Incarnating the Gospel by Becoming a 150% Person

[Jaylen]

I love the concept of becoming a 150% person. Of course this is just a symbolic term to display the idea of making an extra effort to be 100% yourself and 50% more like Jesus, or perhaps even 50% more like a person who is willing to make a change to be like a group of people.
I also like thinking about it like be 100% yourself, 50% you and 50% Christ. This way you could describe it as deny’ing parts of yourself and your sinful nature for the sake of being as close to 100% CHristlike as possible.
Either analogy works, the concept remains the same; we need to make extreme efforts to be as Christlike, or, as much like the people we are ministering to as we need to be. It is our duty to lay ourselves down (our worldviews, our cultures gospel, our selfish desires, even our selfless desires) for the sake of loving someone. Jesus gave His life in so many different interpretations of the phrase, and we should also give our lives to the extent that we let go of who we want to be, and become who we need to be.

[Emma Hodges]

While reading part of this book, I felt quite challenged. I felt challenged in this quote: “Our goal should be to become more than we are, submitting to Jesus our Lord, and to the people and culture(s) to which he sends us for ministry.” (pg. 30). The reality is that in my own power, I will not be effective in cross cultural ministry. If I go in with my own ideas and do not take the posture of a learner, I will fail. If I go in and try to learn by myself without relying on God’s power, I will fail. This book helped me to see the importance of full reliance on Christ. I also liked how the process of integrating into cross cultural ministry was also paralleled with the idea of becoming like a child. Children are open to learning and come in with no base knowledge, but they mimic what those around them are doing and follow the insight and information relayed to them by others. I need to take on the learning posture of a child as I head into my missions journey.

[Taliya]

Jesus was 100% God and 100% man, therefore being a 200% person by fully realizing both natures. Us as humans can strive to be 150% people when living within a different culture. 100% comes from us being who we are, and 50% comes from us humbly adapting to and striving to learn and understand the new culture we are living in. There is a lot of culture that is beneath the surface (such as the values behind certain traditions and cultural norms) that are more difficult to fully adopt. It is unlikely to ever fully 100% adapt to a new culture but in our efforts of doing as much as we can, we can become 150% people!