Thoughts on Biblically Living and Serving Incarnationally, Part 1

There is much talk in evangelical circles on living missionally, incarnationally and with relevance.  There are strategies and ideas, concepts and creative methodologies to achieve such a mission.  Some are accused of going too far in this quest, outside of the realm of orthodoxy; and some are accused of not going far enough, not knowing how to get their tushes out of the church pews.  How does one balance these considerations? Here are some thoughts (and Lord willing born out by biblical examples).

To begin with, I believe very strongly that if a person is to minister to a group of people, that person must know the people. In order to know the people, that person must live with the people. To genuinely live with the people, that person must live like the people. This idea is, I believe, firmly rooted in the incarnation of Christ.

On one hand, no man can live incarnationaly like Christ. He is the God-Man, we’re simply men. He humbled himself as deity to live as a human being. I can never hope to come even remotely close to that kind of sacrifice. But, in Christ, I can at least attempt something that is in a similar vein. When Christ came to earth, he did not commune with angels all the time and then at specific times venture out.  He experienced exhaustion like we do. His body needed replenishment like ours does. He went to the bathroom like we do. He felt emotions like we do. He reasoned with a human brain like we do.  He did not cop out or wimp out. He went through what he had to in order to save a people for his Father. In His incarnation He showed just how thoroughly He loves us. He was not sent by the Father to amuse Himself or to please Himself or to have a vacation. He was sent to be incarnated, to live amongst us, in perfection, to die for us and to be raised from the dead for us. If that kind of a mission propelled Christ, should it not also propel us? Are we not striving in this life to be Christ-like?  If a person is called to go overseas or to another culture, should he/she not give up his/her way of life here in the States to serve amongst a people, living for Christ, and learning the ways of another people in order to minister to and make Christ known to them? Or, if you’re not called to go overseas and you’re called to stay at home in the States, should you not study the ways of your people in order to minister to and make Christ known to them?

To think about it another way, the goal of the missionary church-planter is to plant indigenous churches.  If you’re not leaving your home to go serve the Lord in another culture, are you not serving already in indigenous churches? Another example of living incarnationally is the Apostle Paul.  As he rightly declared in Philippians, he was a Hebrew of Hebrews.  Paul knew the Jewish culture, religion, society and way of life.  He was raised with it and before Christ grabbed a hold of him and saved him he worshiped it.  Likewise, as can be seen in Acts 17, Paul knew something of Athenian culture.  He had read their prophets and studied their objects of worship.  Yet Paul, in being “all things to all men” still preached the same message: Christ and Him crucified.  In preaching a message that was absolutely insulting to Hebrews and Greeks (being a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles), Paul ministered and lived and preached and pastored to both groups of people.  Paul did not sit on his haunches.  He went and he lived.  YET, neither did Paul so relate to the culture around him that he destroyed the message of Christ.  In fact, more often this not, he was so ardent in preaching this message that he was almost killed for it, multiple times, and and in very creative and painful ways.  (see Paul’s litany of his sufferings for the sake of Christ in 2 Corinthians 11:16-33).

What does this incarnational ministry look like though?  I’ll give my thoughts of it in the next part.  :-)