Missional and incarnational are two concepts that are (or should be) inseparable.
You can be missional without being incarnational (in our context) by hanging thousands of gospel door hangers in a neighborhood thinking it's an information problem that does not need a relational solution. The heart of mission, the recognition of "sentness" is there, but the incarnational piece is missing. It's actually possible to do quite a bit of damage by being missional but not incarnational (as is discussed in The Tangible Kingdom).
OR
You can be incarnational without being missional by hanging out every night at the same Portland pub or coffee shop, but never getting to know anyone, never asking God, "how are you at work here?", never having an awareness of what is going on around you. You feel good about yourself because you're around a bunch of non-Christian Portlanders, but if there is never any intention, any idea of what God is doing, any direction, then it will just remain hanging around a bunch of non-Christian Portlanders. Incarnational without missional is just hanging out!
How have you seen or experienced these two ideas brought together in a meaningful way?
2 comments:
insightful. the college ministry at xenos church in columbus (xenos.org) does an excellent job of this.
they don't get a lot of publicity because of their eclectic theology (pre-millenial; arminian but convinced of eternal security; home church ecclesiology with substantial pastoral controls; non-legalistic but committed to stringent, almost hierarchial discipleship, etc), but they are constantly engaging thousands of young adults around the ohio state campus with the life changing gospel.
it's a shame that xenos is overlooked, because it is worthy of study.
Immersing without engaging or challenging is not what I'd call incarnational, it's what I'd call syncretistic.
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