Incarnational v. Missional

Missional is the new thing to be. It has become the buzzword in churches and among Christians who are looking to take faith beyond belief and into discipleship. 

And while that may sound like I'm turning my nose up at it, I'm not. I thank God (sincerely) that churches are beginning to insist that the folks that are a part of them need to be followers of Jesus and not just believers in Jesus. I bring up missional as trend not because I think that it has become trendy, but because I think it still falls a step short of what we're called to.

For years (too many years) belief was it. As Christians, we aspired to nothing more than a proclamation that Jesus was the Son of God and a mild to meaningful shift in morality, depending upon what a person's previous behavior had looked like. In my own denominational tradition (Churches of Christ) we had the "5 steps to salvation" which culminated in the act of baptism. 

What this created was a Christian culture for which belief was the end event. You believe, you're saved, now your only job is to make sure others believe so they can be saved, and you don't even have to take that job seriously enough to really be friends with those who might need to be. 

Recently, Christians have pushed back against this belief only mentality and have started taking more seriously a phrase that had become a cliche, what would Jesus do?

He would feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those in prison, and so on. So we began to take these things more seriously as well. We began to address poverty and slavery and addiction. We began to do something. We began to participate in the mission of Jesus. Hence, we became missional.

But here's my concern about missional. Not that it isn't great, but that it isn't enough. It can become so much about doing that it misses the importance of being. This is why I prefer (and certainly these can all become Bible buzzwords, but I think they can also be helpful terminology) incarnational to missional. I believe a person can be missional without being incarnational but cannot be incarnational without being missional. 

Incarnational means to be the body of Christ. As the church, we are called to be a part of Jesus, to be as he would be and to do as he would do. Here are a few reasons I prefer incarnational to missional:

1) Missional was often a response to churches that made the "believing" activities the main event. Worship and prayer and Bible study took precedent over service and healing. Unfortunately, I believe that missional can go the other extreme. We emphasize "doing" over "believing" so that we become all about service and healing and never take time to worship and pray and study. Being incarnational (being Jesus) means that we take time for prayer and worship as well as service and healing. We see all of these as connected to one another.

2) Missional often places action over belief in response to a tradition that placed belief over action. Again, this is an overcorrection. What we believe has everything to do with what we do and what we do reflects what we really believe. As the old hymn says, we are called to "trust and obey". They are not separate activities. They are one. Jesus' life reflected this and being Jesus means our life will reflect this as well.

3) Missional is too often something that you and I try and do alone. I can go and do and you can go and do and we don't need each other or God to go and do it. Incarnational doesn't allow for that possibility. I am not the body of Christ, I am a part of the body of Christ, just as you are a part of the body of Christ, with Christ as the head. The very act of being incarnational calls me into community with others as well as with God in Christ. 

This may seem like nitpicking over churchy words, but I think the differences are significant and are growing increasingly significant. We are in danger of becoming a bunch of individuals attempting to do what Jesus would do apart from Jesus himself. We are in danger of a newer, hipper works righteousness where the good we do still finds us at the center. We went from being a church that placed believing over doing to one that jumped the fence into doing over believing. It seems to me that we ought to consider being over both or, better said, the being that incapsulates both. Being incarnational calls us into relationship and reconciliation and mission. It calls us not to simply believe in who Jesus was or to do what Jesus would do, but to be who Jesus would be.