Most churches function as a bounded-set. The church I go to is center-set. In a bounded set church, there are discrete boundaries which delineate who is in and who is out. For example, to participate in a Baptist church, you MUST be baptized, abstain from alcohol. If you're Lutheran, MUST perform confirmation. If you're Pentecostal, you MUST speak in tongues after baptism.
Failure to do these things means you are out. You are not true Baptist, Lutheran, or Pentecostal. "Bounded" by tradition. The problem my church has with this is that you could check off everything, such as baptism, tithe, attend church, and still, for example, hate people.
A centered-set church places Christ at the center, believing that he is alive, as well as the people who are following him. God (we could say the Spirit) moves. Therefore, we are also continuously moving away or closer to God. In this model, even those who do not claim to follow Christ can still be doing Christ-like things and closer to him than someone who claims to love God, but hates people (you could argue that salvation, then is in jeopardy for both parties: "I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the father except through me" and "Forgive and you shall be forgiven"). This model is more inclusive.
For example, in my class, there are two Catholics, two Southern Baptists, a Lutheran, a Methodist (IIRC), and there's me, who is either agnostic, Black Baptist, or non-denomonation depending on interpretation of my spiritual trajectory.
So I asked a question, referring indirectly to Unversalist Unitarians, as to how the church nagivate when someone makes arbitrary claims about God's direction in their lives. Like, whatever they feel God says, is okay for them. After all, in the centered-set model, I could be moving closer to God in the aspect of prayer and meditation, but moving away from him in terms of serving (whether or not this model "weighs" proximity to Christ in relationship with reading your Bible and praying as less critical than service when a hurricane wipes out Puerto Rico, is up for debate, or at least, remains unclear to me thus far).
The pastor said my question was legit: if someone says that Polyamory is their thing, and points to scripture where it happens, and says it might not necessarily be for you, there is a check for that:
Right off the bat, my church rejects things like "sola scriptura" or "by scripture alone." Scripture is certainly a critical component to the gospel, but some Christians, like Paul, might have been routed (or not at all) in cultural or religious tradition and yet encountered a Divine Experience before encountering any scripture whatsoever.
This "quadrangle" resonates with me profoundly. Like, I was shook all day. There is so much talk about faith in the Bible, and even wisdom, but the logistics of cognition would have to wait for post-Enlightenment theology. For my faith began with Reason--there must be an explanation for all the phenomena around the world. Where was matter before the Big Bang? What is the probability that humans would "evolve" from single-celled organisms to the magnificent biological machines that we are now? Therefore, God must exist.
And I went toward scripture, and now I'm going around seeking one of those Holy Ghost-like experiences.
I tend to stay away from tradition. Pastor mentioned that he is doing six rosarie prayers during this chapter of his prayer life as enrichment--after all, it is a 1000 year practice. I, on the other hand, feel that tradition does more harm than good to the modern church, but I am willing to entertain them.
My question forced a 30-minute digression out of a class session that is 90 minutes long. I was proud.
There's some other stuff I need to discuss, but I need my workbook.
