Abstract
This article sets out to describe the development of and engagement with a global training collaborative around the formation of urban ministry leadership committed to the act of loving cities and working for peace. The collaborative is an initiative of Street Psalms called the Urban Training Collaborative and each urban training hub has agreed to be shaped and formed by an Incarnational Training Framework (ITF). The ITF was constructed over a 20-year period in the midst of a global missional community made up of leaders from cities all over the world. The ITF is infused by an incarnational theology as interpreted from below and focused on the message, method and manner as exemplified in the life and mission of Jesus Christ such that messengers are free of fear and unleashed to love their cities and seek their peace. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ animates faith-based engagement around the complex issues of poverty, injustice, social inequity and violence, and shifts paradigms from scarcity to abundance, theory to practice and rivalry to peacemaking. To shed light on the practical outworking of an incarnational theology from below, we will critically reflect on Guatemala City as a case study to illustrate how the formation of a city-wide missional community was developed through engagement around the aforementioned ITF which led to the corresponding paradigm shifts and then subsequently seeding a global training collaborative
Highlights
Jesus of Nazareth enters neighbourhoods and animates the Kingdom of God by an embodied message, method and manner of mission
Practical outworking of the Incarnational Training Framework: Urban Peacemaker Fellowship
After several years of encouraging grass roots theological development and leadership formation in cities throughout the global Urban Training Collaborative (UTC), we began to wonder how we might co-create an initiative that remained incarnationally faithful to the unique context of each city while at the same time engaging together in a formation process in a unified manner
Summary
Jesus of Nazareth enters neighbourhoods and animates the Kingdom of God by an embodied message, method and manner of mission. With all eyes on Jesus, the incoming Kingdom of God was made visible as well as available for people to ponder and even receive as a gift (Nolan 1992:100; van Eck 2013). New Testament scholar Van Eck (2013:12) interprets the parable of the Feast and identifies Jesus as the boundless host who gives ‘to those who cannot give back, breaking down physical (walls) and manmade boundaries (purity and pollution) and treating everybody as family (generalised reciprocity), without being afraid of being shamed’. Jesus took compassion to the fringes of society, to the poor and religiously unclean, all the while nurturing into existence a new and vibrant missional community of disciples and friends. Jesus restored and redefined relationships in the first century and continues to do so today
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