Incarnate Isn't Just a Buzzword

Over the last 24 years since I was ordained, millions of dollars and a ton of energy have been expended by churches and ministries on seminars…materials, worship & youth conferences, audio-visual equipment...all in a drive to keep the church up to date with this fast paced and changing society in which we live…to build all these things into our ministries, hoping to encourage growth. What has been the result?  Has the church in North America grown in proportion to population increase or declined?   It has clearly declined...and to such an extent, in many places, that it has not only become mostly irrelevant to the society around it, but will soon….if something drastic isn’t done, simply become extinct.

Is that because there isn’t need or a desire for spirituality anymore?  No! In fact, just opposite is true.  The statistics tell us that the society that we live in today is almost twice as spiritually conscious than the one in which most of us grew up.  But, even though…if you asked question, most young adults would admit to an interest in spirituality, they are not at all interested in our churches.  If that is the case, then it begs the question…what is the problem?    

A number of the authors that I am presently reading (Bob Logan, Neil Cole, Ed Stetzer, Alan Hirsch, Reggie McNeal etc) have said this in similar ways.  Simply put, we have been inviting people to church instead of introducing them to Jesus.  Church doesn’t change lives, Jesus does.  Instead of investing of ourselves in people, in the place where they live and work, where they laugh and play, where they struggle, hurt and cry…that is, instead of being incarnate and in their midst, we have been spending ourselves and the resources that God has given us on the structures that house and maintain the church.  We need to go where the least, lost and broken are and take Jesus with us....be Jesus to them, rather than building cathedrals and expecting them to come to us.

          I have had this sense of disquiet building in me for quite a while, at least the last three or four years….knowing that that something was drastically amiss…which is partially why we came to Squamish to start something new and (I thought) innovative.  However, if I am entirely honest about how we are pursuing this ministry, I can see that we are at least partially still stuck in the old paradigm.   I think that Hirsch, Cole and McNeal etc have got it right.  It is about people; it has to be about people, rather than buildings, equipment, organizations or church politics.  There is no life or restoration in those things...only bondage and death.  

The question is...how do those of us who were raised up and called out of that old paradigm, who have invested so much of our lives as ministers and pastors in the process of church, transition from the attractional model to one based on incarnation?  Pray for us, for if we can't find a way to do this, it may just be time to hang up the spurs...as it were!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Lt9hk9fiU