Living The Incarnation

August 27, 2008 | Filed Under missional | No Comments

If you didn’t run across this article from last year be sure to check out John Santic’s post titled “10 Tips For Living The Incarnation.” I would highly recommend reading the entire article, but here are three of John’s 10 tips:

Attentive Listening: The art of listening is becoming increasingly important for what it means to live incarnationally. Appropriate listening is grounded in a robust understanding of Pneumatology that believes, in addition to the oft overemphasized personal experience, that the Holy Spirit is active, working, leading, and inviting the church into mission. Our ideas and plans can often override the still small voice that gently invites us into unexpected and new adventures.

Peter’s encounter with Cornelius in the book of Acts is a good story to identify with for the importance of listening to live incarnationally. As the Spirit promises to lead us into all truth, we trust that God will reveal the injustice and oppression in our midst so that we can respond appropriately.

Formative Practices: Living in a rhythm that includes formative spiritual practices is vital to remain intimately connected to God. This is the Contemplative way. Seeking union with God and to see God in all things allows for greater freedom to reflect the image of God to others, understand His good an pleasing will, and it gives us a greater awareness of reality. Walking in closeness through disciplined practices of prayer, listening, scripture reading, Examen, discipleship, and fasting prepares the us for works of service that are pleasing to God and shapes us into a Gospel storied people.

Proximity: As Jesus localized himself in the incarnation, so too must the church localize in order to reflect most vividly the image of God. Without local relationships, the fullness of community seems somewhat lacking. People are transported everywhere through vehicles, the telephone, and the internet in convenient and practical ways. But at what cost?

In the midst of the connectedness we have through technology, there is still a great longing for local relationship and the gift of presence. Being proximate with our relationships is vital if we are to express a full embodiment of what Biblical community is. So go for walks. Build relationships. Let people see you and know you are there.

Changing the Conversation

August 22, 2008 | Filed Under missional | No Comments

alban-institute.gifHere is an excellent article from The Alban Institute titled “Changing the Conversation: Nurturing a Third Way for Congregations.” The article, written by Anthony Robinson, first appeared in Congregations magazine. For a flavor of where Robinson is going in the article here is the opening paragraph:

For congregations—particularly congregations of the mainline Protestant tradition—the way forward has everything to do with changing the conversation. Is a third way possible—a way beyond the polarized alternatives of either liberal or conservative, left or right, red or blue, traditional or contemporary, praise or classical? If it is possible, is a third way merely a compromise between extremes, a muddle in the middle, or is it a vital center and a new framing of the conversation?

Being A People of “The Way”

August 15, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 1 Comment

The early followers of Jesus Christ were not called people of “the experience,” or the people of “right doctrine,” or the people of “moral values,” or even the people of “the church.” They were called the people of “the Way.”

They were known for the way they lived, not only for what they believed or valued. Christians were associated with a particular and discernible way of living and relating that both grew out of their faith and gave testimony to that faith.

More than just individuals who had a changed religious position, they were now a new people, a new community embarking on a new way of life — a life worthy of their calling. Their proclamation that in Jesus Christ the reconciling and transforming reign of God had become an historical reality was more than an intriguing idea, it had become visible in a people whose life together was the first fruit of the new social order intended by God for the whole of creation.

Inangrace T. Dietterich in Cultivating Missional Communities

“I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:1-2).

Missional Living . . . Beyond Programming

August 12, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 6 Comments

We have become experts at programming congregational life. As soon as someone offers an idea that seems to be effective in helping a local congregation, somebody comes up with a way to program it, organize it, shrink-wrap it, market it, and sell it to churches as a commodity.

But the missional lifestyle is not a commodity. The missional lifestyle is a way of being, a way of seeing and a way of relating with others. Living missionally is allowing the Christ in us to embrace, touch, respond to, initiate toward, and include outsiders. Jesus mentioned the hungry, thristy, stranger, underclothed, sick, and prisoner. Then he said, “Whatever you did for one of these, you did for me.”

This same Christ initiated God’s grace to widows, grieving, lost, diseased, paralytics, blind, lame, and children. We now have sterilized programs to minister to all of these.

But what about the other outsiders — the social outcasts, homeless, adulteresses, prostitutes, dishonest politicians, beggars, thieves, liars, wayward, demon possessed, and people who deny Christ? What about the person who causes us pain? What about the individual who questions our integrity? Do we initiate God’s grace to them? The only people Christ ever called “sinner” were those people who called other people “sinner.” It’s time to allow the Christ who lives in us to live through us.

Dennis Foust from “It’s Time . . . A Journey Toward Missional Faithfulness: Member Journey Guide”

Sent From the Father

August 9, 2008 | Filed Under missional | No Comments

All the themes of the Fourth Gospel are presented in the person of Jesus. The Christian message is not presented as a philosophy, a code of law or ethics, a doctrine, a catechism: it appears in the person of Jesus and in the impact of his presence on others. It was the author’s purpose to transmit that presence and that impact to following generations.

In accord with his purpose John portrays a Jesus of incomparable unity and simplicity of character. At every moment, in every act, in every circumstance, he was always himself: the one “sent from the Father,” the “missionary” who is never more nor less than a missionary, he who unites the Father and the world not as a bridge joins two fixed points, but by means of a movement, a passage, a communication between living beings.

– Jose Comblin in “Sent From the Father: Meditations on the Fourth Gospel”

What Does a Missional Church Look Like?

August 4, 2008 | Filed Under church, ecclesiology, missional | 5 Comments

A frequent priority of the local congregation is to attract people to come to the physical property of the church so as to inlcude the “pagans” in the life of the church. This model began with the Roman Empire, especially after Constantine’s conversion and Christianity became the official Roman religion.

Since that time, a “Constantinian Model” has led congregations to emphasize that what happens in the physical church building or service is “church.”

Consequently, congregations offer worthip services and education programs but are weak in ministry outside the church building.

Those who want to join the life of faith must leave their culture and come join us in our church. The church does not go to them. This “come to us” model functioned in the Western Church in the culture of Christendom. Without much effort, people came to our congregations and adapted to our culture. All too often, Western missionaries planted Constantinian congregations even in non-Christendom lands.

In every age, there are those Christians who see the Constantinian model as flawed. They see the incarnation of Jesus as a call for the church to leave its “safe” building and move into the world of those they are trying to serve. These missional Christians adapt to the culture rather than ask those outside the church to change cultures to find God. They also sense a call to communicate Christ in words and deeds of love.

In previous years, I invited people to church when I met them, thinking in that way they will hear the gospel. I began to see that I was giving the church an unfair advantage. I was asking them to come to my turf, where I was the leader, where I stand and speak while they sit and listen. It was a lack of courage that led me to rely on bringing them to a place where I was the boss and they were the servants. What I had to learn to do was speak the gospel on their terms — in their homes, in their boats — as a friend and as an equal. — Mark Peske, missionary to the Ojibwa.

It seems safer to remain in our congregations and hope people will come to us. Maybe the safest place for the church is to be where Jesus is.

– The Local Church in Mission: Becoming A Missional Congregation in the Twenty-First Century Global Context, Lausanne Occasional Paper no. 39, 2004