Incarnational Ministry

I was having lunch with other missionaries on a mission compound in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I was enjoying getting to know these men and women that had given their lives in the service of the gospel in one of the poorest countries in the world. I was there with my friend Elias, and we were sharing with another missionary about the disabilities conference we were putting on for the churches in Addis. Joni Erickson Tada had come with us to Ethiopia to help us make the church aware of the need to reach out and care for those with disabilities among them. My role in the conference was to be a photographer and instructor on how the Bible calls us to serve “the least of these” among us. I told my new friend, “The conference is designed to equip churches with what they need to be able to serve the disabled all around them.” The missionary’s response was quite surprising: “Well, it’s all well and good to care for the poor and disabled, but that’s not the ministry of the church. The ministry of the church is to save lost souls.”

I was shocked. It doesn’t take but a glance on the streets of Ethiopia to see the pressing needs, yet as I spoke with this kind man, it became clear that for him there was a sharp division between body and soul, and gospel ministry was only about proclaiming a message by which souls would be saved (and, I presume, discipled). He reflects one side of the spectrum of how people understand gospel ministry. People simply need to be told they are sinners in need of grace, and the only way to have hope for eternal life after death is to trust in the atoning death of Jesus Christ on their behalf. Of course it is true that we need to hear this, but evangelism for some is thought of as a matter of plundering souls out of this world for heaven. Mercy ministry might be a good thing to do, but this world is going to be destroyed, so it is merely a platform for spiritual ministry—we feed the hungry so that they will sit and listen to the gospel. There may be no formal connection between “gospel ministry” and showing mercy to those in need.

I have also encountered missionaries from the other side of the spectrum. Here it seems that “gospel ministry” is nothing more than mercy ministry. This “social gospel” focuses on Jesus’ commands to minister to people’s physical needs—to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked and visit the sick and the imprisoned (Matt 25:35-40). Yet often times, any need to proclaim the gospel that people are sinners in need of the grace of Christ all but disappears. Ministry to people’s physical needs then replaces ministry to their spiritual needs. In other words, there may be no formal connection between “gospel ministry” and a need for the conversion of sinners.

I would like to suggest that both of these extremes fail to represent gospel ministry as it is presented to us in the New Testament. After all, the gospel is intended to correct a problem—a problem that began with Adam’s sin. God created the world and everything in it good, and he placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to fill the earth and govern His creation for His glory (Gen. 1:26-28). Yet at the Fall when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, human nature became subject to both sin (we are totally depraved) and suffering (we all experience both pain and misery), and the creation itself fell along with us in our sin (Gen. 3; Rom. 8:18-25). Yet, of course, this was not the end of the story. God intended from before the creation of the world to redeem what was lost in the Fall. He elected Israel out of the nations to be a light to the world, but the history of Israel actually culminates in the person of Jesus Christ the Son of God.

It is the incarnation that becomes the model for ministry the world. Jesus was born as a person with both body and soul; he ministered to us, died for us, and rose again from the dead in both body and soul. Where Adam disobeyed, Jesus fully obeyed God’s law to fully redeem all that was lost in the Fall. And He did so by becoming like us in every way, yet without sin. He entered our world, spoke our language, suffered our pain and died our death and rose again to secure our redemption. That redemption is not limited to saving souls for heaven. It includes the remaking of heaven and earth—“New Creation” as Paul calls it (2 Cor. 5:17)—and resurrecting all His people with renewed physical bodies as well as saved souls. Of course, that will not be completed until He returns, yet it should not be surprising that the Jesus who ministered to us as a whole person would call us to minister to others as whole people, including both body and soul, both in sin and suffering. For Jesus, gospel ministry anticipates the great climax of all history, when Christ will return and eradicate all sin and suffering from the world.

The apostle Paul summarized His ministry to the Corinthians as follows: “We do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5). That statement brings together both sides of the spectrum into one focus. We cannot compromise the gospel message—Jesus came to deal with the sin of the world by giving Himself as the sacrifice for sin and rising again as Lord of heaven and earth. Yet we must also preach that message while giving ourselves as “your servants for Jesus’ sake.” Service and mercy are not just good tools to get people to listen to the gospel. When we serve each other and show mercy to those in need we give context and meaning to what we say when we tell others that salvation is to be found in the One who came “not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). It is a necessary outgrowth of gospel ministry.

Paul says this again in another way: “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us” (2 Thess. 2:8). For Paul, ministry flowed from love, since the Thessalonians had “become so dear” to him. Because of love, he delighted to share “the gospel of God” with them. However, he wasn’t satisfied with speaking words; he gave his life for those he loved. Evangelism was what overflowed from the love he had for the Thessalonians as he gave of his life for them as well. That’s incarnational ministry. We give ourselves for the sake of those around us, entering into their lives, their worlds, their sufferings, that the gospel might take flesh in their lives, and Christ might be exalted in the relationships we build.

In the mission of Christ’s church, we must keep both sides of this spectrum in one focus. Our primary aim in all Christian ministry is to love each other as Christians. Yet loving people as Christians means that we will, in appropriate times and ways, proclaim the gospel of God that “Jesus is Lord” and commit ourselves to become servants for Jesus sake—to “give our lives” for those we love. We cannot be satisfied either with serving physical needs with no gospel (the world can do that) or with sharing the gospel message without love expressed in service and mercy. After all, Jesus taught us, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:14-16).

More Ready than You Realize

Evangelism as Dance in the Postmodern Matrix
Brian D. McLaren

I liked this book a whole lot more than I expected to. It offers a very engaging challenge to those who would want to package evangelism into diagnostic questions, canned illustrations or five point outlines. He likens it to a dance. It "begins with something beyond yourself," and "over time, your whol life begins to harmonize to the song. It's rhythm awakens you; its tempo moves you, so you resonate with its tone and flow with its melody. The lyric gradually convinces you that the entire world is meant to share in this song with its message, its joy, its dance" (pp. 15-6). McLaren understands that it is the gospel itself, and the transformation that occurs in us by God's Spirit that motivates our engagement with unbelievers. And he undestands that the hope of the gospel is more than just the conversion of the sinner--the entire cosmos (not the sum total of all people in the world) is supposed to share in this song. If I may insert my thoughts on McLaren's words, it seems to me he's arguing that God is about the transformation of the comsos, and as we engage in His song, we become about His work.

He argues that evangelism requires that we engage in real relationship with people who are not yet believers. Evangelism is more about conversation than about lecture--getting someone to listen to our expertise. Evangelism is more like a dance with a parter than a sales pitch. I had the opportunity once, as a young seminary student, to be evangelized by someone who came to my door. He asked me two diagnostic questions, and I told him he didn't have to worry about me. I'm a Christian and a seminary student seeking to become involved in full-time ministry. He responded, "That's the wrong answer." So I gave him the answer he wanted--you know, the stuff about Jesus dying on the cross for my sins, and if I believe in Him, I'll go to heaven when I die. That answer was fine with him, and he invited me to come to his church. I politely refused and thought to myself, I want to go to a church where people are more interested in conversations than they are about having me give them the answers they want to hear so that they can decide whether or not they should give me their sales pitch for Jesus.

You won't find any sales pitches in this book. Interspersed within each chapter is an ongoing converation that Brian had with a musician that came to one of his events. He shares his ongoing conversation. He desires to know her, to engage in discussion with her real questions and with her real objections, not so much to Jesus, but to the Church. Being a pastor, he doesn't get on the defensive; he listens to her and walks with her on her journey. That's what evangelism is all about. This book helps readers, particularly those who have become dissatisfied with "modern" Christianity, recognize that they are more ready than they thought to engage in this dance with unbelievers.

Yet this book is not without its flaws. As is so common in books such as this, the way to show that your version of "postmodern" Christianity is superior to "modern" Christianity is to caricaturize the latter to stack the deck in favor of the former. A favorite tactic is to take negative aspects that were true in some versions of modern Christianity and assert that they were true accross the board throuhout the modern era. McLaren characterizes modern Christianity between the years 1500 and 2000 as operating under a principle of "motivation by exclusion," which he says, looks like this: "We're on the inside, but you're on the outside. We're right, and you're wrong. If you want to come inside, then you need to be right. So, just believe right, think right, speak right, and act right, and we'll let you in" (p. 84). One wonders how anyone was "let in" in the modern era. Nevermind that this flies right in the face of the reformer's insistance that one is saved by grace through faith alone. That cardinal doctrine of sola fide has generated churches that recognize it's impossible to "believer right, think right, speak right, and act right" unless the Holy Spirit transforms us by His regenerating work. He then sanctifies us that we may gradually learn to "act right." Now to be sure, you can find many fundamentalistic churches that turn that doctrine on its head and use the gospel as a fence of exclusion for those who aren't like them. You can also perhaps say that that's a temptation that the church has fallen pray to throughout its history, including postmodern churches. But to toss that out as a general critique of 500 years of protestant church history is unfair, needlessly prejorative and historically naive. McLaren does this a number of times throughout his book, and it strikes me that the very quote proves that "motivation by exclusion" continues in some way in the postmodern church as well--that is, the modern church is "excluded" because it operates under the principle of movivation by exclusion.

This is not to say that the modern era does not deserve to be criticized, nor is it to deny that the church has capitulated to modernism in extensive, deep and profound ways. It is rather to wonder why it is, when modern Christianity is so open to critique, that we have to resort to caricatures? McLaren's book is an exciting and encouraging book encouraging us to truly engage with those in the postmodern matrix with the hope of the gospel. Despite its flaws, I would highly encourage you to let this book help us along way.

Regnum Caelorum

Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity, 2nd Edition
C. E. Hill

Welcome to my theological blog page. The title Regnum Caelorum, meaning "kingdom of heaven," is taken from an excellent book written by one of my professors about the history and development of millennial thought in the early church. Hill's argument is that, despite popular opinion, there were many in the early church (particularly from the late first to third centuries) that were not "chiliasts" (or premillennialists by today's terminology). These non-chiliasts can be identified because they believed in a heavenly afterlife, as opposed to their chiliast bretheren, all of which believed they would rest in Hades after death. In fact, reading his book makes one believe that chiliasm was a development in early Christianity around the middle of the second century. I highly recommend it to those interested in the history of eschatology in the early church. For an overview of Hill's argument (both in this book and in a couple articles), click here.

However, I'm intending that the subject of this blog page to be substantially broader than that of the book. Instead of being concerned with particular millennial views, I intend to this blog to be a forum of discussion concerning what the church would look like if we consistently believed in covanental and reformed understandings of the kingdom of God and redemptive history. What is the kingdom of heaven like, and how are we to live in it? These are questions that I believe we need to ask ourselves, and I believe the answers will challenge the church to live in the world differently. We would give our lives in service and mercy to the least of these in our communities and around the world so that the gospel of the King who "came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" might be seen in the life of His Church, His body, His kingdom on earth, until He returns.