Incarnational Serving
John Hayes
I turn right onto Minnie
Street and ease up its corridor slowly, studying the pavement
on either side. I feel like I am in a canyon, and the
gathering darkness adds to the sensation. Two-story apartment
blocks flank the street on either side. Each is
horseshoe-shaped around a small courtyard. Some complexes are
gated, nearly all need paint and repair. The courtyards, once
planted with grass and trees, are paved now, and the sound of
kids running and yelling is collected and bounced back and
forth in shattering ricochets. About halfway up the street,
the sidewalks teem with people hanging out. I scan the Asian
and Latino faces instinctively. A few look back at me,
curious to see a white man in an obvious rent-a-car driving
slowly down a street you would have to be lost to find.
The street is a
billboard for urban blight. The buildings display no
discernible architectural extras to lend grace to the street,
to soften hard edges and create a sense of home. Each
apartment block is box-like, with cheap stucco peeling off in
folds. I start to recall my art history for suitable names to
describe the architectural style and settle on “urban
classical” and “inner-city functionalism.” But the impulse to
poke fun quickly fades. I am not visiting to conjure up small
ironies.
I am returning.
Near the end of Minnie Street, just before Wakeham, I turn
left into the alley and cruise the back parking lot. Wide as
soccer field and twice as long, the lot is filled with big,
old model cars. Some are “beached” and partially stripped.
But there are more cars in good condition, now, than there
were ten years ago. In the shadows on my left, a dealer
signals to me with his cigarette hand, the orange glow making
shooting star patterns in the dark. On my right, a prostitute
slinks between parked cars. Back walls are mosaics of
graffiti. Broken glass ground into the asphalt gleams like
stardust in my headlights.
I do a U-turn in the
parking lot and return to Minnie Street. When I get to #825,
I catch a glimpse of Apphai and start to pull over. But it is
not Apphai---he would be nearly twenty now. Suddenly the
images come fast and furious and my eyes cloud. In my mind’s
eye, I see Sakharini come running to meet me, his brother
close behind. Chit, Sith and Sophal practice slam-dunking on
an eight-foot, makeshift basket in the space between
buildings. Emotion rises within me and I know that if I don’t
move on, I will really start crying.
What makes Minnie Street
so poignantly different from any other inner city street?
More than just an address? It was my address. I lived
there seven years. It was on this street that I started
Innerchange. It was there that we first dreamed of
sending a team to Cambodia. In this neighborhood, I met
and fell in love with my wife. For all of us who lived there, Minnie St. acted as an
anvil to hammer faith, cudgel prayer life, and clarify that
intimacy with the Lord was a necessity. It was a street that
trusted us, forgave us our failures, and embraced us as its
own. If there are two blocks of street more beloved to me, I
cannot think of them.
Did we need to live
there to see Christ spark transformation in that neighborhood
and see well over a hundred come to Christ? Could a church
have been planted, youth and kids’ clubs founded, basketball
leagues started, and gang members reconciled had we not made
Minnie St. our homes? Could we not have just commuted to this
Santa Ana street and have avoided the personal cost, minimized
the danger?
Living
incarnationally among the poor,
that is, living with them and as much like them as is
practical for us, is controversial and nearly always has
been. On the one hand, those who have shared lives with the
needy, like Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day (Catholic Worker),
and Mother Teresa have been fiercely admired. In our
lifetimes we have seen Mother Teresa honored with many of the
world community’s highest awards. But incarnational workers
among the poor have also been ridiculed and even condemned as
unhealthy models who needlessly expose their lives and their
children’s lives to the dangerous conditions of the poor.
Back ten years ago when codependency was the disease du jour,
I heard a noted woman therapist remark in an interview,
“Mother Teresa has to be the most dysfunctional woman in the
world.” Similarly, Amy Carmichael, outstanding missionary to
India’s young temple prostitutes, was reprimanded on her first
tour of duty by her missionary peers for “going native.” From
her perspective, she was just living simply and appropriately
according to Asian culture. Privately, Amy lamented that her
peers, who clung to Western habits, had settled for so
inaccessible a Christianity. In her journal she recorded, “I
don’t wonder that apostolic miracles have died; apostolic
living certainly has.”
Ash and I, as well as
our wives have all
encountered this push-pull, split personality response from
mainstream believers. We have been told we are “real
Christians,” and have been lauded for our radical expression
of Christ’s presence among the poor. But some of our dearest
friends have also confided to us that they wonder if we are
not just a bit crazy. Or worse. Some have wondered if we
weren’t irresponsible. My wife and I are often closely
questioned for our decision to enroll Savannah in an inner
city school in a city that has the worst run public school
system in the state of California. Similarly, when Deanna and
I were contemplating a move to Cambodia with our infant
daughter one of my friends exploded, “That has to be sin! It
can’t be right to take a baby to a country as poor as
Cambodia.”
Is incarnational
ministry worth the risk? Is it worth the price? I have often
asked myself that question when the rigors of living in a poor
neighborhood appear to mount, and the returns seem far away.
Father Damien: Inspiring us on
I have asked myself, “Is
there an easier way to reach the poor? Can’t we see
those facing poverty come to Christ without getting so
involved?” Learning language and culture, making
enduring friendships, opening our homes, empowering local
leaders and seeing churches planted---all these activities
demand much personal investment. Then I read the story
of Father Damien and reconnected with compassion in its true
meaning of “suffering alongside.”
In the late 19th
century, this Belgian priest of the Order of the Sacred Heart
sensed a call to go to the poor. His passion took him to
exiled lepers on a remote Hawaiian leper colony.
At first, Father Damien
simply visited the colony by boat (It was separated from the
rest of society by a huge cliff face.) He went from house to
house, taking food and medicines, then returned to the broader
society. Even these visits were a huge risk. Hawaiians
dreaded leprosy as a potential plague that might wipe out
their population altogether as similar epidemics had cut down
other indigenous peoples.
Yet Father Damien did
not stop at service provision. In time, he set up his home in
the leper colony, eating with them, sharing his life with them
and ultimately, finding himself rejected as they were
rejected. One day, in the chapel he helped build there, he
opened his sermon, “We lepers…” Soon after, the Belgian
priest contracted leprosy, himself. Rather than return to
Europe and seek a cure, he remained in the colony because
“none of the other lepers had that choice.” In the end,
Father Damien died a leper, on that isolated island.
Father Damien’s model is
very much patterned after Christ’s. Like Jesus, who
became one of us and gave up his life to save us, Father
Damien so identified with the lepers he loved that he put
himself in a position to lose his life on their account.
He has been an inspiration to us to stay the course, to resist the
temptation to find shortcuts in sharing Christ’s compassion.
Incarnational Ministry in Four Dimensions
“The
people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they
oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying
them justice. I looked for a man among them who would build
up the wall and stand before Me in the gap on behalf of
the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no
one.” (Ezekiel 22:29-30)
Living in poor communities, many of our members have been
threatened, knocked down, and “shaken down” by confused
police. We have seen our cars vandalized, homes robbed, and
been held up at gunpoint. A few of us have encountered sexual
advances, stumbled into gun battles, and stopped gang fights.
And I haven’t even mentioned experiencing all manner of
disease because of poor hygiene and close living. Some of us,
compelled like Ezekiel to be ones who would “stand in the gap”
on behalf of poor communities, have found ourselves to be,
repeatedly, standing in the crossfire. If we are to
persevere and fulfill our callings, we need to know and
believe in the great strength of the incarnational model.
Incarnational ministry among the poor works powerfully on four
levels, or in four “dimensions.” First, incarnational
ministry has great value as Christ’s model. But it is
also profitable as a method, a message, and a
spiritual discipline.
Furthermore, when we appreciate all four dimensions together,
we can better sustain a vital simple lifestyle among the
poor for the long term. Without that four-sided balance,
fervor for simple living among the poor can erode and our work
can deteriorate into a mechanical and wearisome exercise.
A) Incarnational
Ministry as Christ’s Model of Choice
In perhaps the
supreme descriptive statement of the Incarnation, John
declares in his gospel: “And the Word became flesh and made
His dwelling among us.” (John 1:1) Further, John tells us
that we are sent out in the same way that Jesus, Himself, was
sent. (John 17:18) As Christ became Emanuel, “God with us,”
so we believe we are led to become poor among the poor in
imitation of Christ.
The Apostle
Paul gives us yet another articulation of Christ’s
incarnation. “Your attitude should be the same as that of
Christ Jesus: who being in very nature God, did not consider
equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself
nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in
human likeness,” (Philippians 2:5-7). Again, in a letter to
the Corinthians, Paul wrote: “…though He was rich, yet for
your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might
become rich.” Adopting a simple lifestyle among the poor
helps to give tangible expression to Paul’s instruction
to self-empty as Christ did.
Historically,
following Christ’s incarnational model in its upside-down
distinctives has been foundational for generations of
disciples who have endeavored to recover and retain the fresh
witness and power of the early Church. Inspired by a vision of
the “apostolic life,” it became a matter of principle for
Francis of Assisi and other pioneers of reform to renounce
worldly possessions and “follow naked the naked Christ” as
a point of departure for ministry. In fact, nearly every
reform or period of revitalization we’ve studied was marked at
least in part by a profound conviction to simplify lifestyle.
Like St. Francis and many others whose faith we are inspired
to imitate, we choose to live simply among the poor not only
because it helps bind us to them, but because it helps bind us
to our Savior and His upside-down Kingdom.
B) Incarnational
Ministry as a Method
“But does Christ’s model work today?” With so much on
the line, I believe we are entitled to ask this question.
We have discovered that living among the poor is also a very
practical way of reaching them with the good news. The
dictum, “we must earn the right to be heard,” is simply
another way of recognizing that insiders do better than
outsiders in communicating good news among a host culture.
Being immersed in a poor community accelerates language
and culture learning, helps persuade our neighbors we are “for
real,” and positions us near the heartbeat of poor communities
in order to identify felt needs. Deep relationships are made
more quickly living incarnationally, and we are less likely to
be waved away by our poor neighbors with, “You don’t know how
we feel.”
Perhaps the most striking confirmation for us that incarnation
works is in the depth and number of our relationships in poor
neighborhoods. There is NO ministry without relationships.
Time and again, we have been approached by agencies, both
public and private, to sponsor them into our networks of
relationships. Often, these organizations have helpful ideas
and well-intentioned action plans to create jobs, rebuild
homes, or tutor children, and invariably they are much better
resourced than we are. But they don’t know poor people and
don’t know how to get to know them or how to build trust.
Typically in the neighborhoods we
work in, we have more relationships than we can even manage
well. These come not because we are so skillful at making
them, though we do work diligently at that. The relationships
come because, in living there, we are knitted into the fabric
of the community.
Incarnational ministry as a method is perhaps best articulated
biblically by the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 9:20-23 when
he outlines the process of becoming a Jew to the Jews, weak to
the weak, that “by all means” he “might save
some.” In the same way, we strive to contextualize the Gospel
after Paul’s example such that, we too, can unite with him in
saying: “ I have become all things to all people.”
C) Incarnational
Ministry as a Message
In John 3, God tells us that He so loved the world He sent His
Son. Furthermore, Paul tells us that God “…did not spare His
own Son, but delivered Him up for us all…” (Romans 8:32).
Incarnational ministry sends a message to the host culture
that love is real and that it can be costly. The
message of love that can be inferred when we incarnate to a
neighborhood is especially important for those we minister
among, the last and the least. Poor people can see that if
love is costly, then they, as the target, are worth much.
This redemptive message is incredibly important to the poor
who so typically suffer the world’s low self-esteem and build
up enormous emotional scar tissue from being at the bottom.
Time and again our neighbors have told us that they are
certain God must love them because we have come from “so
far.” Others have told us that we are the first Christians
they have met that “seemed real,” “made sense,” or treated
them as peers. Our proximity through incarnation can inspire
this kind of appreciation and trigger a sense of empowerment.
As dearly as we yearn to see our adopted communities
transformed physically and work to that end, we know
from our Bibles and our experience that despite all efforts,
“the poor will always be with us.” All the more important,
then, to see that the poor experience the biblical dignity of
Christ sending Himself lovingly through His people. G. K.
Chesterton writes: “No plans or proposals or efficient
rearrangements will give back to a broken man his self respect
and sense of speaking with an equal. One gesture will do
it.”
Moving in among the poor sends a message of love - it can also
send a message of healing. Living in poor communities
However, in choosing to move in with the poor, we more than
help raise self-esteem. We validate hope by showing our
neighbors we entrust to ourselves the same upside-down gospel
we proclaim. In living as poor among the poor, we express
with our lives that we believe in God when He declares
that those of “humble circumstance” may “glory in their high
position” (James 1:9), and that in His economy, He raises the
needy “to sit with nobles and inherit a seat of honor.” (I
Samuel 2:8) I cannot emphasize this enough. The message we
send to the poor when we do not relocate among them is
that their environments are too toxic for good Christians to
live in, despite what the Bible says about the blessedness of
the poor. This adds to the emotional scar tissue they carry
and can lead them to conclude that the state of their poverty
is of graver significance than the state of their souls. On
Minnie Street, my immediate neighbors remained next door to
Deanna and me long after they had generated enough money to
move out of the neighborhood. In part, they wanted to stay
close to us. But more than that, they had begun to see Minnie
Street through our eyes as a special place. Many of our
friends who did move out continue to look back wistfully on
Minnie St. to this day.
In a different
vein, incarnation acts as a message of grace to the mission
workers themselves, specifically, that it is OK to be human. I
don’t know any communities that are as observant as poor
communities are. In the suburbs, where people are often
tucked away behind alarm systems or guard dogs and blanketed
with 60+ hour work weeks, it is possible for neighbors not to
know one another for years. Not so in most poor communities.
People hang out. They see one another. And what they don’t
see, they hear through the walls, folks are typically so
jammed together. So it is impossible to hide from their eyes,
impossible to quick-change from Clark Kent to Superman to
gratify our spiritual egos every time we go out the door “to
do ministry.” Curiously, when we allow people to see we are
human, our Christianity appears less remote and therefore more
accessible, more viable for them. They begin to see it
doesn’t take a saint to live a Christian life.
Additionally, in living among the poor, we lower the
“bulletproof shield” that separates the professional service
provider from the poor and open ourselves to good news from
the poor. I cannot count the number of times my
neighbors came to my rescue---many of them quite humorous.
Within a few months of moving onto Minnie St., I had a crisis
with my plumbing. Now, as a thirty-year-old single man, I
kept some odd hours. Unlike my Cambodian neighbors who
continued to follow a rice farmer’s rhythm, getting up with
the sun and retiring soon after it set, I often would stay up
late. One night I came home after midnight. How late
is nobody’s business but my own, thank you. I went through
the usual routine---hit the fridge for the milk, pulled down a
box of cereal, grabbed a large mug, leaned against the sink
and ate. I always ended this ritual by washing the mug and
spoon. Just as I reached for the hot water handle, I
remembered that early in the morning a strange vibration in
the fixture had shivered my arm and made a sound like waves
breaking far away. Too late. I had already given the handle
a fierce crank. The faucet in the center blew off. Water
shot straight up like a geyser. I fumbled in the sink for the
fixture and tried to fit it back on. I could not remember
having that kind of water pressure when I needed it. Now it
jetted out and bounced off the ceiling. In no time, water
pooled around my feet and reached for the carpet in the front
room.
I must have stood there
ten or fifteen minutes, holding the faucet in place before it
dawned on me I could not hold that position all night. I
tried to fight down rising panic, then succumbed to it,
dashing outside. I pounded on the door of the next apartment,
yelling lustily for my neighbors. Suth Chai and Thong Dam, my
Laotian “parents” came to the door, rubbing sleep out of their
eyes. I pulled them into my apartment and pointed to the
out-of-control fountain. Suth Chai, like all my Asian
neighbors was unusually creative in fixing the unfixable. But
this time, he looked at me in disbelief, opened the cabinet
below the sink, and simply switched the water off at the main
valve. He glanced up at me with a tentative smile, as if to
say, “good Lord, you sure are dumb for an American.” In a
flash, I saw just how ridiculous I must have looked, standing
there in my wet boxer shorts, incompetent to solve so small a
crisis. Suth Chai and Thong Dam were likewise, dripping wet in
their little briefs. Suddenly, I realized it was like a wet
T-shirt contest. Out of modesty, none of us looked below the
neck. Then we all burst out laughing. We laughed till we
fell on the wet floor, howling.
Incarnational
ministry so levels the ground between the hurt one and the
“healer” that often, the hurts in the healer are likewise,
revealed. Years of ministry can leave us wounded by the side
of the road, and it is exceptionally good news for us when
Christ, through our neighbors or teammates, gets “down off His
donkey” to attend to us.
D) Incarnational
Ministry as a Spiritual Discipline
For centuries, believers have committed themselves to poverty
for seasons or even for their whole lives as a means of
spiritual gain. Jesus’ admonition to the rich young ruler,
“If you want to be perfect, go and sell your possessions and
give to the poor” (Matthew 19:21), is one of the passages most
often cited as encouragement to live a life of “loss” for
gain. But perhaps more appropriate for us in our mission
settings is Christ’s commissioning of the seventy in Luke 10:
“ I send you out as lambs among wolves. Carry no purse, no
bag, and greet no one on the way.” Here the impulse to strip
our lives is less spiritual perfection and more a kindling of
dependence upon God as foundation to the missionary journey.
The point for us is that living simply among the poor acts as
a spiritual discipline for our development. It helps wean
us away from self-reliance to God-reliance.
Moving in geographically to embrace the poor and share our
lives with them introduces a second spiritual discipline. We
are committed to the fast of doing justice and mercy
among the poor, not merely as a missional act, but as a
devotional act as well. Isaiah 58 instructs us:
“Is not
this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loosen the
chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and
break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide
the poor wanderer
with shelter---when you see the naked to cover him…?”
If we but recognize it, sharing our lives with the poor
operates as a spiritual fast. It is a discipline for our
personal growth--- not in renouncing the world in arid
asceticism, but in joining with Jesus to embrace the ‘world’s
feet’ and to wash them. We remind ourselves that even as we
are poured out for the gospel, the Lord’s intent is to
“perfect us until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:5-6).
The Four Dimensions
Operating in Creative Tension
· As Christ’s model, incarnational ministry affords us
spiritual leverage in that it puts us squarely on the path
of our Lord as “God with us.”
· As
a method, it gives us relational leverage,
helping us become cultural insiders and careful, humble
learners.
· Incarnational
ministry as a message offers inspirational
leverage in recalling us to the higher vision of God’s
love for the world and in restoring dignity to the poor. As a
communication of God’s love, we are lifted above the prose of
principle and process to the poetry of purposeful
relationship.
· Finally,
as a spiritual discipline, incarnational
ministry among the poor enhances our personal growth in
advancing godly dependence and “dethroning” possessions, which
distract from closer intimacy with the Lord.
When we lose sight of these dimensions operating together, we
fail to experience the synergy that confirms the whole as
greater than the sum of the parts. We risk falling into grave
distortions and superficial applications that create
unnecessary tensions within teams and misunderstandings with
host cultures. For example, incarnational ministry too
rigorously applied as the model can plunge us
into self-righteousness. We can become
dogmatic; insisting incarnational ministry is the best or even
the only way. It can direct us toward a rigid
implementation of incarnation on our terms that cuts us
off from dialog with the host community.
On the other hand, overemphasis on incarnation as a method
can lead to utilitarianism and a spiritually dry
professionalism. Without appreciating the other
three dimensions, the incarnational approach becomes little
more than careful contextualization, an exercise in social
science to be pursued only to the extent that it “works.”
We fear that Christian workers who validate incarnational
ministry primarily as a “pragmatic vehicle to reach the
target,” will abandon or downscale the effort as soon as their
poor neighbors resist them in an upside-down missionary role.
(Often times, especially among patron/client societies, some
needy neighbors will ridicule our simple, incarnational
lifestyle as unnecessary, even foolish or miserly, preferring
instead to see us live up to our means in order to fulfill our
“role” as benefactors.)
Employed excessively or exclusively as a message,
incarnational ministry can make us vulnerable to the “Messiah
complex”, an over identification with ourselves as
Christ. An over prioritization on message can also
place the incarnational venture hostage to our neighbor’s
quick affirmation of our “sacrifice.” Christ’s crucifixion
demonstrates that even over the long term, there can be
under-appreciation of incarnation as a communication of love.
Finally, an over-preoccupation with incarnational ministry as
a spiritual discipline can plunge us into
self-absorption and false humility,
and ultimately steer us away from the essential selflessness
of mission. We are especially mindful that “Lady
Poverty” as a means of perfection holds little immediate
appeal to those for whom there is no exit clause. So
we must be careful how we share this dimension among the poor.
BOTTOM LINE:
To undervalue one or more of the four dimensions of
incarnational ministry is to threaten sustainability, pressure
team life needlessly, and to risk long-term relationships and
accomplishments.
