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p. 73, "Objectives of Incarnational Mission"

QuoteWe cannot just talk about the gospel from a safe distance outside a community.  Doing so ignores the issues of credibility, relevance, and language differences (with the subculturalization of Western society, don't for a minute think that different subcultures don't speak different dialects).  A missionary needs to relate to those with whom he or she is communicating.  Lobbing "gospel grenades" from a distance only brings resentment.  How can we listen and care from a distance?

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In a world where many non-Christians assume God hates them (presumably because they gain the impression that God's people hat them) it is important to make one of the goals of incarnational church planting to help people connect with the God who is seeking them and desiring their friendship.

Well said.

"His love of life was infectious. His form of holiness was not the alienating form so often associated with religious types. It was thoroughly redemptive. We have often pondered what kind of holiness was present in Jesus that ordinary people--broken, sinful, marginalized people--loved to hang around him. They didn't feel condemned by Him. Sadly, these same types don't ordinarily like to hang around church people today. What's the difference? Jesus was even accused by religious types of being a bit of a drunkard and a glutton and of fraternizing with all the wrong kinds of people. He was certainly not afraid of pleasure but oriented it toward God. His is an all of life religion, with no separation of the private and the public. He should be the church's hero, the one we all aspire to become like. Instead we have so emphasized his divinity over his humanity that Jesus seems otherworldly, nonhuman, inaccessible."

p. 107