on a formally organized team, and the particular sport being played might change from week to week. As such, it is more difficult to determine who is a member of the group and who is merely an observer.
Centered-set groups are organized in a qualitatively different way. “Rather than drawing a line to identify people based on their common characteristics, a centered set uses a directional and relational basis of evaluation. The group is created by defining a center and observing people’s relationship with the center” (23). Baker posits that this set is like a pickup soccer game in the park at a particular time that is open to all who want to play. There is clarity about the center (the soccer game) and no restriction based on playing ability or who can afford the fees.
At a surface level, the three categories of group that Baker describes are helpful delineations. Upon further reflection, however, there seems to be more to the category descriptions. Baker’s use of sporting references may seem odd in a book about church, but it may also be that he is trying not to characterize a particular kind of church negatively. He does not avoid that issue completely, however. His mention of tryouts as a criterion for membership on the team in the bounded set comes across as a sort of value p. 100 judgment of certain kinds of churches that Baker does not want to state explicitly. However, given what he says about his personal faith history and church background (described in the book), this does seem a logical association. Baker associates the exclusivism he sees inherent in sports tryouts with the legalistic religiosity he has experienced in his church past, and this tips the reader off about his theological preferences.
Jesus at the Center
From there, Baker outlines the center of the centered-set church. He helpfully clarifies that it is not enough to say that “God is at the center of a church” (61) because contextual factors influence how people view God. Rather, it is Jesus who is at the center. Jesus informs our understanding of God. This clarification seems especially appropriate given the plurality of depictions of God in the Christian tradition.
As an Anabaptist, Baker would be expected to affirm a strongly Christocentric theology. Baker seems to appreciate that there must be a theological framework that defines a faithful response to the call of Christ. He writes: “The center is also defined by a church’s theological beliefs and how a church seeks to follow Jesus” (57). Having Jesus at the center, and defined substantively, creates a contextual gravitational pull on members of the community.
Baker is also evangelistic in his orientation and affirms that evangelism is compatible with his conception of a centered-set approach to church. “Many people also assume that evangelism is bounded, and so as they move away from a bounded approach, they simply stop evangelizing. Yet conversion, or turning toward the center, is a fundamental element of a centered church” (227). But Baker’s description of the center seems again to point to an unnecessary and unfortunate dichotomy in reference to Jesus that also seems to be at odds with his earlier statements about the value of theological beliefs. In chapter 4, “The God of the Center,” Baker writes: “The center is not a list of our beliefs about Jesus, but the person of Jesus” (64).
As a theologian, I read this statement with a sense of both optimism and concern. On the one hand, I recognize the problem of foundationalism in systematic theology. It is possible for doctrinal issues about Jesus to overshadow the need for an existential commitment to Jesus as the focus for Christian discipleship. Systematic doctrinal content that is premised on a priori assumptions (often presumed to be self-evident) about the nature of God can bring more baggage than clarity to conversations about Jesus as Savior and Lord. The caution I discern in Baker’s statement is therefore well said. p. 101
On the other hand, more radical articulations of Christocentric Anabaptist theology have sometimes tended to veer toward affirmations of faith in Jesus seemingly as an existential phenomenon that is largely devoid of doctrinal or dogmatic content. Simply put, it has made confessing Jesus the measure of faithfulness but refused to include what the Christian tradition has understood such a confession to require, especially in reference to what biblical texts say about the person and work of Jesus.
How can one profess faith in Jesus without giving careful attention to what gospel writers have written about him, or to what apostles like Paul and John say about Jesus? This necessary attentiveness seems to imply that what Christians believe about Jesus is a necessary component of having faith in Jesus. Otherwise, one risks putting one’s faith in a savior of one’s own devising. Driving a wedge between the two does not appear to be a fruitful theological exercise, and this undercuts Baker’s proposal at a critical juncture in his book. Faithful theology must be both Christocentric and Christological. Although he talks about the importance of doctrine, it would be helpful for Baker to talk about how it is important, and what he sees as essential doctrines that help Christians understand what it means for Christ to be at the center.
The qualities from Jesus’ life that Baker suggests should inform Christian behavior are an interesting collection. Chapter 7 outlines traits that Baker suggests are “akin to the fruit of the Spirit” (124): compassion, curiosity, creativity, safety, trust, and humility. While compassion and humility are recognizable traits that Jesus exhibits, the others seem to rely on a particular understanding of what Jesus should be like as a paragon of unjudgmental undogmatism. I am less convinced that such a categorization represents Jesus’ example adequately.
For example, gleaning evidence of Jesus’ curiosity or creativity appears to require a prior set of assumptions underlying Jesus’ actions, and it is not evident to me that these assumptions are valid, much less necessary. Safety, in particular, is a quality that does not fit Jesus’ example very well. Although Jesus sometimes healed with discretion, as in the case of the woman who suffered with bleeding for twelve years (Matt 9:22), he also spoke boldly and openly. He surprised the Samaritan woman in John 4, and repeatedly said things that shocked, confused, or infuriated his listeners. Jesus interceded on behalf of a blind man in John 5 and a woman caught in adultery (John 8), but he exhorted both to repent—“stop sinning” (John 5:14 NIV; cf. 8:11)—despite the fact that sin was not the primary cause of their problems. Baker’s categories skew a contextual reading of Jesus’ words and actions in p. 102 the Gospels. It would be preferable to let Jesus’ own example inform our behavior.
The book’s fifth chapter proposes to identify foundational elements of a community that is centered on Jesus. It is here that Baker’s priorities raise serious questions about how centered-set church works. While his desire to free people from the burden of religiosity is laudable, his language about doctrine and ethics is less inspiring. He advocates reimagining the role doctrine plays in discipleship when he talks about seeing doctrine as a well rather than as a fence (80–81). Rather than seeing doctrine as a fence—a barrier that divides—he suggests that doctrine be seen as a well, in the way that Australian cattle farmers drill wells rather than build fences to keep their animals together (described on p. 39).
In doing this, Baker is replacing one metaphor that is clear but unpleasant with one that is far more pleasant but arguably less clear. Doctrines are second-order reflections on elements of Christian faith. They are what Christians have discerned to be true based on God’s self-revelation. They inform Christian discipleship in a given context, meaning that they both define and delimit a Christian community. Doctrine is not life-giving in itself; rather, it is reflection on elements of life lived in light of Christ. Right doctrines are godly and worshipful elements of Christian spirituality. But false doctrines—distortions of tight doctrine—are harmful, even destructive (e.g., 2 Peter 3:16). Doctrine has a regulatory function that Baker does not talk about in detail, but he does have a constructive role for doctrine to play.
Doctrine and Church Discipline
The essential character of doctrine is related to church discipline, which Baker discusses at the end of chapter 8. Baker is careful to clarify that church discipline is reintegrative rather than disintegrative, but he concedes that “a centered church cannot reject the practice of intervening for correction, which may sometimes include the possibility of excluding a person from the community” (151–52).
In the realm of ethics, Baker calls for conceiving ethics as the intended blessing God has in mind for the ethical imperatives in Scripture. Rather than impose them simply as rules, he calls for communities of faith to reframe language about ethics from obligation to gift.
Writing about the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, he says: “The law provided directives that would improve their relationships with God, other Hebrews and foreigners in their land, and the creation. The law was intended to help them in their role as coworkers and cocreators in God’s mission so that they could be a blessing to others” (83). It is not clear to me p. 103 whether this allows for the scenario in which contemporary Bible readers might seek to reevaluate biblical ethical imperatives based on the perception that the context of blessing in which they were given no longer applies. As an example, this line of argument is at the heart of some inclusivist theologies of human sexuality that view biblical teaching on sexuality as descriptive rather than prescriptive. As a result, they insist that biblical teaching on sexuality ought not to form the basis of Christian ethical teaching on sex, gender, and marriage. 2 In contrast, Jesus affirmed the teachings of the Torah (Matt 5:18-19). I think Mark Baker would thus affirm the moral direction of the Old Testament law, but it is not entirely clear to me that he does.
Baker even goes as far as to say that because the law “came after God’s covenantal commitment to Israel,” Christians “do not need to obey God’s law for God to express love to us” (83). This statement is not incorrect. God’s grace extends to all people, regardless of their faithfulness. But in his emphasis on movement toward God rather than proximity to God, Baker seems to blur necessary distinctions between God’s love—expressed generally through God’s grace—and God’s covenantal commitment with his people. This can allow readers to infer that obedience is less than essential for a relationship with God. Nowhere in the book does Baker suggest that this might be the case. However, given that his focus is on a church model in which the definition of faithfulness is seen in orientation toward the center rather than proximity to the center, it remains a matter of concern.
Another issue that Baker names, but does not clarify, is the problem that occurs when there is disagreement about the center of the centered set. Baker talks about the need to define the center and acknowledges that the center will be different in different denominational traditions (57). (On this point, it seems that someone wanting to do justice to the goal of Centered-Set Church might have to write a different book for each denominational context in view!) In the Mennonite tradition, of which Mark Baker is a part, there seems to be a lack of agreement about what specifically is at the center of the community. Different voices are describing different portraits of Jesus in relation to love and nonresistance, baptism and membership, relationship to government, and human sexuality. In some cases, disparate voices are appealing to what is seen as ambiguity about the theological center. In one blog on sexuality in the Canadian MB conference, David Wiebe wrote asking about the Bible, “Does it speak with one voice on this issue? Does it speak with one voice on any issue at all?” 3 It is not clear that there is a consensus among MBs on matters such as this. What does a centered-set approach to this problem look like? I would like to hear from Mark Baker on this matter. p. 104
Centered-Set Discipleship
The largest section of the book addresses how Christians can implement a centered-set approach to discipleship in a church community. It is in this section of the book that Baker truly shines. His pastoral heart and missional orientation come through clearly in several examples in which church communities chose to love and support individuals whose conduct was in question. In doing so, they drew people back toward the center and into renewed fellowship with other members of the community.
Baker’s use of theological terms and concepts in this section is robust and helpful. He is clear in framing ethical imperatives in light of God’s prior gracious works toward people (104–7). His use of “journey language” (109–13) to describe faith in a dynamic rather than static way conveys the depth of discipleship in terms of pressing on. He uses invitational and imitative language rather than language of obligation.
Nor is Baker reticent to talk about sin and repentance. The call to discipleship that Baker wishes to articulate in positive, invitational terms is nevertheless a call that demands repentance from sinful behavior. Although he seems reluctant to discuss the eventuality, he does acknowledge that there are points at which members can no longer be part of the community. He says this:
Generally, in centered churches, those who are not in relationship with the center will self-exclude. Recall, however, the analogy of a centered pickup soccer game in chapter two. There comes a time when the group must tell the player who keeps grabbing the ball with his hands, “If you are not willing to abide by the rules, you cannot play.” The group excludes the person not only because he is showing that he is not centered on soccer, but also because he is disrupting the game for all. (152).
As I read this section of the book, I came away convinced that Baker’s motivation is to equip ministry practitioners with thinking and real-life scenarios that will help them work at winsomely living as disciples of Jesus and inviting others to do the same. As a missiological resource, this book has much to commend it.
Methodology
It is important to note that the methodology that forms the framework for evaluating models of church missional self-understanding comes not from Mark Baker but rather from the work of Paul Hiebert, the Indian-born Mennonite Brethren missionary anthropologist and third-generation p. 105 missionary. Hiebert’s work arose because of his observation that missionaries often feared an “invasion of missions by anthropology.” 4
Rather than perpetuate a dichotomy between missiology and anthropology, Hiebert proposed to bring anthropology, theology, and missions together into a mutually enriching conversation—a trialogue—so that missionaries might communicate the gospel to people in disparate cultural settings in ways that are both contextually understandable and theologically faithful. 5
The origin of Baker’s centered-set missiological model is important for a number of reasons. Hiebert’s experience of mission work in India led him to try to give a robust explanation of the nature of conversion in a cross-cultural context. Specifically, Hiebert set out to answer this basic question: “Can a nonliterate peasant become a Christian after hearing the gospel only once?” 6 It is intended to manage the tension between the immediately transformative power of the Holy Spirit in conversion and the educational and contextual processes necessary to help an individual shift from non-Christian to Christian ways of living.
Hiebert turned to his educational training in mathematics to find a way to categorize and describe Christian groups. 7 Set theory was the tool Hiebert used, and its structure allowed him to delineate the processes of contextual change among individuals in religious communities, including Christian communities. Centered sets were one type of group he identified, along with bounded sets and fuzzy sets.
The historical context of Hiebert’s work is important because the dynamics of change for which he was trying to account is significantly different from the context of Mark Baker’s work. While this contextual difference does not invalidate his adaptation of Hiebert’s model, it does raise questions about its transferability. Some of the problems of syncretism in Indian mission work may exist in North American culture, but it is not clear that the interplay of forces in North America move with the same type and degree of syncretistic force as those in Shamshabad, India.
Also important is that Hiebert’s development of set theory was a sociological development of the model. It was informed by Christian theological presuppositions about mission work, the nature of conversion, and the ongoing expectations of Christian disciples, individually and collectively. But it remained a sociological representation rather than a theological one. This is an important distinction because Baker’s use of centered-set discourse is a theological model that he advances as a way of describing how church mission should operate rather than a simple depiction of how churches do operate. The use of sociological models is not inherently problematic, but p. 106 Baker assumes its validity more than he demonstrates it. The authority of the theoretical foundation of his work needs to be investigated more thoroughly to determine whether or not it is suitable as a foundation for the theological model Baker has created.
Another issue for those seeking to make use of Baker’s model is the problem of categorization. An ongoing issue in systematic theology is the problem of foundationalism, where the categories used to organize and explain theological concepts come to not only define but also skew the concepts they are supposed to explain. In the case of the centered-set model, the nontheological rules of set theory are imposed, of necessity, onto the theological areas of ecclesiology and missiology. This can have impact in at least a couple of different ways.
The first type of impact is that models imposed on theological matters do not always ask the most useful questions in relation to those matters. Sometimes, they fail to ask questions that might be apropos. In Baker’s case, while he does not seem to exhibit a disinclination to ask questions—for example, regarding lifestyle expectations in relation to Christian discipleship—he does not clarify what sort of questions are appropriate ones to ask in relation to discipleship and which are not. I will elaborate on this a bit later in relation to the role and function of the Mennonite Brethren Confession of Faith.
The other type of impact of the centered-set model on theological matters is the problem of artificial categorization. Baker makes use of centered sets, bounded sets, and fuzzy sets in his book. 8 The problem that emerges is that church communities do not fit neatly into the categories Baker provides. In some respects, centered-set thinking is appropriate to living missionally in Christian community, but there are also elements of boundedness that Christians minimize at their peril.
Baker acknowledges that individuals and communities can and should possess boundaries and maintain them while refraining from judgmentalism (50). But Baker’s use of boundaries seems more a psychological term than a theological one, and he consistently insists that a bounded set group is one “whose identity is defined by the boundary line and who uses the boundary line to self-righteously divide the included (those who are superior) from the excluded (those who are inferior)” (51, emph. in original). Not only does Baker force church groups to identify with only one of the models, he defines the models in a way that problematizes some and validates his preferred choice.
Baker seems unwilling to permit a clear differentiation between those who choose what the community has agreed to be an obedient path and p. 107 those who have chosen otherwise. Even more difficult is a delineation of these two categories into what would be called insiders versus outsiders, or members versus nonmembers. Yet numerous New Testament texts speak to the matter of maintaining not only such categories but also some form of social separation from those outside the community. 9
This categorization problem is also evident in the delineation of the categories more broadly. Baker refers to bounded and fuzzy sets in generally negative terms (bounded sets in particular), but the centered-set seems to have no problems and no downside. He is willing to acknowledge that “[i]n theory a church could be a bounded set and avoid the negative attitudes displayed . . . in the previous chapter, but I have not seen that neutrality in reality” (24–25). It seems unfair to create artificial categories and then condemn all but one’s preference, and propose one’s work as a theological resource, even if a practical one rather than a scholarly one.
Practitioner-Focused
One of the greatest strengths of Centered-Set Church is the way Baker fleshes out what he sees as the missional dimension of his work using real-life case studies. Rather than describe how his method might work using hypothetical examples, he talks about real people with real issues whose lives have been changed because they received the loving and nonjudgmental witness of caring Christians rather than being judged and excluded for their sinful lifestyles. This approach lends credibility to Baker’s proposals.
But at points, these strengths in the book become significant weaknesses. The deeply contextual nature of the examples raises questions about how Baker’s methodology might work in other contexts where different considerations are at play. Readers who think about Baker’s method and categories will also come to the conclusion that the theological approach beneath Centered-Set Church is a thin one.
Virtually all of the case studies address matters of Christian discipleship in relation to the center—that is, Jesus. And it is true that, in many cases, “people in bounded churches learn that many lines exist beyond those officially stated” (25). I recall being excluded from serving communion at a church where I was the youth pastor. Why? I was wearing a dress shirt and sweater rather than a suit and tie. I ran afoul of an unwritten rule. Baker is right to name this sort of exclusion as wrong.
But what Baker’s book does not address adequately is the variegated nature of theological discourse. Not all ethical norms are the same. For example, rules of Christian conduct are contextual. They arise in a setting for specific reasons and need to be understood accordingly. Moreover, ethical p. 108 rules are usually material applications of formal norms, and changes in context may necessitate that they be revisited. The biblical imperative that elders be above reproach from 1 Timothy 3:2 may have necessitated that an elder wear a suit and tie to serve communion in one context, but that dress code is not a timeless standard of dress. As such, conversations about such matters require gentleness and grace, and Baker is right to advocate for this.
But some matters are weightier. In recent years, conversations among Mennonite Brethren in Canada have raised the question of whether the Confession of Faith is binding on all churches, leaders, and members. Responses from denominational leaders that the Confession represents the theological confession of faith that all Mennonite Brethren are expected to affirm has been assailed as a sign of bounded-set thinking that is unfairly excluding people from the MB family. It does not appear to me that Mark Baker had this sort of weaponization of centered-set thinking in mind when he wrote his book. Nevertheless, his work has been co-opted for this purpose, and it would have been helpful for him to have commented on how he sees centered-set thinking bearing on this type of theological protest.
It seems to me that Baker’s book has a particular resonance with Mennonite Brethren (and likely others) who have experienced a church upbringing that was strict, legalistic, and probably also affected by modern Christian fundamentalism. For such people, there is a natural (and in many cases, commendable) inclination to move away from such religious practice toward one that is more openly invitational and grace-filled.
Centered-Set Church is a book that has the potential to resource this shift, and I think that it is less a matter of substance and more a matter of style that Mark Baker seems too soft in terms of helping others maintain high standards of Christlike discipline. For those from an overly strict background, discipline will always look like a bounded set and raise protests. But for those whose ecclesiological expectations remain strict, centered-set thinking is likely to appear fuzzy—lacking in discipline. And those who are from a loosely knit fuzzy-set background may find centered-set thinking too constrictive—too bounded.
Centered-Set Church seems destined to receive the ire of theological opponents on all sides. That may actually be a good sign because it is an indication that the author has taken a stand, even if unpopular. But some of the criticism may be the result of a lack of attentiveness to theological method that creates uncertainty in the minds of readers. That is unfortunate because the many fruitful insights in the book may leave readers wanting more, perhaps even expecting more. Mark Baker is certainly aware of the ongoing theological disagreements in his theological community. And p. 109 Christians—Mennonite Brethren in particular—need theological resources of a higher caliber to address divisive issues that threaten the vitality of the community.
Notes
- This article is a critique of Mark D. Baker, Centered-Set Church: Discipleship and Community Without Judgmentalism (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021).
- As seen, for example, in Mark Thiessen Nation and Ted Grimsrud, Reasoning Together: A Conversation on Homosexuality (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2008), 197–98.
- John Longhurst, “ ‘Give Us a Theological Case for Changing Something the Church Believes and Practiced for Two Millennia.’ Open Space Leaders Respond to a Commenter’s Question.” Web log. Time To Tell (blog), March 19, 2023, http://timetotellcanada.blogspot.com/2023/03/give-us-theological-case-for-changing.html.
- Paul G. Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1994), 10.
- Hiebert, 10–11.
- Hiebert, 107.
- Michael L. Yoder, Michael H. Lee, Jonathan Ro, and Robert J. Priest, “Understanding Christian Identity in Terms of Bounded and Centered Set Theory in the Writings of Paul G. Hiebert,” Trinity Journal ns 30 (Fall 2009): 177–88.
- Baker’s adaptation of Hiebert’s use of set theory mentions only three of the four types of sets Hiebert describes and lacks the depth that Hiebert gives. Hiebert’s work connects to his concept of the “law of the excluded middle,” which attempts to describe the visible transformation of an individual resulting from conversion. But Baker’s book does not address this, which is unfortunate (cf. Hiebert, 110–36).
- Paul includes imperatives about this type of matter in a number of his church epistles. Paul’s counsel spans church contexts and multiple ethical issues (cf. Rom 16:17; 1 Cor 5:9; 2 Thess 3:6, 14).
