How does one live incarnationally?
What the heck does that even mean?
Awhile back, I read Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost's book, The Shaping of Things to Come. A key point they flesh out is difference between an attractional church and a missional church. A basic difference, according to Hirsch, is that an attractional church has a "come to us" mentality, and a missional church has a "we are sent" into our communities mentality. Read an elaboration of this on Hirsch's blog here.
So, you're a layperson. You're at an attractional-modeled church, yet your heart is missional. In the words of Francis Schaeffer, "How Should We Then Live?" The answer is incarnationally.
Dwight Friesen articulates this well below:
At this time I find myself preferring the language of incarnational living instead of missional living. The language of incarnational living more meaningfully emphasizes embodying Christ in every situation and cultural context. The celebration of Christmas is the celebration of God with humanity—it is the Incarnation, Emmanuel, God with us. Fully God and fully human, Jesus by his very life and presence was mission.
Incarnational living more meaningfully marries mission with the wholeness of life. Incarnational living places the mystery of life with Christ at the center of each follower’s life and each faith community’s life together.
Incarnational living invites all Christ-followers to flesh out their uniqueness, encouraging the totality of their being to reflect or embody Christ. When people and their respective communities see their “being” as inevitably making the invisible Christ visible through their lives, then every interaction, every act, every moment of stillness becomes a Christ moment. This explodes the singularity of mission; now life becomes mission in a holistic sense. Mission is inevitable when Christ is incarnated, but without incarnation mission looks a lot like busy religiosity.
When Christ is incarnated through you and me, we will be looking for ways to empty ourselves in the service of the Father by serving others as the Holy Spirit guides us. We become active participants in a divine dance through which all of creation is being reconciled to Christ. This is a dynamic faith process that will always find unique expression through each follower of Christ and each cluster of Christ-followers—so much so that one person incarnating Christ out of his or her uniqueness may appear to be in direct conflict with another person incarnating Christ out of his or her uniqueness. But fear not, God is big enough to handle such occasional differences.
Of course there is not a genuine dichotomy between missional living and incarnational living. Mission is always lived out of our being, and incarnational living always results in doing. Every person (Christ-follower or not) and every organization is missional, and the more purpose-driven in the execution of their mission, the more they are viewed as successful, because the results are often more clearly measurable. There is nothing uniquely Christian about being missional. Christ-followers may espouse a mission that serves God and others, but we are not alone in such selfless service nor are we entirely selfless. What does set Christian mission apart is that Christ is lifted high. God is made visible. What makes mission Christian is that Christ is incarnated.
Questions to Ponder
- Consider the example of the new neighbors who sponsored the “Evening of Light.” What is the difference between you deciding what someone else needs and engaging with how that person has already sought to meet that need? (click link below for this reference)
- How do the concepts of living missionally or incarnationally relate to the concepts of faith and works?
- In what ways do you live incarnationally? How does that result in mission?
- How would you describe the dance between faith and works?
Read the whole thing here.
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