The Life of an Ordinary Radical

Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to somebody for the first time about the incarnational urban ministry that my family lives out in the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The person asked lots of questions, as many people do, and I just really enjoyed the platform that God gave me to share about the amazing mission that God is up to in Homewood. The concept of incarnational ministry is so simple... Jesus came into the world 2,000 years ago and he modeled a perfect life. Jesus modeled the standard to which every human being should aspire to live. He lived out the ultimate lifestyle of presence. He didn't shout down from the clouds with a heavenly megaphone. He became like us. He entered into our context and our human experience. He became present. He was present with the powerful religous people of his day, and he had some harsh words for them so they wanted to kill him. He was present with nonreligous people all the time because they were the ones who needed the good news. He was present with adults, kids, sinners (all of us), rich people, poor people, powerful people, marginalized people, sick people, prostitutes, drunks, and just about everyone in between. People, people, people. Jesus' life was all about relationships with people because his mission involved ushering in the Kingdom of God for the sake of every single person who has ever lived. So, just as Jesus entered into other people's contexts and became the ultimate servant of others, then we should enter into other people's contexts and become the servants of all. That's the ultimate expression of what it means to follow Jesus during the short life that God gives us here. We love God and love others well.

Jesus is the one who inspired my family to live incarnationally in a world that is in desperate need of Christians who will love God and love others well. In our particular case, God called us to Homewood. It is a wonderful calling. It is an amazing, astounding, profound, joyful calling filled with so much purpose and meaning in our lives. God has given our family a huge gift in allowing us the opportunity to reach people in Homewood that most people in our city and in our world ignore. Over the past several years we've developed friendships with rich people, poor people, powerful people, and marginalized people. My wife, my daughters, and I have developed meaningful friendships with thieves, homeless people, prostitutes, addicts, convicted felons, drug dealers, graffiti artists, elderly residents who have lived in Homewood for over 50 years, single moms living on government assistance, dads struggling to make ends meet because of the lack of good paying jobs in my community, kids who sleep on the floor and only have one change of clothes, orphans, widows, and just about every other kind of person in between. This calling has not been a burden. It has been the great joy of my life to serve my neighbors.

People are curious about my family's calling to incarnational urban ministry because it is countercultural. As Christians, our lives should be countercultural. If our lives look exactly the same as everyone around us in the world, which they often do in the American church, then something is drastically wrong. Following Jesus should make us all radicals because Jesus was the ultimate radical. People killed him because he was such a radical. Our lifestyles as Christians in America should be radical, but instead most of us choose to conform to the world. And it is a choice. We don't just randomly end up separated from the people who need the love of Jesus. We make a choice not to interact with them. We makea choice not to go into poor neighborhoods and to avoid people who are different than us racially and socioeconomically. We make a choice to live in places where we have virtually no interaction with our neighbors. We make choices that keep us from loving others. We choose not to be incarnational in a world that desperately needs it, and so we choose not to be like Jesus. Isn't that the point of following Jesus in the first place? And I'm not saying that everyone's calling should be like mine in Homewood. God calls each of us to go into different places for different purposes that align with his mission to reach the lost in this world. What I am saying is that as Christians in America, if we're not careful, our lives won't look any different than anyone else in our culture. We won't be radicals, we won't be present with the people who need the love of Christ, and we run the risk of missing out on the purpose for which God has placed us on this planet. And we might miss out on the joy that comes with the downward mobility that Jesus modeled so well for us, instead choosing to somehow find joy and meaning in the smaller stories that the world tries to manufacture for us to live in. Yes, I'm a radical. But I'm just an ordinary radical. And that's how God made me.