When you talk to several people who use the word incarnational, you begin to realize the usage is anything but uniform. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, observes,
“Over the last few years I’ve seen how so many different people are the using the word ‘incarnational’ to convey very definite and different theological agendas.”Keller surveyed folks from a high-church setting, who mean “sacramental ministry,” to others like Hirsch, who contrasts incarnational with attractional ministries, where instead of bringing friends to hear the sermon, you go into the community to love people and share the gospel.
"So I’d say that a young Broadway actor who wants to show his peers the beauty of the gospel will have think out how to “incarnate” the gospel in his life. It won’t be exactly the same way that an 80-year-old grandmother living on a farm with her extended family does it."
How can missionaries help churches grow? This is a question asked by many missionaries and is part of the larger question of their identity and role as cross-cultural workers. Can a foreigner struggling to become fluent in the local language, still learning the rudiments and some of the fine points of the culture and its worldview, really make a helpful contribution to the work and mission of the local church to its society? These questions are asked not only by first-termers, but by missionaries throughout their cross-cultural mission career.
“Building a bridge has nothing to do with compromising your beliefs. It’s all about your behavior and your attitude toward others. It’s about genuine love for people. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Before people ask, “Is Jesus credible?”, they want to know if you are credible. Before people trust the Jesus you present, they must trust you. You cannot win your enemies to Christ, only your friends. It is part of what Paul calls ‘the ministry of reconciliation.’ It is Christ-like to treat people with dignity and listen to them with respect.” - Rick Warren
If we are going to deal with people as people in a culture that is vastly different from our own, we have to come to fundamental realization that people are different from society to society, and to do this we are going to have to make the major move to change.
If we are going to be persons among people, our privacy, our established patterns of what is convenient and comfortable are going to have to be drastically modified. Our sense of belonging to ourselves will have to be filed away and we will have to develop a sense of belonging to others, which characterizes so many societies in the world.
This sort of experience involved a tremendous emotional drain. It is an extremely difficult attitude to take and position to follow. It means 'becoming all things to all men so that by all means we might win some' in the deepest sense, and it means a type of cultural suicide which Paul characterizes as being 'crucified with Christ.'" -- William SmalleyMost people today view cross-cultural ministry as something performed in a foreign nation. But North America today has become very secular, developing a culture of its own in an ideological sense--one very different from the culture of the church. So today, we need to view our North American culture as a place of opportunity for cross-cultural ministry! We do this by investigating the world views of our culture. According to David Hesselgrave in his book Communicating Christ Cross- Culturally, "understanding another person's world view (or belief system) is the starting point for communicating the gospel." (1) By showing an understanding of and interest in another person's beliefs, we gain credibility and integrity before that person--and probably even a hearing for the Christian message.
The Gospel authors said, “Believe,” but they also report Jesus as saying, “Love.” The core of Christian identity lays on us an obligation to love our neighbor—including our non-Christian neighbor—that must be weighed versus the obligation to assert the truth of our creed. What, then, if our insistence on preaching our beliefs is an offence to the integrity and identity of our non-Christian neighbor? Christ’s commandment to love that neighbor may imply that we curtail our insistence on our own rightness. Put simply, to tell the Hindu, for example, that he cannot find salvation or fulfillment in his own tradition and community is morally a very un-Christian thing to do. - Hesselgrave
By helping leaders define and deepen their own identity and authenticity that comes from the journey within, potentially that leader will have the integrity to remain attuned to that identity thereby becoming a more effective leader
"Mission of the church as a whole loses force and integrity, too often becoming bad news, rather than good news both for those who encounter it and for those involved in its proclamation” - Nancy Bedford
Evangelicals and evangelism have always been bracketed. So much so that the adjectives 'evangelical' and 'evangelistic' have often been identified in the popular mind. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that whenever evangelicals have become concerned about social issues, some eyebrows have been raised, and questions have been asked whether the cause of the gospel is not about to be betrayed.
"In order to achieve meaning and relevance in the communication of the message, contextualization
takes into account linguistic and cultural forms of the target group. It refers to “any action that puts the gospel into a more understandable, culturally relevant form by including elements from
a target culture’s customs, language, and traditions.” David Racey
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