Defending My Paycheck 3: Forgetting Incarnation

There are two things that occur if we forget that the churches' work is to be an incarnational work that serves the greater purpose of transformation.

The first danger is that we forget that our job is to be missional. If we forget that God's people are in place "for such a time as this" we neglect the work he has gone ahead and prepared in advance for us to do.

You do not have to look very far to see historical evidence of this. Coming into the 20th century, the church in Europe had lost a good deal of its' historical power but still remained a viable voice socially, politically, and spiritually. By the end of the century, the church was (and is) largely irrelevant to most Europeans. The church did not respond well on a popular level to the crisis of two world wars and the intelectual and philosophical attacks it endured. So Europe produced two of the greatest Christian thinkers of the 20th century (C.S. Lewis and Karl Barth) but lost it's incarnational and missional edge to the people at-large. Ask the church in Europe if they'd like to take a mulligan on doing more thoughtful generational-specific ministry!

The second danger that we face if we forget that our work is to be incarnational is more subtle but perhaps greater. To simply state that our work is to speak the gospel belies an assumption that we already have that gospel under wraps. Philemon v. 6: "I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ." As we engage the people and situations around us with the fullness of the gospel, we are stretched to grow in our understanding of what the gospel is. Honestly, we can't simply say that our job is to present the gospel and let the chips fall where they may because none of us knows the fullness of the gospel yet. And we are arrogant to presume to. There is a teachability and a humility when we seek to bring the gospel to bear to a given culture or a situation or a generation that allows us to see the gospel more fully.

Every understanding of what the gospel is comes freighted with our cultural and generational assumptions, questions, and values. The practice of incarnational ministry reminds us of this fact. The posture of presuming to already know the gospel cuts us off from being able to learn from Christians of different cultures or generations--including older generations whose blind spots and clear-sighted areas are different from ours!

Of course, there are dangers in incarnational ministry as well, and we'll talk about those tomorrow. Assuming, of course, we don't have a baby between now and then--she's due any day now...