Often in our lives we hope and mean to accomplish certain tasks but get way laid and end up having to wait for a later time. Writing this article is one of those tasks so it will probably take a few sessions to break down due to its length. (You may want to print it out and pull up a comfortable chair.)

Urban Resurrection, and hence our family, is in the midst of a lot of transition these days. Transition often brings a sense of chaos and ambiguity with it. In those times it can become difficult to see our way forward. I have learned that in those moments when you are not certain where the road is going it is best to look back at where you have been and take note of the many ways Jesus has lead you through past difficulty to bring you to the point where you are.  This article is one of those times of looking back in order to move forward with confidence.

As I have been straining my eyes to see where Jesus is leading us He reminds me that my striving accomplishes little and that I must loosen my grip of some things in order to take hold of new ones.  When we seek to follow after Christ and lead others toward Him and the healing He brings several things happen and I want to talk about them. Henri Nouwen in his book In the Name of Jesus has helped me to form some of my own thoughts into a more understandable form so I will quote him often in this and the following articles.

Many people have a difficult time understanding what “incarnational ministry” means. I doubt that I can fully explain it in words as it is something one must experience in order to understand and experiencing incarnational ministry takes a significant amount of time. I will try and bring out some things that God has been teaching me in the hopes that it may resonate with His Spirit inside of you.

We just celebrated THE Incarnation, the amazing event of God Himself leaving His place by the Father’s side in order to become a human child. Not only a human child but a baby born to poor parents, in a feeding trough for animals, and soon after his birth (to an unmarried teenage mother) having to flee with his family to another country as a refugee fleeing political persecution! It has been talked about a lot. So I won’t dwell on that event itself except to point out that Jesus (in the words of John Perkins) “moved into the neighborhood”.

We as His followers must then be willing to do the same to leave all that we know, our place of comfort and move into and live alongside those whom we want to share Jesus with. That is the foundation for incarnational ministry.

Incarnational ministry is not just a method for sharing the Gospel, it is a lifestyle and a spiritual discipline that is chosen in order to for God to reveal Himself to YOU as well.  Nouwen says when working and living among the marginalized you are suddenly and constantly faced with your naked self, open for affirmations and rejections, hugs and punches, smiles and tears, all dependent simply on how you are perceived at the moment. Because of this sort of environment, you find yourself forced to rediscover your true identity.

If that identity is based in your skills, your abilities, your personal attributes or any other part of YOU then you will really come up hard against a wall of difficult adjustment. That adjustment is God stripping you of self and replacing it with Himself.  Again Nouwen says, to belong and incarnate you must first let go of your relevant self – the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things- and force yourself to reclaim the unadorned self in which you are completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments. This, of course flies in the face of Western cultural norms that drive us to seek success and to push for productivity that seem more tangible and measurable than the transformation of lives tends to be.

The Christian leader is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self as a conduit of Christ’s love. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love. The great message that we have to carry as ministers of God’s Word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us NOT because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen US to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life.

This is one part of what Jesus meant when He answered the temptation from Satan in the desert by saying, One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Mt. 4:4) He is speaking of identity and answering Satan’s challenge for Him to prove himself the Son of God, to prove His relevance and His worth. Jesus simply pointed back to His own identity.

We are called to realize our true identity and part of that is being a kingdom of priests to minister to the spiritual needs of people. We must point others to Christ and create Christ centered community because our society points to self and creates loneliness isolation, lack of friendship and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, emptiness, and depression and a deep sense of purposelessness and uselessness. Only Christ can fill those things and we are called to stand in the gap and point out the way as we stumble and struggle toward Him as well. Our lives are to be living examples of His grace and peace.

So, the leaders of today are those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows them to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish of people, and bring the light of Jesus there.

I see this to be true and right and it rings true to what I am seeing around me in my neighbors and in the places where we have seen the deepest and most lasting change in the lives of our neighbors and friends. When we take time to walk alongside of and be friends with and love on those around us we see deep change and transformation. When we do so we not only bring the Word of God to bear in their lives we live it out in front of them, we love them with the closest thing to unconditional love that we can muster in our imperfect state and we point them to the ONLY ONE who can truly love them and transform them.

Of course, as we do this we inevitably see the physical, social, intellectual and spiritual needs they have and because we love them we try to empower them and help them realize their own value and ability as Christ’s beloved creation. Sometimes this leads us to greater macro systemic changes that must be made. We see the true patterns and needs and dreams and desires of our community because we have taken the time, and it does take time, to know them and love them and to be known and loved by them. As we do this it opens up more opportunities for us to serve them and, more importantly sometimes, for them to be empowered to serve us and to serve each other. This leads us to be able to celebrate each other as part of Christ’s community and of wholeness and transformation.  As we live this life of incarnation following the true Incarnate God we are transformed and renewed and challenged and broken and rebuilt. This journey into our neighbor’s lives is not just for them to see Christ at work in us, it is for us to also be truly transformed and refined by the process as we see Christ at work in them.

Posted on December 28th, 2009 by Michael
Filed under: Community Development, Mentoring & Discipleship, News