Inciting Incidents – Catalyst or Crutch?

The term “inciting incident” is a literary term used to describe the event, point of conflict, or problem in a story or play that sets the stage for the rest the story to unfold upon.

In my post yesterday I talked about a campus-wide inciting incident that our campus experienced that is serving to transform the lives of many of our students — while helping to meet significant needs both locally and globally (you can read about it here: Students, Money & God… A Transformational Mix).  Hearing students report back about their 21-day experience has been both encouraging and inspiring.

All of the time, energy and effort of countless volunteers, the donation of one very generous donor, and the  prayerful efforts of over 900 students will have all been worth it (in my mind) if even for just one life that was transformed — changed forever!  And based on what I’ve been hearing, there are numerous students experiencing life transformation as a result of this experience!

I love it!!

But if I’m honest, I’ve also found myself wondering about a few things:

  • How many inciting incidents do we need to facilitate a year (or semester) in order to really assist our students?  Is this a sustainable and/or appropriate approach to ministry, spiritual formation, etc.?
  • How can we effectively move students (who tend to live from inciting incident to inciting incident – mountain top experience to mountain top experience) into more meaningful forms of discipleship and spiritual formation?
  • In choosing to provide ‘inciting incidents’ (as opposed to waiting for those that will naturally happen on our campus) are we trying to force something — are we getting out ahead of what God is doing in our midst?
  • Is there a healthy balance — a good mix of ‘inciting incidents’ and plain jane discipleship — that we need to try and find for the sake of helping our students move forward in their faith journey?

I find myself recalling the stories of Jesus’ miracles — and how they did serve as ‘inciting incidents’ for many (but not all) of those who were directly involved (physical healing, etc.), as well as those who were witness to those events.

But then I also read where Jesus resists some of the requests for such ‘signs’, suggesting that it won’t really make a difference… and that ‘this generation’ seems to require so much in order to have faith.

I know I want to do whatever I can, working within the leadership of God’s Spirit, to assist students along in their journey of faith.  At the same time, however, I know I don’t want to be a ‘spiritual crutch’ to our students in a culture of Christian consumerism…

So I circle back to the questions above…

And at this point, I don’t really have any conclusions… mainly just questions.

I’m curious to know your thoughts on this… and what this might look like in your ministry context.

2 thoughts on “Inciting Incidents – Catalyst or Crutch?

  1. I like the challenges this post poses to us….it reminded me of a discussion about a term called liminality in a book I use as a text called The Forgotten Ways…basically it describes a journey to “unknown” places…a mission that causes disorientation and marginalization(from the “normal” status quo)…a mission where they encounter God and each other in a new way….seems synonomous to an “inciting incident” in a way….loved hearing the stories and results of this…I have heard of similar but not so much on a large scale like that….

  2. Tim Elmore has some great stuff on Event + Process – it might be in the Orange Lifeway book, but I do know he’s been talking about it for a long time. I appreciate his both-and approach, especially because it seems to be true: Event w/o follow-up discipleship process is fairly worthless, but events can certainly jump-start in a special way.

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