One cannot read far into the literature on youth ministry, cross-cultural ministry, or the missional church without seeing references to “incarnational ministry.” Dozens of books, websites, and ministries have adopted incarnational ministry as their basic model for ministry: just as the Word became flesh in Jesus Christ, we should take on a second culture as our own, becoming “incarnate” in that culture.
While there have been occasional short articles expressing concern about some aspects of incarnational ministry, there has not been a survey of how the model is used, a critique, and then a constructive alternative that addresses the very real ministry needs that an incarnational ministry paradigm seeks to address. That is exactly what J. Todd Billings does in Union with Christ: Reframing Theology and Ministry for the Church (Baker Academic, November 2011). While the book explores a range of theological and ecclesial issues related to union with Christ, a substantial section of the book gives a critique of incarnational ministry and an alternative in terms of union with Christ. Billings presented some of his earlier thoughts on incarnational ministry in “Incarnational Ministry and the Unique, Incarnate Christ,” which appeared in the March/April 2009 issue of Modern Reformation. Here he answers some questions about “incarnational ministry” in light of his earlier article and forthcoming book.
What is your basic argument about incarnational ministry?
Here is my basic thesis about incarnational ministry from the book itself:
While certain aspects of “incarnational ministry” are commendable, this chapter critiques its basic assumption: that the incarnation is a model for ministry, such that Christians should imitate the act of the eternal Word becoming incarnate. To the contrary, at the center of the Christian gospel is a claim that the incarnation of the Word in the person of Jesus Christ is a unique and unrepeatable event. As such, the incarnation is not an “ongoing process” to be repeated or a “model” to be copied in Christian ministry. Instead, the incarnation should set our focus directly upon Jesus Christ, the servant, to whom Christians have been united. Moreover, the ministry outcomes sought by “incarnational ministry” can be realized and refined through seeing that the imperative to have “the same mind” as “Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5) fits within Paul’s matrix of union with Christ. As ones united to Christ, we participate in the Spirit’s ongoing work of bearing witness to Christ and creating a new humanity in which the dividing walls between cultures are overcome in Christ. Thus, today’s church should replace its talk of “incarnational ministry” with the more biblically faithful and theologically dynamic language of ministry as participation in Christ.
What is incarnational ministry?
There are a variety of ideas connected to incarnational ministry’many of them can stand on their own as insightful and helpful from biblical, theological, and ministry standpoints. But core to the idea of incarnational ministry is that the act of God becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ provides a “model” for ministry, such that Christians should have their own “incarnation” into another culture in order to reach those in the other culture.
Why is incarnational ministry advocated?
It is seen as a solution to theologies of ministry that were culturally insensitive and ineffective because Christians refused to cross cultural boundaries in self-sacrificial ways. Thus incarnational ministry is a common model in cross-cultural ministry circles, youth ministry circles, and other contexts where culture-crossing is advocated. Whether or not one agrees with a theology of incarnational ministry, it certainly addresses a real problem faced in ministry: how to move beyond cultural isolation and insensitivity when ministering cross-culturally.
What biblical support is given for incarnational ministry?
The most common biblical source given is in Philippians 2:5-11, what many scholars consider to be an early hymn about Christ. Here are the verses most often quoted in defense of incarnational ministry:
Let the same mind be in you that was
[or that you have] in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death’
even death on a cross.
What sets apart advocates of incarnational ministry is their interpretation of verse 7, which they believe to be an imperative to imitate the action of the pre-incarnate Christ emptying himself (kenosis) and taking on human likeness.
What is the problem with the biblical and theological case?
A large majority of biblical scholars give an account of Philippians 2:5-11 that is incompatible with the reading of the passage given by advocates of incarnational ministry. Specifically, they do not think the passage suggests that the act of becoming incarnate is something to be imitated (Phil. 2:6-7), just as they do not think the passage suggests that Christians should seek to imitate Jesus’ exaltation as Lord. Tellingly, advocates of incarnational ministry almost never consider the Christ hymn as a whole (2:5-11), for after verse 8 above come the following verses (2:9-11):
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
If the whole hymn is to imitate, including the act of becoming incarnate, why not the act of being exalted as well? This points to a serious problem in the “incarnational” rendering of this passage: the act of becoming incarnate is a uniquely divine act; it is not a human act that can be imitated by other human beings. Likewise, the act of being exalted and confessed to be Lord is a unique act’uniquely appropriate to Jesus Christ, the one who is both fully God and fully human.
Biblical scholars generally emphasize that this passage gives a doxological summation of the mighty saving acts of God in the incarnation, life, death, and exaltation of Jesus Christ. Christians are to be conformed to Christ’s humble, obedient service to God by the Spirit, as they live into their identity in Christ. But neither in Philippians, nor in any other place in the New Testament, are Christians called to imitate (as a model) the unique act of God becoming incarnate in Christ.
What is an alternative to incarnational ministry?
In my forthcoming book Union with Christ, I outline an alternative that shows how a theology of union with Christ can retain the genuine strengths of incarnational ministry and correct its shortcomings. My alternative points to several different dimensions of a biblical theology of ministry in union with Christ as follows.
Union with Christ underlies Paul’s missiological account of crossing cultural barriers in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23: “I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some” (9:22b). Rather than imitating the act of becoming incarnate, Paul sees this vulnerable act of culture-crossing as an expression of the life of one united to Jesus Christ, the humble servant.
The horizontal implication of union with Christ is that people of all tribes and nations are adopted as God’s children in Christ; in this, the Spirit is creating a “new humanity” that overcomes the walls of hostility between cultures and people groups (Eph. 2:13-18; Gal. 3:26-29); this “new humanity” finds oneness in Christ, but not in cultural homogeneity. Thus in order to participate in the Spirit’s work in creating a culturally diverse new humanity, Christians must be learners of other cultures and respectful of cultural difference as they bear witness to Christ in cross-cultural contexts.
Christians are sent into the world to bear witness to Christ, participating in the Spirit’s work of creating a new humanity. But they are also to participate in the gathering of a community from many cultures to “have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph. 2:18); this community is gathered to worship, anticipating the vision in Revelation of “saints from every tribe and language and people and nation” worshipping the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ (Rev. 5:6-10).
Ultimately, a theology of ministry in union with Christ is one that witnesses to Jesus Christ. Our lives are not the good news; our effort at cultural identification is not the good news. We have been united to Christ, but we are not Christ. Rather, we bear witness in word and deed to Jesus Christ, the one who is good news!
