Incarnational Practices
The
modernist mode of thinking is a practice most practitioners find difficult to
overcome when learning to engage the PD process. The following activities are
about learning to move outside of the modernist paradigm into a real understanding
of culture amid marginalized people. When engaging an unfamiliar cultural
setting it is best to learn to listen. The first incarnational practice is to
listen more than speaking. This is a critical activity in the PD process. The
listening process referred to herein involves listening without assuming or
judging. It is a listening for the sake of understanding others. It is critical
to understand how Christians and church are viewed amid the people being
engaged. Listen for the critics, criticisms, complaints, and condemnations of
Christians and the church. While listening avoid getting defensive and
argumentative, but instead learn why they feel like they do. At all cost do not
invalidate their opinions and brush them aside. Their feelings are real and
should be respected. As Christ followers we cannot afford to take a position of
superiority and diminish the opportunity to connect in culture. There must be a
willingness to hear the voice of others and respect their voice. Their voice
will give the practitioner significant clues about how best to reach the
community with the Gospel.
The second
incarnational activity involves living amongst a marginalized people. Loyd
asked the question, “Can we be one of you?” Living amid people in their culture
on their terms allows for a listening that comes naturally and not mechanically
or academically. Living amid people allows the practitioner of the PD process
to hear more than their words, but allows for watching their faces as they
reveal their hearts. The goal of the PD process is to gain an authentic
relational understanding of people. It is only when listening is engaged in
living amid the culture does a practitioner understand the relationship of what
it means to be one with the people.
The third
incarnational activity is to learn the language, the slang, and the idioms of
the community. The Bible has been through many translations and paraphrases; it
is just as important amid the marginalized to speak the Gospel in their terms,
even if those terms might be offensive within the institutional church. For
many, the action of cultural translation may stretch boundaries of what has
been perceived as acceptable limits, but one of the most honoring ways to
connect with people is to speak in their language on their terms.
The fourth
incarnational activity is to create a contextually open environment where
people are accepted and loved as human beings without judging their brokenness,
flaws or lifestyles. The focus is upon developing authentic relationships that
allows people to experience belonging without believing. People who are
interested in Jesus Christ want an authentic experience of Christian
spirituality. They are exploring faith and faith experiences in pursuit of a
real spirituality that works. They are asking the questions, “Does Christ
really make a difference and does your faith really work for you?” A
contextually open community is a safe place where people who are exploring
faith may belong without believing, acknowledge their interest and experiment
with the Christian faith, experience the Gospel as reality, and experience a
community of faith.
The fifth incarnational activity is
experiential discipleship. The seeker through the previous four incarnational
activities has the opportunity to take a natural step through experiential
discipleship. This style of discipleship is fueled through discovery. As the
seeker pursues faith, Christ allows the seeker to capture him or her by
becoming aware of Christ presence within them. Here the intersection of pursuit
and faith become a reality leading to transformation. The transformation must
come from Christ work within the seeker through the conforming work of the Holy
Spirit to the image of Christ. Note this is not an external conformity to
appear as a believer, but an internal conformity to Christ that demonstrates a
real transformation. The greatest witness of the Gospel is the incarnational
community of Christ followers living amid the cultures and peoples of the
world. Leslie Newbigin asserts,
[What occupied]
the center of Jesus’ concern was the calling and binding to Himself of a living
community of men and women who would be the witnesses of what he was and did.
The new reality that he introduced into history was to be continued through
history in the form of community, not in the form of a book.[1]
Newbigin’s assertion turns things upside right by making the
focus of the mission of Christ the community and not the book. Being people of
the book does not create community, but being people of Christ does create an
authentic faith community. The community of Christ results from living out the
Gospel in the world as an incarnational and missional community. The pattern of
the contemporary church had been to use the Attractional, Propositional and
Colonial (APC) method as described in chapter one. The PD practitioner
represents one of the greatest assets of the church to bring about transforming
the presence of Christ amid marginalized people and people in all cultures
throughout the world.
One final recommendation is always
be in pursuit of Jesus Christ, recognize how he is already present and active
in the lives of all people, and truly love everyone unconditionally. A.J.
Swoboda said, “We are not taking Christ to them. He is already present amongst
them. We are learning to see where and how Jesus is intersecting with their
lives, so that we may connect with them.” Welcome to a new journey and the pursuit of the mission of
Christ.
[1] Lesslie
Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission
(Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1995), 52.
No comments:
Post a Comment