Being real

I like the mission statement of Reality Ministries: Helping adolescents live into the loving presence and life-changing reality of Jesus Christ. I think they do a wonderful job of ministering out of a Trinitarian, incarnational vision. For them, it's about "being real."

At issue here is understanding two competing "realities" that we might refer to as God's reality and fallen-human reality.

God's reality is the truth of who God is (as Trinity) and who humanity is because God (in the person of the Son of God) has united humanity to himself. Through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, all humanity has been reconciled to God. In Christ, humanity is re-born - given a new reality.

Fallen-human reality is what most humans see and live by. Though God has reconciled them to himself, they do not "see it." They continue to believe and thus live in unreality. This has devastating consequences.

What Reality Ministries seeks to do (and I believe this is God's call to all Christians), is to help people know and to live into God's reality.

It begins with helping people understand and embrace the reality that they are God's dearly loved children - God wants them, loves them, accepts them, and has included them in his life in union with Jesus. Christians help people understand this by declaring in actions and words the "good news" (gospel) of who Jesus Christ really is, and thus who they really are.

Having understood and embraced who they are, Christian ministry helps them "live into" God's reality, progressively ceasing to live into fallen-human reality. This change in behavior is thus grounded in changed belief - the transformation (renewal) of their mind as it is conformed to the reality that is found in Jesus Christ (God's reality).

Our life and ministry is about "being real."