pat loughery

I was commenting here on an entry in Rachelle’s blog today, and figured I’d just reproduce the question here.

When we talk about the church being missional and incarnational, what’s the difference?

In summary, I understand that the idea of missional community is that we’re a people who are sent into the world as part of God’s mission, and the results of this approach are that we focus more on service and relationship than on inviting people to church meetings, or throwing tent revivals or whatever. So far so good.

I understand less the idea of being an incarnational community. Thinking through the term, I suspect that it means that we are to be the people of God who once weren’t a people, the body of Christ, Jesus with skin on.

But I must be missing something in those definitions, because in the blogosphere the two terms are treated quite distinctly from each other.

Help – what’s the difference? Or do you have a better understanding of incarnational community than my summary above?