As presented in the reading, Baker’s definition of conversion is best defined in the centre-set church model, where he shows that there is no set boundary line. (Unless you draw a line around the group by looking individually at each person, based on their ‘arrow’.) The arrow Baker demonstrates is to signify each person’s relationship with the center (Jesus/God). He defines conversion in this case as “Is someone facing the center or oriented in the other direction? From this perspective, conversion happens when someone turns toward Bounded, Fuzzy, and Centered Churches 27 the center. The second change relates to movement toward the center. Such movement varies because members do not move at the same pace. The group is unified by the first change because they are all oriented toward Jesus Christ. However, they are not uniform because the characteristics of the various members will differ due to their varying distances from the center.” I feel that this is a very similar definition of conversion to that which our church follows. In our church, there is not a hard outer line that you have to be within to be accepted as a part of the group. Certainly, as Baker says, there are still hard lines to be drawn as to what is right and wrong, but we do not make a practice of publicizing someone’s ‘state of conversion’ or relationship to the middle, and ‘shunning’ those who do not fit within a certain hard boundary, as Baker describes in his drawings.
