Incarnational Mission

Another piece from Alan Hirsch's blog

Presence: The fact that God was in the Nazarene neighborhood for 30 years and no-one noticed should be profoundly disturbing to our normal ways of engaging mission. Not only does it have implication for our affirmation of normal human living, it says something about the timing as well as the relative anonymity of incarnational ways of engaging in mission. There is a time for ‘in-your-face’ approaches to mission, but there is also a time to simply become part of the very fabric of a community and to engage in the humanity of it all. Furthermore, the idea of presence highlights the role of relationships in mission. If relationship is the key means in the transfer of the Gospel, then it simply means we are going to have to be directly present to the people in our circle. Our very lives are our messages and we cannot take ourselves out of the equation of mission. But one of the profound implications of our presence as representatives of Jesus is that Jesus actually likes to hang out with the people we hang out with. They get the implied message that God actually likes them.