Incarnation  

Posted by BT in

I'm sitting at Panera listening to Alli Rogers' song "Eden." I recommend it.

I've really been dwelling the last couple days on what it means to be incarnational. I was just replying to a great question from my friend Andy, who really got me to thinking about this. Does incarnation mean anything to followers of Jesus? I mean, besides the obvious? I don't think it has meant much to me...I can say it has meant a lot, but unless it changes the way I live, it just doesn't really matter. I wonder what it would look like if, instead of short term missions and giving money to overseas missions getting all the attention (not saying those things are bad), we shifted our focus to incarnational mission. I wonder.

My toes are cold.

This entry was posted on 29 October 2008 at 9:29 AM and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

2 comments

Anonymous  

wow. My toes are cold too!

I like the new layout of the blog. Can't say I can answer your question about incarnation, though :)


-petey

10:26 AM
peterkevinson  

Brad,

I guess you know my parents now... my prayers are with you. Just joking, they are great people and I'm glad they get to know you... I know you will be a blessing in their lives.

About the whole incarnational thing. It's kind of like the focus of my church, but even though it is the focus I still see how hard it is to real incarnate yourself or a church in a neighborhood or a community because I fail at it so often. There has to be a lot of 2 Phillipians going on for it to happen, you know, not holding on to or grasping what you deserve and just letting go to be a servant, which is all very hard to do and must be done intentionally every day. But I honestly believe it is the only way to do mininstry.

But when it comes to international ministry I'm currently clueless on how it gets done. How do you incarnate yourself another place where there are great needs that you really need to be addressed, but you live thousands of miles away? I don't think the answer is for everyone to sell their houses and move to Haiti, but I do think we have to respond to the need in Haiti. In 2 Cor 8 and 9 Paul took an offering for the church in Jerusalem, but he didn't ask for everyone to move there.

I struggle with the question, because I hate just sending a check and I hate just going for a week as a religious tourist, but I know we need to do something because we have so much excess and they don't have enough and that more than anything demands that something happens. So I guess I have no answers to your question.

The lectionary this week calls for John 1 to be read... "and the word made His dwelling amongst us"

10:55 AM

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