Thoughts
on being missional, organic, and incarnational
by Pastor Pete Beck III
The Kingdom of God Is Here!
And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay. Matthew 10:7-8 (ESV)
As Hugh Halter points out in The Tangible Kingdom Primer, for many people the kingdom of God has never touched down on planet earth. By that he means that they have never knowingly been impacted by or intersected with kingdom life and love or a demonstration of the power of God. Why is that? To a great extent, it is because Christians have been focused on themselves and their church programs instead of "going and making disciples."
God is working in his church today to transform us believers from being inviters to the show put on by ministry professionals to being people who incarnate the Gospel to those around us. The New Covenant did away with the separation between "clergy and laity." The professional priest no longer has sole access to the altar and sanctuary. Christ removed the veil and gave access to God's throne room to all believers! Christ has also called all his followers to ministry, distributing gifts and callings throughout his body. The job of the "five-fold ministry," according to Ephesians 4:11-12, is to equip the rest of the church to do the work of the ministry. Unfortunately, many five-fold ministers, out of insecurity or for whatever other reason, have loved to have the preeminence and to be seen as "special people," and often have tried to reserve the ministry to themselves. Today God is renewing his emphasis on the "priesthood of the believer" as he calls the church outside its walls and into the community it serves.
As we go, it is vital for us to know who Christ is in us and who we are in Him. Just as the Lord became flesh and moved into the neighborhood, we too are sent as "Christ bearers" into our communities. When people interact with us, they should get at least a taste of God's kingdom life, love, power, and message. We are called and challenged to embrace three aspects of kingdom life: mission, incarnation, and inclusiveness.
The mission is to go and make disciples. This means that every believer is sent to those around him or her. We are not called to be inviters but goers. Our message is not "come to church with me." Instead we bring Christ and a demonstration of the kingdom to them. Our mission is to connect them with Christ first and the church secondly, not the other way around, as so many of us do.
Incarnation is becoming what we preach. It means people encounter God when they encounter us. Incarnation has a lot to do with our calling, our identity in Christ, the anointing of God's Spirit, and our posture or attitude. For too long Christians have stood on the sidelines of society hurling insults and stones at those who violate God's laws. Jesus did not do this. He engaged and loved those who had gone astray. The only ones with whom Jesus showed antipathy were the religious who had closed the doors of their hearts to God's kingdom and ways. People need to know they are loved first. The God we preach will attract them to himself if we correctly model and share who he really is. The Spirit will do the inner work of transformation in his own way and time.
Inclusiveness means we refuse to turn the church into a membership only club with clearly defined lines of who is "in" and who is not. Instead we make it our aim to welcome all who are on the God journey. We choose to blur the lines of who "belongs" and whod does not, but the center is never blurred - devotion to Christ. By being a "center set" group, we remove the temptation toward hypocrisy that can exist when people must say and do certain things to be part of the group. We want reality, not outward conformity.
Our job is to help people interact and intersect with God and his kingdom. We do this by doing kingdom things - loving the unlovely, serving the least of Christ's brethren, binding up the brokenhearted, setting the captives free, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the widows and orphans, etc. We are also have a kingdom message that proclaims the reality of Christ's victory and our need to surrender to him as Lord and believe on Him for salvation. Jesus said that the kingdom is at hand when the sick are healed, the dead raised, and the demonized set free. Have you experienced the kingdom of God lately? Have you helped someone else have a kingdom encounter? This is our calling and privilege!