incarnation-al: being formed by the story
The Incarnation not only qualifies God’s acts in the world, it must also qualify ours. If God’s central way of reaching his world was to incarnate himself in Jesus, then our way of reaching the world should likewise be incarnational. To act incarnationally therefore will mean in part that in our mission to those outside of the faith we will need to exercise a genuine identification and affinity with those we are attempting to reach. At the very least, it will probably mean moving into common geography/space and so set up a real and abiding presence among the group. But the basic motive of incarnational ministry is also revelatory—that they may come to know God through Jesus.
To say the Incarnation should inform all the dimensions of individual and communal life is surely an understatement. In becoming one of us God has given us the archetypal model of what true humanity, and by implication true community, should look and behave like. This has major implications for our lives as well as our mission. So using the same grid, let us apply this to the mission of God’s people…
- Presence: The fact that God was in the Nazarene neighborhood for 30 years and no-one noticed should be profoundly disturbing to our normal ways of engaging mission. Not only does it have implication for our affirmation of normal human living, it says something about the timing as well as the relative anoninymity of incarnational ways of engaging in mission. There is a time for ‘in-your-face’ approaches to mission, but there is also a time to simply become part of the very fabric of a community and to engage in the humanity of it all. Furthermore, the idea of presence highlights the role of relationships in mission. If relationship is the key means in the transfer of the Gospel, then it simply means we are going to have to be directly present to the people in our circle. Our very lives are our messages and we cannot take ourselves out of the equation of mission. But one of the profound implications of our presence as representatives of Jesus is that Jesus actually likes to hang out with the people we hang out with. They get the implied message that God actually likes them.
- Proximity: Jesus mixed it up with people from every level of society. He ate with Pharisees as well as tax collectors and prostitutes. If we are to follow in his footsteps, his people will need to be directly and actively involved in the lives of the people we are seeking to reach. This not only assumes presence but also genuine availability which will involve spontaneity as well as regularity in the friendships and communities we inhabit.
- Powerlessness: In seeking to act in a Christ-like way, we cannot rely on normal forms of power to communicate the Gospel, but have to take Jesus’ model with absolute seriousness (Matt.23:25-28, Phil.2:5ff.) This commits us to servanthood and humility in our relations with each other and the world. Sadly much of church history shows how little we have assimilated this aspect of incarnational Christlikeness into our understanding of church, leadership, and mission.
- Proclamation: The gospel invitation initiated in the ministry of Jesus remains alive and active to this very day. A genuine incarnational approach will require that we be always willing to share the gospel story with those within our world. We simply cannot take this aspect out of the equation of mission and remain faithful to our calling in the world. We are essentially a ‘message tribe’ and it means we must ensure the faithful transmission of the message we carry through proclamation.
This can be visually referenced to our former diagram in the following way…
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Alan…This ROCKS!
I preached a series a few months back on the practical implications of a trinitarian theology and this was one of the points I made when I talked about Jesus and the incarnation (though admittedly, I didn’t even consider some of the points you made). I’ve never considered the presence aspect of it, of Jesus being here for 30 years prior to his pronouncement of mission.
This opens up a HUGE discuss that needs to happen, especially among church planting and how we go about the missio dei.
Thanks so much!
I agree that the presence aspect raises significant issues that need to be discussed. How many people are ready to simply dwell … for years? How many Christian organizations in the West would support them in that? In some ways it very anti-climactic and very much goes against the grain of our hype driven culture. Yet putting down deep roots takes time.
Sorry Alan, is that incarnation - “Al” or is it “aL”!!! Ha ha!
This is genius Alan! Perhaps a continuation on my last comment in the previous post; I am extremely leery to the practices of “evangelism” in the modern paradigm. To long has it been that proclamation must come first, and then followed by proximity! Let the incarnational spirit continue to bring new movement to a better way! Perhaps down is up!