Intelligent Church and incarnational ministry

Am on my final college placement at the moment, choosing to go to Kilsyth Community Church. As a Baptist College student the choice of a non-Baptist church may seem strange, but its not a chance choice. The Associate Pastor has been a college colleague for a few years, and having heard loads about the church I was keen to go there and check it out. Have become somewhat interested in thinking, reflecting on and living out certain 'anabaptist' principles in an attempt to follow after Christ with integrity, authenticity and well, radical-ness. By radical though I mean total surrender, utter life-long and whole-life discipleship. This church in many ways lives this out. And so while not Baptist they certainly live out baptist ideals in many aspects of church life and witness. So my placement is working alongside their Community Outreach Co-ordinator exploring how they might develop some of the community engagement into fresh expressions of church amongst other things. As part of that my personal reading, reflecting and writing will look at some of the values and principles that underpin community engagement.

With that in mind I have been reading Intelligent Church this week, reflecting on what it means to be the Church. Radical church, which really shouldn’t be that radical, but often is because it looks quite different to what church can often look like, is incarnational in nature. It seems to me that there is amongst some church leaders, and congregations too, a move towards this kind of church, springing from a discontent at the way things are currently. In my thinking this week I have been unable to get away from the idea that actually intelligent church is radical in nature and perhaps the biggest principle that underpins this is that it is incarnational.

If God is incarnational, and the church’s task is to be part of God’s mission, this principle must become ours too. (Chalke, pg 39).

Incarnational in the sense that we get involved. God, in Jesus, took on human flesh and became part of humanity. God got involved in a very real sense in everyday life. God did it in such a way that everything was turned on its head and transformed. Everything in the Bible points to and leads towards Jesus, and everything after talks of the implications. And so if we are, as disciples (those who know what their teacher knows and do what their teacher does as they follow after the teacher), are to become incarnational it means we must involved. Get involved in a real way, in the nitty gritty of people’s lives, of the communities and places we find ourselves. It’s not a maybe, but a definite.

Sounds great in theory, but how do we do this? How does this become concrete?
Perhaps the greatest miracle of Pentecost is this: God chooses to speak to us in our own language. His is no one-size-fits-all policy. He comes to us. He begins where we are.
If the incarnation is God personally involving himself with his people, the day of Pentecost is God miraculously equipping the church to do the same. The rest of the book of Acts is the story of how the first Christians connected with the world, slowly discovering how to contextualize the gospel for each people group they encountered – to meet them on their own turf.
This same task remains the challenge for the church today: to start where people are, to engage in our communities, to embrace the public – in short, to speak their language. (Chalke, pg. 41)

It takes concrete form in the practices we live out. These practices of things like inclusion, loyalty, service become the principles that underpin both community engagement as well as authentic Christian witness. This happens with the realisation that, like the chapter titles of Chalke’s book point to, church needs to become inclusive meaning it may look quite messy. People’s lives aren’t sorted, and neither are ours, and so inclusion and messiness are natural and to be expected rather than feared. This is what happens when you begin to discern what the living Christ is saying and doing amongst people, for Jesus loved and included and cleaned up people. We do the same, but not from a position of condemnation and superiority, but rather radical attachment to Jesus and love of God, self and other. Tripolar spirituality as David Augsburger would call it.

I have seen this borne out in many of the different things I have seen this week at KCC. They tried to convince me that every week is not as hectic as this one has been, but I'm beginning to see that actually it is. And rather than being off putting I actually think that is quite attractive. It is not an easy kind of ministry, but it is transformational. The thing is though, it most definately requires getting out of the mind-set that this is a quick-fix kind of ministry, or one in which you see 'bums on seats' quickly. You don't! But you do genuinely walk with people, witness to Jesus and eventually as they begin to become open to Jesus (in part because of the way Jesus has been borne witness to by disciples) transformation of a deep and lasting kind begins to occur. It takes time and it takes a willingness to endure the pain and frustration of what incarnational ministry often means, but it also means being open to seeing God move in the most amazing and unexpected ways.

Hmmm, I love it! Just the idea makes me come alive, and so I'm forced to ask myself why. Is it because that kind of ministry meets any kind of need in me? Not that I can see, but perhaps because it seems to reflect tripolar living - genuine authentic discipleship following after Jesus, Lord of all.