Wes White and I helped run a TREK theological conversation with a group of leaders, pastors and students in various stages of emergence in Portland, Oregon, from 11th to 13th November, 2007. The theme for the conversation was: How and in what way is the church prophetic? Along with that, what is the prophetic ministry today and how is it done? These are some of the ten papers that were presented and discussed.
By Dan Steigerwald
The church is arguably “prophetic” in a number of ways. It calls itself, its own House, back to faithfulness to God and being a fairer demonstration in the world of His Kingdom of righteousness, peace (shalom) and joy in the Spirit (Romans 14:17). This suggests more than the call to mimic certain behaviors of Jesus or Paul or others, but the call to live out of the fullness found in God and the Body of Christ as participants in the missio Dei (God’s mission to the world). In another sense the church is prophetic; it calls all people and human systems and organizations into harmony with God’s now and not-yet Kingdom (acting as a sign and a foretaste of the coming Kingdom which has broken into this “present evil age”, as Paul labels it, and will one day be experienced in fullness). These two ways of being prophetic are of course directly linked to one another, with the first call to the church itself being of foundational importance to the church’s effectiveness in carrying out the second (to the world). And because the church is made up of imperfect people (like myself) who only see in a mirror dimly, it will continually tend to stray or capitulate to ways of being and operating that reflect the entrapments of its host culture – not to mention sin within its own ranks. Much of time these entrapments and/or sin will not be clearly seen (the proverbial fish who cannot see the water in which it swims); but some are adopted perpetrated knowingly by church leadership. Hence, the prophetic call to return will need to be regularly heard and embraced (in the latter case, repentance too). To the extent that this happens, the church’s prophetic witness to culture will be strengthened.
In this brief paper, I want to focus on the call of the church to put its own house in order. I have chosen to use a recent book by David Fitch, The Great Giveaway, as a way to illustrate this specific operation of the prophetic (the church unto itself). In his book, Fitch, with prophetic fervor, identifies eight specific ways he believes Evangelicalism has capitulated to Modernism and drifted from its multi-faceted, God-given mission in the world. What I like most about the book is that Fitch does not simply use the book to rail against the church for its many ills, but actually suggests a host of useful correctives “to help us receive back being the church”.[1]
In The Great Giveaway, Fitch argues that the Evangelical Church is guilty of accommodating various destructive “Modern maladies,” so much so that it has literally given away many of the functions (notae) that have historically qualified it to wear the title of “the Church.” Fitch relates this give-away as eight specific handoffs by Evangelicalism (devoting a chapter to each) “to modernity’s experts, techniques and sociocultural forces.”[2] I briefly touch upon these below, also offering Fitch’s suggested corrective to each alleged capitulation (with my own occasional commentary too, including some closing thoughts).
1. The way we define success. The invasion of church growth approaches has got the church focusing on the wrong measures of success – church attendance and decisions for Christ. Evangelicalism has seriously diminished the quality of disciples in its ranks by giving undue attention to numerical growth, efficiency structuring and effectiveness decision-making. Megachurches have gone even a step further and adopted an “economies of scale” approach, insuring that the church is able to deliver the best quality religious goods and services that its best hi-performance teams can deliver to the most people. With effectiveness as the bottom line, and with a focus on business technique, numbers and Sunday morning productions to attract and hold the attention of attendees, the church succeeds in reinforcing the cultural idols of consumerism and individualism. I would add that the way we conduct our Sunday gatherings (with the stage as a focal point and a small group of staff and church members creatively designing a quality experience week after week) and the energy required to pull them off also reinforces this consumerism. It is hard for attendees to avoid getting the message that “we are spectators gathered to take in a quality religious experience provided by those who are paid to do ministry” (as opposed to those paid to equip for ministry). Remedy: According to Fitch, we need to return to faithfulness to what it means to be the church as our measure of success. Are we creating growing, faithful communal followers of Jesus? He suggests that churches adopt better measures: the number of baptisms, church-plants and quality of discipleship taking place (the latter measured by answers received from a core of communal questions getting at the outworking of love of God and serving one another). At the risk of sounding trite, I would also say that churches must hold resolutely to faithfulness to Christ as their criteria for success – are they responding to Jesus’ leading, as best they can discern that, in the context He has placed them?
2. The way we do evangelism and present the gospel. The focus of the church too often is on proclaiming content in a monologue, rather than embodying the gospel in a lifestyle that validates the superiority of God’s Meta-narrative. Persuading individuals to finally surrender to our superior arguments and reasons-to-believe approaches no longer works among a postmodern culture that is weary/skeptical of words and propositions and sales-pitches. Taking the road of appealing to self-interest through a felt-needs oriented gospel also does not help us win followers to Jesus’ costly path (and many feel cheated when they discover that the church’s seeker-sensitivity is really a bait-and-switch strategy employed to get them in to allow our “other agenda” a hearing). The bottom line, as Fitch sees it, is that there is too much disconnect between the message we proclaim and the lifestyle we live out in community. Remedy: Fitch calls us to engage our neighborhoods through the practice of hospitality, which he sees as mostly about inviting people into our homes. He also exhorts us to be out among the pain of our neighborhoods, praying for people and actually visibly displaying Christ’s compassion and justice. Evangelism is most effective as a communal endeavor, meaning we (plural) need to be out in the Third Places of our neighborhoods and in the nucleus of social need. And church communities must release creativity and be artful in presenting the multi-faceted nature of the gospel. I would add that the church needs to see evangelism as the presentation of a layered gospel that converts us deeper into it over time; also that our “good-newsing” needs to cover the range of first decision thru initiation in baptism (which Fitch hints at too).
3. The way we lead our churches. The church has turned to the marketplace to help us get our house in order. Now we have pastors as CEO’s, who lead congregations to adopt the latest business techniques to achieve the “bottom-line” (which rarely is about quality of discipleship). Charismatic and personality-centered leaders who bring order to chaos are too often the norm in churches, rather than servant leaders who share the leadership load in facilitating the equipping and growth of the body (including a humble deflecting of attention to the body’s carrying out of ministry, as opposed to drawing attention to the leadership team’s performance). Remedy: Fitch argues for more shared leadership configurations; and getting back to leadership as a call and not simply as a profession. His own church, he notes, encourages leaders to explore their call thru bi-vocationality. Only after character and fruitfulness in ministry is observed are leaders moved to consider full-time service. At that stage, some ordination or commissioning process is involved, which invests communal sanction to the leader’s empowerment. Fitch notes the need for transformative community for leaders, and espouses communal expressions such as triads and missional Orders to effect leadership development. He also advocates seminary training that gives more attention to the leader’s spiritual formation in community. So much I might personally add here, but suffice to say that a continual immersion in Mark 10:42-45 would not harm many an Evangelical leader one bit!
4. The way we focus on producing intimacy and entertainment experiences in our gathered worship. We need to challenge the way Evangelicals’ minds and emotions are being shaped by the compelling images of America’s consumption-driven, materialistic, individualistic and hedonistic culture, Fitch argues. Churches must move away from over-valuing performance-based, feel-good worship experiences that put the worshipping self at the center of worship rather than God’s glory and goodness. The aim of worship is too narrowly viewed as helping people feel good or provoking a group of gathered individuals into personal feelings of intimacy with God. Remedy: Fitch argues for a return to liturgy, art and beauty in order to provoke appreciation of God and gratitude. He captures what the church needs to aim for in the phrase “immersive worship”, which he describes as “display[ing] the God of history with art, symbol and beauty, not just propositions. It rehearses the drama of God in Christ liturgically and invites us into this drama to participate in it, not just express ourselves cathartically.”[3] I would go even further than Fitch and say we need to get beyond Sunday morning as the locus for worship, and equip disciples for a worship that is 24/7 (Romans 12:1-2).
5. The way we preach the Word. Evangelicals concentrate on “mastering the text” through expository teaching. Fitch’s contention is that exegesis and historical-critical studies give us a false assurance that we are able to accurately interpret and hear the word. With meticulous attention to exegetical technique, the text is made to yield its one meaning to and then packaged “for rhetorical delivery to an audience” who “gather before the Word with our imaginations and character formed out of the omnipresent culture of a post-Christian narcissism and consumerism.”[4] The supposed objectivity of the expositor and the audience, in other words, is a fallacy (i.e. all expositors are interpreters who come with some agenda, either known or unrecognized, and the legion of varied interpretations for given texts using the same methodology attests to this reality). Remedy: Fitch suggests a return to communal discourse around Scripture, a greater emphasis on narrative preaching, and the creative public reading of Scripture (with emphasis on the lectionary). Fitch cites Solomon’s Porch and the way Doug Pagitt encourages communal interaction/exegesis, which I think is worth exploring further (see Pagitt’s book, Re-imagining Spiritual Formation).
6. The way we’ve farmed out social justice to parachurches. Instead of allowing our churches to be centers where social justice is demonstrated within (in the context of relationships), we send money and resources “out there” to address face-less needs. Fitch goes after the church’s propensity to be in and of Capitalism as opposed to being in but not of Capitalism. He chastises Evangelicalism for the way it circumscribes its ministry of social compassion and justice with consumer Capitalism, thereby subjecting the church to Capitalism’s rules. He argues that too often our efforts to improve the lot of the impoverished and/or disadvantaged involve pulling them into some level of stature and self-sufficiency so that they too might participate in the individualistic, narcissistic, entitlement-based consumerism (i.e. the American dream) that is corroding both our churches and culture from the inside-out. Remedy: Fitch’s call is for the church to bring the struggle, complexity and messiness of social justice within its own doors. Let church communities re-instill benevolence ministries within, where discernment committees wrestle together before God on how to best respond to specific social needs of the disadvantaged or oppressed that we allow to walk with us on the complex road of healing and relief from immediate distress. While I personally agree with Fitch, I think he needs to leave more room for the expression of some parachurch expertise, as long as it is done in sync with existing churches in a given locale (if there are in fact churches there!).
7. The way the church has farmed out spiritual formation to the professional shrink community. Fitch contends that modern psychotherapy has become an easy cop-out for the hard and often slow pastoral work of caring for the broken. Psychology and psychotherapy often accommodate the hyper-individualism of our culture, and too often disregard altogether the power of sin and selfishness in the counselee’s life. Therapy is also often conducted outside of any holistic formational regime, meaning there is often no bridge between the treatment plan of the professional therapist and the church’s own approaches to forming disciples in truth, wisdom and discernment, spiritual practices, etc. Remedy: The corrective to Evangelicalism’s sell-out to psychotherapy, according to Fitch, is to bring therapy back into the realm of the church, so that there is a holistic co-laboring for the person’s healing and growth. Also, greater value needs to be placed on micro-community triads and other forms of community, where a deep sharing of lives and pains and struggles can occur; and where prayer can be central. I felt this was Fitch’s weakest chapter, since authors like psychologist Larry Crabb (see his book, Connecting) have long been calling Evangelicalism away from the therapist’s office to the healing of one-another ministry in the body.
8. The way the church has outsourced the moral education/training of our children to the public school system. Fitch argues that a lowest-common-denominator approach to teaching virtues (i.e. let’s not offend any particular group), when employed against the backdrop of our American cultural ideals of Capitalism, democracy and liberalism, is not just a harmless, barebones attempt at moral education. Public schools socialize children into a way of life and thinking (including an American civil religion) that makes it all too easy for kids to dismiss any Christian signature instilled in them by their parents or churches. Home-schooling our children, starting parochial schools or challenging school systems on certain moral issues (abortion, prayer in school, evolution, etc.) are all insufficient ways of addressing the problem. Remedy: What is needed, Fitch argues, is a return to some form of communal catechesis, with practices and rites of initiation within the mainstream of smaller-church life (where kids are known and mentored and included in the communal rhythms and spirituality of the adults). I resonate with this, but wonder how the church can get back to this, given the transient nature of so many young families these days.
David Fitch identifies significant ways Evangelicalism is giving-away critical aspects of what it means to be the church. His call in this book is to a deeper ecclesiology – one that re-invigorates what it means to be the people of God, living as alternative communities that demonstrate the validity of the gospel they proclaim through transformational practices and lifestyles (I encourage readers to follow his blog and see his attempts to make the ideas of the book practical with his endorsing of a special missional Order, called The Order of Fiacre). I picked up a clear bias of Fitch’s in the book toward smaller churches (and the planting of smaller churches). When I consider his call to the church, I think he has a strong case that smaller churches and church plants really represent the strongest way for Evangelicalism to respond to his (and others’) prophetic correctives. But I am personally unsure of the wisdom of limiting the optimal ecclesial form for missionality to small churches, since context and discernment must determine what is best for a particular cultural subset. Also, social enterprising and other missional initiatives that may or may not form into churches are still worthy routes to direct leaders into (instead of church planting). All in all it is a great and challenging read!
[1] Fitch, David. The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), 18. I have chosen this particular author and book, partly because I believe Fitch is one of the more mature and respected prophetic voices to the Church today. Consider the following traits which seem to make him a voice worth hearing: 1) he is well-acquainted with postmodernism; 2) he is a sound theologian who obviously loves Jesus; 3) he is also a church planter, which shows he can move his ideas out of the abstract into community-forming action; 4) he captures the imagination of many young leaders through his popular web-blog and his platforms as a teacher and writer and practitioner; and 5) he is careful not to berate his Evangelical heritage, and actually operates within a rather conservative denomination (CMA), which hedges his prophetic impact backwards into mainstream conservative Evangelicalism (where change is arguably most drastically needed).
[2] Fitch devises his own comprehensive list of the historic marks or notae of the Church by blending those marks developed by Luther, the Anabaptist tradition and others. The way he ties each of the book’s chapters into his list seems somewhat contrived, as if he had the chapter themes already in view and then went back to attempt a tie-in with the list to add weight to his argument of a whole-sale give-away. NOTE: My underlined captions do not represent his specific chapter titles.
[3] Fitch, p. 114.
[4]Ibid, p. 141.
By Aaron Fudge
There are two ways to answer this question. The first follows the normal biblical usage of prophecy and its cognates. When the Bible speaks of people who are prophets and others who prophesy, the Bible is unequivocal about the nature of the prophecy. The Lord has given words (and occasionally actions) to someone to speak (or act) on His behalf. The majority of these prophecies were given at one particular moment. They are not Spirit inspired thoughts that develop and take root overtime. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians explaining the usage of prophesy in the church, it is clear that he was writing about words given “in the moment” and was not talking about a carefully developed exegetical sermonette, even if such was Spirit led. There is a clear distinction between teachings and prophecies.
A good working definition of prophecy is: Prophecy is a word or phrase that is given to a person, from the Lord, which “give[s] us a glimpse of the reign of God, to give us understanding of His solution for our brokenness [and] insight into His intentions toward us.”[1] This “glimpse” of some aspect of the Kingdom can come in the form of a predictive statement, an encouragement, an exhortation, a consolation, or as conviction of Christ’s lordship.
The second way to answer this question is to say that the church is a “prophetic community”.[2] As we embody the roles given to the church as the new creation people, we speak/embody a “prophetic” word to the churches, to our countries, and to the world. As the church lives its purposes more fully, the actions of the church will prophetically point out the in-breaking Kingdom of God and the bankruptcy of the worlds systems. And in case anyone should contend that actions cannot be prophetic, one needs only to look to the major prophets for an example: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and in the New Testament, at Jesus, and Agabus.[3] To further clarify though, the actions done by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Jesus were actions done to fulfill the words of YHWH given to them specifically and for a specific time and purpose.
At this point the language gets a little muddy. The Scriptures do not call the church to be a “prophetic community” in the sense that we just described. The church is called the bride, a colony of Heaven, a Kingdom of priests, a chosen race, a new creation, ambassadors, and children of God. We belong now to the Kingdom of light and not the Kingdom of darkness, and we are called to be a light to the whole world. But the Scriptures do not call us a “prophetic community”. We are a community of new creation people to whom God gives words of prophecy, and we are called to follow Christ in being an incarnation of the Kingdom of God, the firstfruits of the coming reign. I contend that the blurring of the “prophetic” be addressed and terminology, which reflects scriptural intent more clearly, be adopted. We are symbolically enacting the coming Kingdom, and we are proclaiming the goodness of God through our actions and words, but unless there is a specific Spirit-given action, it would be advantageous for the church to avoid the blending of “prophetic” language. In Guder’s, “Missional Church”, this demythologization is avoided by speaking of the church as “that gathering of the reign of God assembled to be a sign of that reign, to proclaim the reign of God in word and deed, to make decisions, and to give allegiance to their Ruler”.[4]
With the adoption of prophetic language for the community of believers, and the propensity within the missional church for activism, the prophetic, in the lives of individuals, has been again relegated to the sidelines. As we deal with prophetic ministry today, it will be helpful to address the need for balance in two areas of our conversation. The first is the church’s attempt to move away from a Western individualistic conception of church and spirituality towards a more communal understanding. And the second is the move toward a more blended political and spiritual world, and away from a dualistic separation of the spiritual and political. I think both reactions are valid and that both share the tendency to remove any sort of personal, inner spiritual life with God, and away from balance.
The first movement is highlighted by a non-missional/emergent writer, who has, perhaps inadvertently, written a very missional book on discipleship.[5] In David Augsburger’s book, Dissident Discipleship, he longs for the church to move from a bipolar to a tripolar spirituality. This is a call to leave the “its just me and God” type of spirituality found in most evangelical churches, to a spirituality that “links discovering self, seeking God, and valuing people into a seamless unity”,[6] or again “a spirituality of self-surrender, love of God, and love of neighbor”.[7]
Tripolar spirituality is what the missional/emergent church is striving to be. That said, the missional church has shown the same tendencies as Augsburger. Dr. Augsburger’s “practices” of dissident discipleship show, rather baldly, overreaction to bipolar spirituality. His chapters, which highlight the problem, are: Radical Attachment (imitation of Christ through loving others), Stubborn Loyalty (solidarity in community), Tenacious Serenity (willing obedience), Habitual Humility, Resolute Nonviolence, Concrete Service, Authentic Witness, and Subversive Spirituality (neighbor-love, politics, and redemptive actions). I like this list, and I like the book; we are using it for our small group. But this disciplship is begging to be asked, where is prayer? Where is worship? Where is a relationship with God, as Jesus displayed through his regular departures to pray with the Father.[8] Specifically for this paper, where is the prophetic? Where is speaking the words given to you for the church for its edification, exhortation, and comfort?[9] Where is the word that came to you while another is prophesying?[10] Where is the word, which drops an unbeliever to her knees saying, “Surely God is among you?"[11]
The missional church is recognizing the need to love our neighbor, to care for the downtrodden, to see God in community, and to display his coming kingdom through “prophetic” communities and actions. But we must take care not to replace one bipolar spirituality (vertical) with another bipolar spirituality (horizontal) in our efforts to right the wrongs of previous generations of Jesus followers. We cannot revert to a spirituality that is only action oriented. The Porpoise Diving Life blog highlights this problem well in a post called, ‘Charismissional’.
“Where a term like “charis-missional” becomes important is in keeping a complete understanding of what Jesus included in His demonstration of the in-breaking, already-and-not-yet Kingdom. While there has been a healthy emphasis on the poor and marginalized in the emerging/missional church, there needs to also be an honest look at ALL the ways that the Kingdom was expressed in Jesus’ ministry and continued by the disciples after the Day of Pentecost – and that means we have to look honestly at the topic of signs and wonders and their role in the expansion of the Kingdom of God.[12]
I’m not calling again for a “new” charismatic movement. I am calling for a realization of our overreaction, and for a balanced return to listening to the Lord, eagerly desiring to prophesy, and for a not despising of prophesy.[13] I don’t want to be a charismatic, but I do want to recognize the place within God’s story of His touch given to individuals with words for His people and the world. As we become “post-charismatic”, let the “post” reflect where we’ve come from. Let it reflect our passion to hold onto the good word, which the Lord has given to us, and our desire to purge the excesses from our ecclesiology. Let it reflect more of a centering, than the swinging of a pendulum.
The second overreaction is similar. With the wonderful historical work being done of the first century world, and of Palestinian Judaism, we know more about Jewish worldviews than we have ever known before.[14] Thanks to the work of historians and scholars, we are now able to see how foreign our “political” and “spiritual” dualism would be to anyone in the first century.[15]
As historical studies continue to highlight where we have over-spiritualized and de-historicized much of the New Testament, the tendency creeps in to place the prophetic and the “supernatural” in a lesser category, which is then subsumed by the political sphere. The spiritual tends to be blended into our understanding of the political in ways that negate it, while still paying it lip service. Recently I took part in a class called “Principalities and Powers: Structural Evil and Systemic Change.” In this class, the spiritual nature of the Powers was affirmed, but only at the outset. The class then proceeded to focus on this-worldly institutions, ideas, and governments with very little mention of the place of prayer, prophecy and non-physical spiritual warfare. This tendency to demythologize within the scholarly world has been picked up by the missional and emergent church. It is a tendency we must reject.
In contrast, I was reading Luke 1 the other day, and was struck by how integrated Luke presents the spheres we tend to isolate; spheres like the political, the spiritual, the supernatural, and the historic. In a cursory reading of the text, one is struck by how historical the Gospel is. Luke mentions the names of the present day governmental rulers, and in the prayers and prophecies one is continually reminded of YHWH’s continuing story of the redemption of the Jewish people and the world. Luke anchors his narrative firmly in the first century “political” sphere as well. The announcement of Jesus’ birth as the coming of the successor to the throne of David and of the kingdom which will not end, cannot be understood apart from the kingdoms of the world. Jesus is called the Son of God, which screams in the face of Caesar.[16] Another aspect Luke brings out is the supernatural. Zechariah sees an angel, his lips are sealed shut, then Mary sees an angel, and John leaps in Elizabeth’s womb as he is filled with the Spirit.[17] Within this last category the prophetic is seen as well through Mary’s Magnificat and, in chapter two, through Simeon’s and Anna’s pronouncement.[8] One is reminded that YHWH has spoken to his people through his individual prophets in the past.[19]
I am not calling for a rejection of good historical and scholarly research. I am not calling for a dualistic separation of the political and spiritual, but I am calling for balance. As we begin to understand the gospel in its full “political” understandings, and as we seek to live as faithful prophetic people in kingdom communities, let us not forget that the Lord has in the past, continues through the present, and promises in the future to speak to His people, both individually and corporately through crazy supernatural and prophetic experiences.
So within this balance, what does prophetic ministry look like in the missional church? It looks like men and women committed to being on mission with God who spend concerted time in prayer, waiting on the voice of God, seeking and desiring to prophesy. It is loving your neighbor and seeking God in prayer. It is fanning into flame the gifts of the Spirit and living incarnationally.[20] It is imitating Jesus in all His ways: in His symbolic actions, His prophetic words, His caring for the sick, the possessed and the oppressed. Near equal time should be spent between the development of the community of the Kingdom, the development of an incarnational and symbolic witness to the broader community, and to a deeply intimate relationship with the Lord who speaks.
In, A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren calls the church to stop looking at our brothers’ weak points, to begin to see their strengths, and then to move towards an adoption of those strengths. We must seek to follow Christ in all of the ways He has chosen to give us, which means that we love our neighbor and enemy, that we care for the poor and the down trodden, that we heal the sick and bind up the broken hearted. It means that we empower women to serve. And it means that we prophesy as the Lord gives utterance. We desire prophecy and we do not despise the gift. We fan into flames the Spirit’s power in our lives.
In missional communities we need to continue to emphasize personal spiritual formation alongside of our activism. Instead of pitting the personal against corporate, and the prophetic/spiritual against political, let us embrace the whole Gospel of God.
[1] Brother Maynard and Emerging Grace, Prophetic Ministry, Re-imagined Missionally. Porpoise Diving Life, 11-9-07. http://www.theporpoisedivinglife.com/porpoise-diving-life.asp?pageID=403.
[2] Response by Andrew, Post-Eschatological Charismatic, Open Source Theology, 11-9-07.
[3] Is. 20:1-6; Jer. 19:1-15; Ezek. 4:9-17; Acts 21:10-11.
[4] Darrel Guder. Missional Church, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998, 118.
[5] This may be due to Augsburger’s Anabaptism, and because much of the missional/emergent thinking today has been fueled by looking at the Anabaptist traditions
[6] David Augsburger, Dissident Discipleship, Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2006, 7.
[7] Ibid., quote of subtitle.
[8] Luke 5:16.
[9] 1 Cor 14:3.
[10] 1 Cor 14:29-32, see Gordon Fee, 891 (God’s Empowering Presence, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994).
[11] 1 Cor. 14:24-25.
[12] Robby McAlpine, Chrysalis: From Post-Charismatic to Charismissional, Porpoise Diving Life. 11-9-07.
[13] 1 Cor. 14:1; 1 Thes. 5:19-22.
[14] see N. T. Wright, New Testament and the People of God, Mineapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.
[15] Some who deal with this at varying levels and for various reasons are Walter Wink, Naming the Powers; Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come; Wright, NTPG.
[16] N. T. Wright. What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? Grand Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997, 88.
[17] Luke 1.
[18] Luke 2:25-38.
[19] Luke 1:46ff and 67ff.
[20] 2 Tim. 1:6.
By Rusty Bonham
Love God.
Love others.
That’s pretty-much it.
It would be prophetic if we just really did that… ‘cause nobody does that.
(Names in parenthesis are names I associate with this realization.)
How are we different (prophetic)?
A conversation with a high schooler: “So we are supposed to be different than the non-Christians at school right? How? Is it that we don’t drink or smoke? Most of my friends are not Christians, yet they neither drink nor smoke. Furthermore, I know some Christian kids who do. No. if you wanna know what would make someone really different… it would be to say once in awhile: “Excuse me, but what I did/said yesterday was wrong. I am sorry, and I want you too forgive me.” That would make you truly different, ‘cause nobody does that.” (Neff)
Loose stuff
The following is currently the loose stuff in a box. (Can you tell we just moved?) You always have a draw with this-and-that in it; it gets emptied into the box for the move, then gets poured into the “stuff” drawer. The box rattles.
What’s My Motivation?
It’s simple, but not easy. Love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength… and my neighbor as myself. Love God; love others… the Law and the Prophets summed up. The Great Commandment. Notice, the title is from Jesus. What is the other one called? You know, the one … “Go ye into all the world…” The Great Commission! Who called it that??? Not Jesus. Many mission-minded believers act as if this were the Greatest Commandment, and consequently they are driven by an “ought to” compulsion. This is a fear-driven motivation, from a directing God (maybe a task-master God). But if your motivation is the Greatest Commandment, then love is your motivation because you have been loved by the One who calls you worthy and you begin to see others as worthy, for they are in God’s image, and the “want to” is there because you have joined God in reconciling the world unto Himself. (Sawatzky)
The (Two) Basic Question(s)
The obvious first: Who is God? In other words, by nature I always want to be God and my life is a process of identifying and surrendering those actions. But the second question betrays my desire to keep the focus or emphasis between God and me: Who is my neighbor? The question is designed to limit my radius of responsibility to those of my choosing, no doubt I will choose only those I already love. Jesus’ answer (parable of the guy in the ditch) puts the lover in the position of desperate need and horror, and shows that everyone deserves love. How does that change my idea of what it means to let God be God? It means I love from the ‘weakness’ of realizing I am vulnerable, even love my enemy. To God, who while we were enemies of God, died for us… there are no enemies. Just beloved sinners.
Second Commandment, Third Pole
Love God / Love people… mirror images. Reflection- twin brother, view from the other side… Love God… and the second is like it… (this is what it looks like) love your neighbor as yourself (love your neighbor, for he is as you are.) Uni-polar spirituality is concerned with feeling peace. The Bi-polar spirituality acknowledges a God and responds to this God. A tri-polar spirituality does not comprehend a love for God that does not love neighbor… even my enemy… for he is as I am. (Augsberger)
Prophets Repent!
The forth-telling of God’s message. To the church. The first message of the prophet must not be “Repent,” but “I repent.” And then, like Daniel, begin to feel the pain and fallenness of your own people and in tears pray confession for the forgiveness of the sins of your people… the Church. (Blakeman)
Story
The barber writes, “Arlee sat there in my chair going off about how they oughta drop a bomb on the protesters and I wheeled him around and said to his face, “Love your enemies.” Arlee said, “Where’d you get that?” “Jesus.” “Oh.” And Arlee shut up. (But there was one problem- I did not love Arlee.)” (Augsberger)
God=Neighbor
How can you say you love God, whom you have not see, and not love the brother that you have seen??! (easy… isn’t it. I do it all the time… unless this means I do not truly love God.) When you did it to the least of these, you did it to me. “The way you encounter another person is the same way you encounter God, 100%.” (Pate)
Friendship Evangelism
We befriend people in order to get them saved. This is disengenuous, manipulative and coercive, using people, Amway missions; true friendship in and of itself IS whole and of the Kingdom of God. It is only love, when there is no ulterior motive. (Frost, Hirsch)
True Christian
An Amishman was asked, “Are you a Christian?” He replied, “If you truly want to know whether or not I am a Christian, then you should ask my neighbor.” (Bontrager)
Love and Truth
“Missional” is the result of embracing the Love and Truth of God.
Love: (emotional health) that I am loved, worthy, special, unique, acceptable as I am.
Truth: (spiritual health) that I am lost, contaminated, wounded, guilty of wounding, goner
So I am loved and lost, a beloved/sinner.
To truly grasp this will transform me into a transformed transformer. An evangel-ed evangel-er. A reconciled reconciler. II Cor 5- He reconciled us to Him and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. I am an impacted impacter, a loved lover- a truthed truther… a salted salter.
John 20:21 As the Father has sent me, so I send you (be salted) (Love Others)
John 20:22 Receive the Holy Spirit and he breathed on them (be salty) (Love God)
Triangle or Tree?
I sometimes wonder if the triangle should equally be Worship, Mission and Community. I entertain the possibility that Community is the trunk of the tree between Worship and Mission. Currently the church has roots (Worship) and trunk (Community) but it’s as if the power company has clipped all the branches. So we are comfortable with a church of worship and community. What if we were only worsip and mission… would we not find a way to support and resource one another in our mission work? Would the stress of mission not create community?
Paradigm Shifts
Rather than church as Sunday, building, and Pastor, (which is attractional, dualistic and heirarchical), it should rather be incarnational, messianic, and apostolic. Seek an ecclesiology that flows from a missiology, which flows from a christology. Conventionally, we have first encountered Jesus, then form the church, and lastly try to be missional. We form churches and then try to get people to reach out. We’ve lost the realization that God is a missionary God, that God wanted the whole world to be blessed in Abraham, and that we are to follow Jesus (implies that he’s moving, doesn’t it?) cristology => missiology => ecclesiology (Frost, Hirsch)
Being IN Jesus
If I stop thinking of Jesus in me, which really appeals to my individualism, which is to say it appeals to my flesh, and start thinking of myself as being in Christ, then the paradigm stands on its head: now…
I exist for him,
(worship)
I go where he goes,
(mission)
I’m squished in there with his
family. (community)
Evangelism
… is Evangel-ing. It is Good News-ing. What is the verb of Good News? It is not to tell good news. It is not enough to simply be a changed person; it is to be Good News-ing. I was thinking, to be a part of a church that owned no building, and paid no staff, and had lots of money ‘cause people would earn well and not spend it on themselves but look for opportunities to bless people with it, and live simply so that there would be even more money to give… your neighbor has a kid in the hospital and you give him $200 for his expenses, missing work… nobody does that.
The Poor
The Gospel should be Good News to the poor. (Luke 4) Gandhi said, “If you want to know who the Christians are, just ask the poor; they’ll tell you who the Christians are.”
What is the Gospel?
The Gospel must be simple to be replicable. (Cole) Memorable.
Something like…
| God so | loved us |
| became | like us |
| showed love | to us |
| suffered | with us |
| died | for us |
| to take death | from us |
| and live | through us |
Missio Dei
Being missional is being a part of what God is doing- God’s mission, the Missio Dei. It is not the Church’s effort to extend itself. It is what God is doing to draw all of Creation back to Himself. (Steigerwald)
This is the New Creation
Now that’s a very big claim - there should be a gasp when hearing such a mind-blowing concept. That the severed relationships between us, our God, ourselves and the Creation are being made new and whole as Shalom is restored: the Kingdom, His will on Earth as it is in Heaven. The Church is the hermeneutic of the Gospel.
The Cost of Non-discipleship
What does it mean to make disciples? Bringing belief and behavior together:
Do you have beliefs about Jesus? (opinions)
Do you believe in Jesus? (pietism)
Do you believe Jesus? (convinced)
Do you believe what Jesus believed? (disciple)
A disciple is a little-Christ, a “mini-me.” Follow Jesus, becoming like him as you go. (Augsberger) We were not told to plant churches, but to make disciples, and it is disciples who will make more disciples. (Cole)
Conversion Order
The Roman conversion: believe, then belong
The Celtic conversion: belong, then believe. I like Clark’s description of “Why don’t you come stand be me and maybe you’ll see what we’re talking about.”
But might I propose a 3rd? Both the above examples exclude mission. Why not behave=> belong=> believe? This culture is ripe to expect seculars to join our (example) justice activities first, then get to know us, then believe.
Wholistic Gospel
People need Jesus, and they need a job. (Sider) If I love my neighbor as myself, then I want them to have a roof over their heads, food, a job, safety… all the things I want for me and my family, right? (Perkins)
Counter-Culture Gospel
Jesus is not the kind of friend your mom would have wanted you to hang with. Likewise, the Gospel is so counter-culture that we usually miss it- like we take it as spiritual, and thus has no real bearing on me or how I live, play, work, shop, etc. But the Gospel is so conflictually in the face of our culture- often the opposite of our self-saturated culture, that it should be sobering, scarey, and maybe should make one reluctant to enter into an arrangement with something so costly. It could mean being disowned by your people. The twelve Marks of the New Monasticism stand in contrast to our cultures values:
The twelve marks of a "New Monastic" Community are:
1. Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.
2. Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.
3. Hospitality to the stranger
4. Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.
5. Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church.
6. Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community along the lines of the old novitiate.
7. Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.
8. Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.
9. Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.
10. Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies.
11. Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.
12. Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.
These marks were drafted in June of 2004 by a group of intentional communities, and represent contrasting Kingdom values and priorities in the place of our unconscious American-culture’s self-serving sinful powers and patterns. The book written to define such communities can be read at the following site: http://www.newmonasticism.org/book/chpt1.pdf
In their simplest topical form, they are:
1. Relocation
2. Sharing financially
3. Hospitality
4. Racial Reconciliation
5. Submission
6. Novitiate
7. Common Life
8. Sexuality
9. Proximity
10. Creation Care
11. Peacemaking
12. Contemplation
What does it look like?
How then, shall we live? We are Jesus people, and Jesus’ people, and we seek congruity- a life whose faith is integrated- a life that is observably under the direction and management of Jesus. Someone does not become a person until s/he relinquishes the projected image they want you to see, and then enters into relationships that invite others to respond to that true self. (Pate) Is there a way in which this statement is true in my relationship not only to my Christian brother or sister, but also in my relationships to God and to the secular not-yet-believers I meet?
Covenant
In order to live a Jesus life, I need others to keep me on track. I also need to be keeping others on track. So we enter into covenant with those whose vision, trajectory, or goal is the same, and we encourage and/or confront one another- speaking the Truth in Love. (Structure is cold and institutional-protecting. Commitment can be, too. But Covenant is relational, and has the other’s best interest at heart.) (Forsythe)
Practices in the Tri-polar Church
Covenant is valuable but may be subjective, so we covenant to practices that will nurture growth and deepen roots. (Deb Hirsch) The most basic unit in the Kingdom is the individual-in-community. (Augsberger) I can only pray for God to lead me into relationships with brothers and sisters whose heart beats for living in faithful, reconciled relationships that will hold me against the world, the arms of God, to encourage and confront me, to keep me on the path of obedience, God with skin, people committed to loving God and/by loving others, a people who soooo love the world, a community of people who live practices that are freely and refreshingly different from the world in a winsome way that will overhear others remark, “nobody does that.”
In the context of the current renewal of missional theology the suggestion that the church is essentially ‘prophetic’ in its nature is contentious for a number of reasons. On the one hand, it is likely to raise concerns about the relationship between emerging theologies and the modern charismatic movement. So for example, prophecy has typically been understood by charismatics as an individualized gift of the Spirit rather than as an attribute of the church as a corporate entity; and for many the idea may carry uncomfortable memories of the trivialization of divine speech or of the abuse of authority. On the other hand, the prophetic has been associated in other traditions with forms of direct social-political critique and action that may be difficult to reconcile with evangelical notions of mission. The challenge, then, is to ground the notion of a ‘prophetic community’ in the biblical narrative in a way that moves us beyond the limiting charismatic model of prophetic speech without breaking the link with a core and sustainable definition of mission.
This essay, which was prepared for a TREK gathering in Portland, Oregon, on the theme of the prophetic church, reflects my conviction that we must ensure that the categories of thought that are becoming definitive for the emerging, post-modern or post-evangelical church (such as ‘prophetic community’ or ‘missional community’) are found to have an authentic biblical integrity. Having sat in on Dwight Friesen’s class on postmodernism at Mars Hill Graduate School this week, I am a little more sensitive to the negative connotations that the word ‘biblical’ has for many who are struggling to escape from the suffocating embrace of modern evangelicalism. But it seems to me that the hermeneutical shift from a dogmatic and systematic structuring of thought to a narrative-historical account of the emergence and significance of these ideas will be a crucial step in the rehabilitation of scripture.
On the day of Pentecost the disciples, assembled in a house in Jerusalem, are filled with the Holy Spirit, and as the Spirit moves them, they begin to speak in other tongues (Acts 2:1-4). Hearing the uproar, a crowd of devout Jews from many nations gathers outside the house. They are astonished to hear the disciples declaring the ‘mighty works of God’ in their own languages and wonder what it all means (2:11).
Peter takes the opportunity to explain to them that this was all foreseen by the prophet Joel. But before we consider the actual content of the prophecy, we should take note of the context. Joel describes a ‘day of the Lord’, a day of devastation, when a powerful nation will come to make war against Jerusalem. It will be a ‘day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness’, the ‘sun and moon are darkened’, because the smoke from burning villages and towns will fill the sky (Joel 2:1-3, 10). If, even at this late stage, Judah should repent and cry to God for deliverance, then God will drive the enemy back and restore Zion, and they will come to know that ‘I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God and there is none else’ (Joel 2:27). In that day, when God will ‘restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem’, he will gather the nations that are hostile to his people in the Valley of Jehoshaphat and will ‘enter into judgment with them there, on behalf of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations and have divided up my land…’ (Joel 3:2).
In the middle of this story about judgment on Israel, repentance, renewal, and judgment on Israel’s enemies, we find the passage that Peter quotes. There are two parts to it. There is the statement, first, that during this time of crisis God will pour out his Spirit on all in Israel: all will see visions, dream dreams; all will prophesy, not just a select few. Then secondly, when the great and terrible day of the Lord comes, ‘everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved’ (Acts 2:17-21). These two parts are not unconnected. The Spirit poured out on many in Israel at Pentecost is not the Spirit of covenant renewal of which Ezekiel speaks (Ezek. 36:26-27). It is specifically the Spirit of prophecy; it will be confirmed by ‘wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below’ that presage the coming turmoil. Peter’s argument, therefore, is that at this time – at this critical moment in Israel’s history – the Spirit has been poured out on a diverse and growing community that will see and prophesy collectively what God is about to do. The disciples together, young and old, male and female, servants and masters, have become a prophetic movement that will exist in the midst of Israel, and eventually in the world, as a sign that God is about to ‘judge’ his people.
In response the crowd asks Peter what they should do. His answer is that they should save themselves ‘from this crooked generation’ by calling on the name of the Lord. Jerusalem faces the same judgment by war envisaged by Joel, the same terrible day of the Lord – a self-inflicted calamity of rebellion and violent repression. But if they repent and have themselves baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of the sins of the nation, they will be saved from this quite concrete and realistically conceived destruction.
The meaning of the Pentecost event, therefore, is not simply that this is where the church began as a movement of the Spirit. The shared experience of the Spirit was a sign that God was in the midst of Israel and that his people ‘shall never again be put to shame’ (cf. Joel 2:27); and a link can certainly be made here with Ezekiel’s motif of a new covenant. But the narrative significance of the event is that the church in the New Testament began as a prophetic community whose eschatological horizon was defined by the prospect of judgment on Israel and of a day when ‘there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls’ (Joel 2:32).
From this narrative we can extract a simple formula or template: the church is a prophetic community with a shared eschatological horizon. It is prophetic not in the first place because it is made up of spirit-filled individuals, amongst whom are those with the particular gift of prophecy. It is prophetic because it has participated corporately in a decisive symbolic event. It is prophetic in its concrete historical existence as a community. But how do we transpose that pattern to the circumstances of the church today? What I want to suggest is that we remain a prophetic community, just as we are a priestly community, but two significant things have changed: i) the prophetic orientation of the community has changed from an internal witness to an external witness to the world; and ii) the eschatological horizon of the community has changed from vindication to re-creation.
The early prophetic community was oriented towards Israel. The community in its charismatic activity was a sign: on the one hand, that God was about to bring a catastrophic judgment on his people; and on the other, that there was an immediately available avenue of escape. Once this community moved beyond the confines of Palestinian Judaism, however, it became a sign not only to the scattered Jewish communities of the diaspora but also to the principalities and powers that governed the Greek-Roman world – a sign that God had defeated his enemies and had made Jesus Lord. By its very existence the church demonstrated that no power or authority could overcome or suppress the testimony of the people of the living God – not the Jewish hierarchy in Jerusalem, not the Roman governor, not the synagogues of the diaspora, not the local magistrates, not the mobs, not Caesar, not Satan, not even death. This constituted, I think, a second eschatological horizon, defined narratively as the moment when God in history defeats the powers that oppress his faithful people. Once we move beyond that, however, a third horizon begins to come into view and with it a rather different prophetic stance.
We need to go back to Abraham at this point and pick up a thread that runs right through scripture to the final pages but which gets somewhat eclipsed in the New Testament by a story about the salvation of Israel and the renewal of the community through Jesus. The theological significance of the family of Abraham is embedded in its calling: the first couple, Abraham and Sarah, will be blessed by God; he will make them and their descendants fruitful and multiply them; and they will fill the fertile land which God will give them (eg. Gen. 12:2-3; 13:15-16; 17:6; 28:3; 35:11). All this is a recapitulation of the original blessing of Adam and Eve. The family of Abraham will be a new creation, a creation in microcosm, in the midst of the nations and cultures of the earth, marked out from other peoples by their loyalty to his commandments and statutes (cf. Gen. 26:4-5).
Because Israel failed to live up to the standards of that microcosm, the imagery of new creation – new heavens and new earth – came to be used not for the actual but for the ideal, not for what Israel was but for what Israel would become when the people were restored in the aftermath of judgment (Is. 65:17; 66:22). The return from exile fell short of the poetic intensity of this hope, but it had now lodged itself firmly in the prophetic imagination of Israel to be reactivated in the New Testament as the early church reflected on the larger ‘cosmic’ significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
First, Jesus is seen not only as the pioneer of a community that will endure the birthpangs of eschatological transition; he is also the one through whom all things were created (eg. Jn. 1:1-3, 10; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:15-16; Heb. 1:2; 2:10). Secondly, the believer dies with the crucified Christ in baptism as a sign of identification with the one who suffers and is vindicated, but she is raised to become new humanity, new creation (cf. Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:9-10; 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). Thirdly, although the immediate hope of the early church was vindication against its enemies (cf. Lk. 18:1-8), victory over the forces that violently opposed it, we also glimpse beyond this a final hope that all creation will be made new, that wickedness and death will ultimately be destroyed, and that God will live as he always should have done in the midst of things (cf. Rev. 21:1-22:5).
Now let’s go back to our basic template: a prophetic community with a shared eschatological horizon. How do we develop this? How do we begin to speak about the church as a prophetic sign of new creation? In his Old Testament Theology Brueggemann makes four general observations about the individual prophets who functioned as ‘channels of communication between Yahweh and Israel’ (623). We should not regard it as a simple exercise to transfer these criteria to the corporate witness of the church, even allowing for the argument from Acts that the church is always potentially prophetic by virtue of its concrete existence. Nevertheless, I think we can reasonably make use of these four characteristics to begin explore the likely dynamics of a prophetic community.
1. Because the prophets are ‘compelled by an inexplicable force that is taken to be the summons of Yahweh’ (623), Brueggemann argues, they maintain an openness to God outside the structures of establishment authority. ‘In their appearance, Yahweh is taken to be directly and palpably present in Israel.’ If the church is now prophetic, it is because it is similarly positioned outside the mainstream of social and cultural life, similarly ‘compelled by an inexplicable force’, to preserve an openness to the voice of the creator God. Inasmuch as this prophetic witness is embodied in marginalized or disaffected parts of the church, it is also a challenge to the renewal of the people of God.
2. The prophetic stance is grounded in a tradition. The prophets ‘have learned over time to perceive and experience the world through a particular prism of memory and interpretation’ (623). So, for example, Amos is understood to represent ‘international wisdom thought’; Isaiah ‘reflects the royal ideology of the Zion establishment’; and so on (624). What this suggests is that we should expect the witness of the prophetic community to be contextualized with respect both to the social-cultural environment and to ecclesiastic tradition, which may have some interesting implications for an emerging ecumenism.
3. The prophetic stance either is a response to a crisis or it evokes a crisis. For the early prophetic community this was the crisis of suffering and vindication that marked the transition from second temple Judaism to the church. In a more limited and contingent sense this was a transition from a national to a transnational or imperial paradigm for the creational microcosm – in effect, from nationalistic second temple Judaism to imperialistic Christendom. But this eschatological crisis of transition is situated inside a larger crisis of the failure of the created order, and it is to this state of affairs that the church must respond. The church both in its actual praxis and in its more idealized forms of address is called to keep before the eyes of the world the concrete possibility of an alternative humanity centred around an authentic worship of the creator God.
4. The prophetic stance brings into play the power of the imagination. Brueggemann makes the important point that although the biblical prophets ‘are characteristically immersed in public crises, they are not primarily political agents in any direct sense and rarely urge specific policy. Nor are they, against popular liberal opinion, social activists’. They are essentially poetic ‘utterers’; they ‘speak most often with all of the elusiveness and imaginative power of poetry’ (625).
This suggests that the prophetic community must likewise be ‘immersed in public crises’ but must seek to articulate its witness primarily through poetic and symbolic means. Understanding how immersion and expression relate to each other will be crucial for the development of this thought. Immersion implies at least the dynamic presence of the community in the midst of the manifold crises of human existence, out of which the community gives prophetic expression in the form of ‘Yahweh’s own utterance’ to ‘distress’ and ‘new possibility’ (625-627). But the Old Testament prophets were as much actors as ‘utterers’, which suggests that more active forms of immersion, including perhaps political agency and social engagement, may find their primary significance as symbolic dramas through which the distinctive prophetic message of judgment and renewal is heard.
By Brandon Rhodes
The word ‘prophetic’ has an individual and a corporate sense to it. Individually, the prophet is the man or woman of God who gives fresh truth from God to the believing community. Corporately, the prophetic church likewise reveals God’s truth and intentions to the world. Crudely diagrammed, we might see:
Prophet — prophetic → Church — prophetic → World
This corporate sense of the church functioning as prophet to the world is usually characterized by its advocates as being counter-cultural. Indeed, being "counter-cultural" is core to the prophetic nature of the church. But being counter-cultural is not enough. Rob Bell describes the church as "God’s counter-cultural insurgency that actually things the world can be put back together." And I think he nailed it with that last clause, that inclusion of hope in his definition. After all, the prophet’s function in the Old Testament is one who primarily announces judgment and hope. So also the church’s living out hope is prophetic, announcing God’s reign amid a broken and aching world.
Much has already been written on how to be that prophetic community, but I have encountered frustratingly little about how to give prophetic language to that prophetic life together. Just as faith without works is dead, so also prophetic works without prophetic words may lack the full potential of prophecy’s pierce to contemporary culture. Jeremiah’s prophetic actions would have made little sense to Israel if they were not somehow legible to his hearers. Likewise, what sense would the church make without investing its prophetic actions with legible language?
To be sure, prophetic language is more than bluntly explaining what is going on, thought that is a start. More: it does so by very consciously saddling its claims right alongside the claims of the world, making their differences plain. Two questions from here must be asked: what, theologically, is prophetic language explaining? And does the New Testament provide any examples of the kind of prophetic language we’re digging at?
Here is what prophetic language explains. The late Lesslie Newbigin says that in the Acts of the Apostles, time and again the question being asked of the church by onlookers is, "What is this new reality?" Their answers to that question was that the kingdom of God was breaking in. That is immensely telling: somehow, when the church was most being the church, by the power of the Holy Spirit, it revealed a new reality, the life of the Age to Come. Their life announced that not only was another world possible, but in fact that it was in some strange way being anticipated in their midst. The shalom, joy, reconciliation, worship, and healing that will so characterize the world to come is pouring through the seams of the present one, and, as Paul says, the world smells the aroma of the Messiah. The church is being salt and light of new creation amid the competing claims of the present age over how to be truly human. That, I suggest, is at the heart of the prophetic nature of the church.
Yet this fresh reality of new creation needs fresh language to describe it.
Paul created fresh, prophetic language to explain, implement, and steer the prophetic nature of the church and the kingdom of Jesus by taking from the language of the Roman Empire. N.T. Wright has written thoughtfully on this in his essay "Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire," which I am sure many here have heard of. And Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat have written an entire book on the topic in Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire.
The gist of Wright, Walsh, and Keesmaat’s ideas are that throughout his epistles, Paul takes the language normally ascribed to Caesar, and reworks it around Jesus. Language of man’s empire is challenged by similar language about Jesus’ kingdom. Where the gospel was that Caesar was the son of God, ascended and now sending his messengers to announce his worldwide reign of peace and justice, now Jesus’ gospel is that he is the true Son of God, ascended and sending messengers to announce his true worldwide reign of real peace and justice. Proper response to the former is to confess that "Caesar is Lord," but Paul says the proper response to the true gospel is a confession that "Jesus is Lord". And this is just the tip of the iceberg, concerning Paul’s dissident, prophetic language.
Paul answers the question of "what is this new reality?" with sly, subversive answers that aren’t just talismans of ethereal theology to sate so strange a question, but instead are stark challenges to the power-holders and rhetoric-dispensers of his culture. I believe that the church, if it is to let its prophetic nature flourish, must do the same.
So, what are today’s treasonous claims? What empire-language must be subverted for Christ’s sake? What does America and the global market claim for itself which rightly belong to God and the church? Hear the following with an ear not just to what may politically offend, but to what is treasonous to King Jesus. Hear also their aspirations, aspirations which are only a mockery next to God’s kingdom. Hear where these tomes can be reimagined in subversive poetry around Him. Now, let the facts be submitted to a candid world.
Can we echo the US Constitution in doxology-form, as Paul echoed Caesar-language? It begins with
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Now hear echoes of atonement language that most fully belong to Jesus; this from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Could we form atonement language which echoes Lincoln? I’ll come back to that later.
Thomas Paine, the great Revolution-era propagandist, said:
We have it within our power to begin the world over again.
Our power? The world was made anew on Easter, not in the Enlightenment!
George W Bush said:
America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining. Today, our nation saw evil - the very worst of human nature - and we responded with the best of America.
I believe the cross is the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world, Mr. President. And what, the church should ask, does he mean by "the best of America", and how might it compare with the "the best of Christ Jesus"?
Elsewhere President Bush said:
This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.
Is anyone else seeing, as Paul saw, that the empire’s mythic language must be confronted by the truth of Jesus?
Bush, again:
In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America, because we are freedom’s home and defender. And the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time.
That is as much a theological claim as it is a political one, claiming for the American empire language which rightly belongs to Jesus and his church.
More Bush:
Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.
Heresy! Treason! Jesus is ridding the world of evil! How dare any institution sap the cross and empty tomb of such power. That the church has so clangingly failed to hear these claims as power-plays against the real Commander-in-Chief, Jesus Christ, baffles me utterly.
One more from Bush:
America is united. The freedom-loving nations of the world stand by our side. This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil, but good will prevail.
Again, didn’t Jesus already beat evil? Didn’t good prevail in the resurrection? We must not be led astray by this false gospel of anyone but the true King beating evil.
And let’s not forget that great myth that world history can be benevolently guided by the invisible hand of the market. One wonders, what ever happened to the invisible hand of Yahweh Almighty in ruling history? We have put ourselves, rhetorically, in the wrong hand.
Finally, here’s an easy one to subvert:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
If Christian conversion is about allegiance, this pledge must be stood down. We must pledge allegiance to King Jesus.
Before giving an example of how we might use imperial language as prophetic language, we should pause to hear one important contour about how Paul reclaimed imperial claims from Caesar for Jesus: he often simultaneously drew from the imagery, language, rhetoric, and aspirations of Jewish memory, custom, and scripture at the same time! He didn’t just steal from Caesar’s pledge of allegiance or just quote Micah 6:8. No, he often did both. Paul drew from biblical language and from contemporary power-language, and let them dance worshipfully in the minds of his readers!
The evangelical movement has been great at only doing the latter, quoting scripture, proof-texting; but we have been lousy at synthesizing biblical language and allusions with the language of the contemporary culture and empire. So, it is important to me, if this experiment is to follow Paul’s lead, that we reach one hand into the language-banks of our religious traditions, stories, and memories, and the other hand into the mythic language of contemporary empires. Combined they sharpen one another, and our prophetic life together.
I’ll end my presentation today with these few remixes, only partially grasping, I admit, this final ingredient of biblical allusions:
Language of "the axis of evil" might read:
"The axis of evil - sin, rebellious powers, and the devil - was challenged, exhausted, and defeated decisively on the cross of Jesus Christ."
President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which I quoted an excerpt from earlier, may be paraphrased in Jesus as:
Two millenia ago, our Father brought forth onto this world a new creation, conceived in suffering, and dedicated to the proposition that God’s kingdom has the last word. … But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this world. The humble servant, dead but now alive, who suffered on Golgotha, has consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract…. From Jesus crucified we take increased devotion to that cause for which he gave the last full measure of devotion - that God’s world, under his reign, shall have a new birth of God’s freedom from sin and death - and that the kingdom of God and his Christ shall not perish from the earth.
And perhaps God’s churches can have their own pledge of allegiance:
I pledge allegiance to the true Commander in Chief, and to the kingdom for which he died, one church under God, indivisible, with God’s freedom and justice for all.
There is much more to be done. I have begun a Google Document which catalogues the mythic language of America, from founding articles to famous speeches to patriotic parlance to national songs. At the bottom of the document is the beginning of a "Letter to the Church of America" which has inaugurated an effort to put this most fully into effect. Talk to me if you’d like to see it, and participate in its creation.
Thank you, and may the Pax Christi, not the Pax Americana, be with you as we invest our churches with prophetic language that provocatively reveals God’s kingdom to contemporary culture.
Wesley White
Peter’s second sermon in Acts 3 is often overshadowed by the well-rehearsed first sermon in Acts 2. John Howard Yoder particularly bemoans this for the loss of Christological emphasis that ensues in diverse discussions concerning the prophetic stance of the church.[1] It is all the more surprising given Peter’s dependence on the Deuteronomic quote (Deut. 18:15) for the conclusive impact of his address (Acts 3:22), including the unabashed Mosaic comparison (hōs eme) that casts Jesus among the highest order of what Israelite tradition projects into the role of prophet. In fact, the post-resurrection Jesus[2] claims even greater allegiance as the one upon whom “the restoration of all things” revolves and upon whom soul-survival rests. Yoder contends that all succeeding ecclesial expressions of prophetic practice should similarly be Christologically determined.
In so doing, Yoder happily aligns himself with the “radicals” of the Reformed Reformation who distanced themselves from Luther when he essentially abandoned a vision governed by the “Rule of Christ,” opening the way for the later developments of Bultmann, in one respect, and Kierkegaard in another, in which there is little need for a critique of or word to the world and in which radical discontinuity goes so far as to suspend the ethical.[3] To the contrary, prophetic responsibility requires an empowering of what might be understood as a missionary ethic of incarnation. It is, in fact, an ethical posture grounded in an appreciation of Creation that is not independent of Redemption.[4]
Only evangelical Christology (properly understood) of this kind can aspire to a transformationist approach to culture that is both humble and hopeful with reference to the biblical recognition that everything is not yet subject to Jesus. (Heb. 2:8-9) Because of it, tactical alliances can be encouraged in the interest of what Yoder refers to as “interworld transformational grammar.”[5] Becoming allies, for example, with pluralist/relativist deconstruction of coercive certainty, toward which orthodoxy is deceptively prone, need not turn relativism into a new monism. Likewise, tactical sharing of the grammar of liberation, by way of another example, need not result in advocacy for violent revolution. Humility gladly acknowledges the benefit of mutual sharing, while at the same time hope insists on the elevation of Christ as both a symbolic and lived word to the world.
On the other hand, incarnational prophetic responsibility must challenge epistemological stances that either conflate political authority and social consensus with particular belief systems, or are determined pragmatically on the basis of whether or not they escape social reproach. Neither of these can be countenanced when high Christology properly assumes that Messiah is placed above rather than within cosmology and culture in such a way that the lordship of Jesus is affirmed as the surest way to coherence and meaning. The particularity of incarnation, however, requires the low road that is not so concerned with making Jesus contextually relevant as it is with practices that render it compelling for others to join in following him.
Incarnation, therefore, strongly invokes an approach to spirituality that accentuates prophetic demonstrations and verbalizations that are localizable and (concurrently) serves to differentiate Jesus from the multitude of religious hero figures. Liberation from violence, identification with the poor, the constructing of forgiving community, reference to common stories that have shaped a worldwide communion are all indicative of what Yoder calls the “relative” fruitfulness of Jesus as iconoclastic prophet purposefully located amidst various clashes of culture and despite the ongoing betrayals of his own disciples. “His message interpenetrates with the realms of politics and culture” as most forms of devotion do not.[6]
When incarnation moves out of the simple historic arena and into a properly construed communal context it requires that serious attention be given to a hermeneutic of peoplehood. It is within this setting, particularly, that the “one who prophesies” (1 Cor. 14:3, 29) serves as an agent of direction for both the community’s singular moral/ethical stance and as a motivator for the world at large. Ecclesia that conforms to this rendering of peoplehood happily embraces its own identity in terms of theo-political categories, preferring in fact to situate itself in the very midst of worldly concerns with communally prophetic intentions.[7] Furthermore, when ecclesial life is so conceived, Pauline and Johannine contrasts (Romans 13 and Revelation 13) turn out to be less about differing states and more a reflection of the enduring ambiguous reality of any state. It compels the church to be a community of prophetic dissent, not apolitical but hyperpolitical, offering more original, creative and intensive ways of realizing a healthy polis.[8]
The eschatological orientation of missional community of this sort, therefore, is both affirmed and intentional. It reasserts an ardent Christology by articulating what James McClendon (assessing Yoder’s contribution) refers to as a “politics of resurrection.”[9] It interprets the work of God in such a way that juxtaposes hope in the cumulative results of human achievement with hope in Yahweh who raises the dead. In this manner, Yoder situates the prophetic purpose of missional community within an eschatological framework that is deliberately anticipatory in nature. If communities of this kind have recourse only to their primitive origins, their social engagement cannot help but be severely limited and temporal. Far more resourceful are those that envision themselves as collectively progressing toward the future of Jesus Christ. “The people of God,” according to Yoder, “is called to be today what the world is called to be ultimately.”[10]
[1] John Howard Yoder, The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, ed. Michael Cartwright (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1994), 147.
[2] Zehnle notes Peter’s dependence on the LXX and its interesting use of ανιστημι (3:22) in what is minimally an allusive, if not a forthright suggestion as to a new Christological paradigm for the role of prophet in light of the resurrection. For comparison, cr. ref. 2:14 and 3:7. See, Richard F. Zehnle, Peter’s Pentecost Discourse: Tradition and Lukan Reinterpretation in Peter’s Speeches of Acts 2 and 3 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971), 72.
[3] Yoder’s critique of Luther is in the context of “binding and loosing” as prescribed by Jesus (Mt.18:15,18), and reflects Luther’s frustration with establishing a truly evangelical community. See, Ulrich S. Leupold, ed., Luther’s Works, vol. 53: Liturgy and Hymns (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1965), 64. Bultmann’s overriding concern for authenticity leaves little room, if any, for material ethical content. See, John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 18-19. Ronald Green wrestles with various interpretive offerings of the sacrifice of Isaac story for which Kierkegaard made a name, at least in part, by rejecting any Christ typology in it. See, Ronald M. Green, “Abraham, Isaac, and the Jewish Tradition: An Ethical Reappraisal,” Journal of Religious Ethics 10/1 (Spring 1982), 1-21.
[4] Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom, 44
[5] The danger is rendering Jesus either optional or innocuous. Properly understood and approached, the collision of the message of Jesus with postmodern lauding of pluralism and relativism can radically shape the world in affirming ways. See, The Priestly Kingdom, 56. A critical element in transformational grammar of this sort is an honest appraisal of what is meant by the term “power.” It can be construed as neither neutral nor intrinsically evil. See, Nigel Goring Wright, Disavowing Constantine: Mission, Church, and the Social Order in the Theologies of John Howard Yoder and Jürgen Moltmann (Milton Keyes: Paternoster, 2000), 70. However, the church must be willing to be the community of prophetic dissent when power becomes hegemonic rather than serviceable. See Yoder’s views on this in, ‘Mennonite Political Conservatism: Paradox or Contradiction,’ in H. Loewen (ed.), Mennonite Images (Winnipeg: Hyparion Press, 1980), 8.
[6] See, The Priestly Kingdom, 57-58. The Mosaic paradigm comes to the fore as the Old Testament prophetic stance is carried on, only more radically, in Jesus. How the Hebraic prophet tradition can be instructive for political and cultural challenges today is admirably discussed by Richard Bauckham despite the fact that he generalizes far too much in his assessment of Anabaptist distinctives. See his, The Bible in Politics: How to Read the Bible Politically (London: SPCK, 1989), 6. Hermenutical resorting to paradigm and analogy is similarly advocated by Christopher Wright, Living as the People of God: The Relevance of Old Testament Ethics (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1983), 40-45, and by Andrè Dumas, Political Theology and the Life of the Church (London: SCM Press, 1978), 68-69.
[7] Bosch particularly emphasizes the missional potency generated when ecclesial objectives do not shy away from theo-political considerations. He suggests, for example, that missional community inherently assumes a prophetic stance. See, D. J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: An Introduction to a Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991), 377. Yoder, of course, intends to extend our understanding of prophecy so that “its primary focus is neither prediction nor moral guidance,” but rather the declaration of and reinforcement of “a vision of the place the believing community in history, which vision locates moral reasoning.” In all of this, it is dependent upon the work of the Spirit rather than social contract democracy. See, The Priestly Kingdom, 29.
[8] Serving the subject’s welfare is part of the radical possibility entertained in Romans 13. See, John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 210. It is in keeping with the examples of Joseph and Daniel who willingly serve the pagan king, yet avoid idolatry. For a good treatment of this see, “To Serve our God and to Rule the World,” in C. Villa-Vincencio, Between Christ and Ceasar: Classic and Contemporary Texts on Church and State (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 92. At the same time, Villa-Vincencio turns to Barth for a rehearsal of that vision that acts as an eschatological symbol meant to challenge the state.
[9] James McClendon, Jr., Systematic Theology, vol.1, Ethics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986), 7. McClendon contends that ethical reflection is like a three stranded rope comprising ethics of the body, of culture and community and of the resurrection promoted by Christian community that is both primitive and eschatological.
[10] John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching World (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1992), ix.
By Steve Ganz
Moses was having a bad day. The whole nation was complaining that they wanted meat, and God was ticked off. People were dying and crying and Moses was tired of carrying the whole weight. So Moses told the LORD, “If this is how you are going to treat me, put me to death right now — if I have found favor in your eyes — and do not let me face my own ruin."
Moses needed help. But God had a solution other than killing Moses. He told Moses that not only was he going to provide meat for the whole nation; he was going to provide them enough meat for a month! And he was also going to get Moses some help. He told Moses to gather together 70 elders and the LORD was going to put some of the Spirit that was upon Moses upon them.
Moses couldn’t believe his ears. As impossible as it was to provide that much meat out in the wilderness, Moses told the people what the LORD had said and gathered together the elders at the meeting tent. Then the LORD came down in a cloud and took of the Spirit that was upon Moses and put it upon the 70 leaders. When this happened they all prophesied. Even two guys who were supposed to be there but stayed behind in the camp also received the Spirit and prophesied.
Now Joshua, Moses’ aide, didn’t like the way this looked, and told Moses so. But Moses replied, "Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the LORD’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!"
Would Moses get his wish? Nearly every prophet in some way prophesied of a coming time when God’s Spirit would be outpoured. It would be the day of the King and the kingdom. Before the day of Pentecost, after Jesus’ resurrection, the Apostles asked Jesus if this was the time that the kingdom would be restored. This was just after Jesus had taught them over the last 40 days about the kingdom. Jesus didn’t rebuke them for still not understanding, but told them that “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Jesus’ answer, as always, went to the heart of the issue. In lieu of an immediate full and complete manifestation of the kingdom - the restoration of the kingdom – there would be an outpouring of the Spirit in power so that the people of God could be a witness to Jesus throughout the whole world.
As Joel had prophesied, one of the results of the outpoured Spirit would be prophecy. Throughout the book of Acts, when people had the Spirit come upon them, they often prophesied. Paul wrote that we should all “eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy”. Why did Moses and Paul want God’s people to be prophetic? Why does the Holy Spirit desire to manifest himself in the church through prophecy? Is there some aspect of the kingdom of God, and of our witness to Jesus, that cannot be seen apart from the prophetic?
What is prophecy? The prophet Amos wrote, “God has spoken, who can but prophesy?” John, in the book of Revelation, writes that the “Spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.” Prophecy is where someone, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, says what God is saying to a person, a group, a nation, or a situation. The person acts as God’s voice. This may be about the future, but is also often about the past and the present. In Revelation chapters 2-3 Jesus is seen speaking to the 7 churches. He reveals, through what he tells John to write, something about himself, something about how he sees them, what they have done, are doing, what they should do and what Jesus himself will do. This is the essence of prophecy. It is God personally communicating through his servants his intentions to others.
This is the kind of help Moses needed. He needed others to come alongside and be God’s voice to the people. The load was way too much to bear for one person. Paul wanted us to eagerly desire the supernatural ability to be God’s voice to others. Why? Because Paul wanted us to help each other know God in reality, not just in our imagination. We all want God to genuinely enter into our lives and interact with us. Without prophecy, God can be too distant, intangible, and transcendent. With prophecy we can hear God’s voice in a tangible way. So “if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!" It is to this reality of God among us that prophecy is meant to be a witness. This is how prophecy builds us up in our faith. Through prophecy we can see Jesus active in our midst.
The gift of prophecy needs to be reclaimed by the church. It has fallen on hard times through misunderstanding, misuse, and abuse. Even the basis for this gift, the outpouring of the Spirit, is either discounted or misapplied. Paul warned us not to be ignorant of these things of the Spirit. Yet much of the body of Christ lives as if prophecy is irrelevant. Because of this, our witness to the world that Christ is among us is often without power. Our impact on the world is not what it could be. And why should we have impact if all we are offering is just another set of ideas and practices, albeit good ones? Paul never wanted the gospel to be presented in this way.
Paul, in writing to the Thessalonians, said, “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.” They knew that God chose them because the gospel came to them in more than just words, but also in the power of the Spirit. He also wrote to the Corinthians, “my message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”
One of my deep disappointments regarding the emerging church movement is its apparent rejection of the practice of the gifts of the Spirit. In its effort to distance itself from the excesses, doctrinal immaturities, exclusiveness, and fundamentalism of some of the previous ‘Spirit’ movements in the church, it has turned a deaf ear to many of the more dramatic types of genuine Spirit manifestation. Although this is not without some justification, I think that Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonians that they should not despise prophecy is also applicable to us today.
The passage in Thessalonians reads like this: “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.” As with all of Paul’s exhortations, there was a good reason for giving them. If we could not put out the Spirit’s fire, why would he have exhorted us not to put it out? But what did Paul mean by the Spirit’s fire? Does anyone besides me hear echoes of the words of the prophets? Without the fire of the Spirit the distinction between the holy and the profane would be blurred. Fire marks the line of that which is totally devoted to the Lord from that which is not yet so devoted. But it is the Spirit’s fire, a fire not of our own making. Yet that cannot mean that the Spirit’s fire can burn without our consent and complicity. If it could burn in such a way, without our consent, then how could we put out the Spirit’s fire? So for the fire of the Spirit to burn in us we need to agree with the Spirit. This results in a passion for the things of God – love, holiness, faith, compassion, forgiveness, truth, justice, fidelity, and so on. By agreeing to live like this we are in step with the nature of the Holy Spirit. The more we are consumed by these virtues the more we are ‘on fire’ by the Spirit.
Yet there is an aspect of the Holy Spirit’s fire that manifests itself in the supernatural, in things that happen that defy natural explanation, which we also need to consent to. This will bug the rationalist who must have all things explained in a natural, causative way. The difficulty in explaining the supernatural is that it cannot be explained naturally. How come everyone isn’t healed, or why did God answer that prayer but appears not to have answered this other prayer? The rationalist wants rules so it will work the same way every time. There probably are rules and principles governing the manifestation of the supernatural power of the Spirit of God, but they are not natural rules. This is not magic. It is a relationship with the supernatural Being who made it all and who desires to share his life and power with his children.
Our witness to Christ is that he is real. Prophecy, done rightly, will help to confirm our affirmation that Jesus is risen and is truly among us by the Spirit of God. This is why Jesus wanted the disciples to wait until they had been “clothed with power from on high” before they began their witness. Jesus didn’t want the gospel to be just another religion. He wanted the world to know that he is really the Son of God, the Son of the One-and-Only-Who-Made-it-All. They would need the power of the Spirit to declare this in a manner consistent with the message. Only by a demonstration of the character and power of the Spirit can the church be truly incarnational.
Will Moses get his wish? The potential is there. God has poured out his Spirit. The Church needs to decide if it can have the faith to receive it in order to hear God and say what God is saying. Maybe then we all can be, each in his own way, a prophet of God.
By Nathan Willard
In the city of Portland, Oregon there is a square. It is a brick-paved depression in the center of downtown surrounded by tall buildings, which block out much of the fickle autumn sunlight. This square has been named Pioneer Square. There is another Pioneer Square in Seattle. A young man I know was drinking heavily one night in Portland, he asked strangers for a ride to Pioneer Square and ended up in Seattle. The one in Portland has been nicknamed “Portland’s Living Room”. However, it takes a very special event to entice the upstanding citizens of Portland to linger. Instead they briskly skirt by it, shopping at Nordstrom’s, grabbing a latte from the Starbucks placed in its Northwestern corner, or hopping on The Max, the light rail train. If you walk past the square, a fundamentalist screamer may harangue you. This could be a man with a picket sign declaring his belief that the holocaust is a Jewish conspiracy. Or a group verbally attacking a tuba band playing Christmas carols may aim their righteous anger at you. “Christmas is a pagan holiday,” they say. “Jesus hates Christmas.” But, everyone knows Jesus loves, he doesn’t hate. Isn’t that what the Church tells us? These day war protestors congregate there and they bang pots and pans for peace.
There are the gentle religious folk, the happy-glad-handers, who sit with the home bums and street kids, who may attempt a conversation with a gutter punk – those are the wealthy kids from Beaverton who look homeless. They usually sit on a stone wall in front the old courthouse – I think that’s what that building is. These do-gooders pass out socks, food, toiletries, condoms, etc. But, there isn’t as much of all that these days. The city didn’t appreciate the few Portlandites who used the square as their living room and has successful driven them off to spots that only the street people know. Now people from the suburbs can pass by the square without being inconvenienced by Portland’s parasitical population. No, the undesirables are conveniently removed from view, unless you happen to wander north of Burnside, or into Waterfront Park. That’s outside the safe confines of the Saturday market, for now.
The other day, Gilbert, who is a tall long legged man, walked rapidly past Pioneer Square. It was chilly that day. His hands were stuffed deep in his pants pockets. His coat was buttoned up to his throat. A small man, who resembled a subdued, but still unstable, Robin Williams always on the verge of crying, tottered towards Gilbert. The small man’s name is Larry. He is an immigrant from what was Czechoslovakia. Larry, as is common, was wearing a filthy grey sweatshirt with dark red stains spattered on his chest. He put a Mountain Dew bottle that had been filled with a red liquid into his duffel bag.
Larry pointed at Gilbert and smiled. “Are you teasing me?” he says.
But Gilbert walks by. He didn’t, he didn’t look at Larry. He ignored him. Everyone ignores Larry, because he is a drunk and tells you the same stories over and over again all in the same conversation. The next time you talk to him, he’ll tell you the same stories again. You have no idea when the conversation is going to end; that’s the worst part. All of his stories are about someone named Michael. Larry loves Michael, though Larry refers to him as a “son-of-a-gun”. “Still I love him.” He smiles as he says it, then slouches, he looks at you and sighs. “Still I love him.” Sometimes it may sound like Larry thinks Michael is a god, or Michael the Archangel. “Michael is so beautiful, he’s glorious. He saved me.” Perhaps Larry is a Jehovah’s Witness. But no, Michael is an architect.
“One time Michael took me to the zoo. We looked at the monkeys,” Larry says. “Michael said, ‘You know Larry you look like a monkey.’ What? I said. But you know, he was right. They were beautiful.” Larry sighs. “They had brown and black bodies and yellow stripes on their face.”
“You know how I met Michael?” ask Larry. “He was reading a Bible in the Library. Everyone else was reading novels, magazines, text books, but Michael was reading the Bible.” Larry laughs. “I went to Catholic school. I saw Michael reading the Bible and so I asked him about it.”
“One time he took me to a movie. You know what movie it was? Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart.” Larry slaps his hands on his knees.
Then he’ll ask you, “What is love?”, or “What is life?”, or “What is perception?”. And eventually, depending on what you say, he might tell you about Jesus. And he’ll ask you if your water bottle is full of vodka. He doesn’t drink vodka, he says, just Mountain Dew.
Once Larry made some rather incoherent statements about a quest that Michael went on. Larry looked like he was about to cry, his jaw was set. But, he looks like that most of the time; incredibly joyful, then incredibly sad.
Larry is ostracized, by both the homed and homeless. I was standing with a homeless man once. Larry approached. He looked at me, pointed. “Are you teasing me?” he said. My companion stated, “I can’t stand that guy”, and walked away. The man I had been standing with has been a Christian for about five years. He used to be a wizard. He was a shaman and could heal people. Now he tells people about Jesus and he confronts druids and Satan worshipers. As a Christian he once prayed that a leader of Portland’s Satanic Church, who he knows personally, would be healed. The man was healed. My friend let him know it was through the power of Jesus. The Satan worshiper said, he would take whatever help he could get.
Gilbert went to Czechoslovakia last spring; it’s now actually the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He went to see were his grandfather and grandmother met. His grandfather, Eugene, was in the Russian army and was part of the force, which liberated the Czechoslovakian people during World War II. He met Gilbert’s grandmother, Ana, in a small town in Slovakia called Ruzomberok. He had leave one day and wanted to explore a castle ruins he could see from the town. So, he set out through the fields in the direction of the castle. As he was exploring the ruins, he fell and twisted his ankle. Ana heard his shouts for help. She brought her uncles cart to carry him back to his camp. Eugene fell in love, he deserted after the war ended and found Ana. It took him a while to convince her to marry him, but when he did finally they made their way to West Germany and eventually the States. They lived in Chicago, missed their homes, their families, but never went back. Eugene had been Russian Orthodox, Ana was Roman Catholic, but Gilbert’s father, George, found their religions too suffocating, and didn’t see any point for all the rituals. Gilbert loved the Czech Republic and Slovakia. What impressed him the most were the beautiful churches in every town and the shrines, every mile it seemed, along the roads. Most towns had Stations of the Cross on the nearest hill. These would culminate at the top of the hill with a small chapel.
The grandest of these is in the town of Banska Stiavnica. The sun was setting when Gilbert, his wife and their friends arrived at the top. The chapel had received a make over in the twenties or thirties, but had since fallen into disrepair. It was in the process of being restored, but a majority of the stations were in disrepair. The chapel looked like a crypt, so their exploration was tentative. The chapel is a large open-faced domed room; on each side identical towers stand. Crumbling white plaster covers the building. The trim and the roof are painted blood-red. Two unpainted stone statues standing on pillars flank the entrance. Inside the walls are covered with frescos. Straight above you gazing down upon you is the resurrected Christ. These frescoes are faded and flaking off, in desperate need of repair. But, they may not be very old – there are outdated electrical lines underneath the paintings. The restorers are in the process of pulling these out.
Suzan, Gilbert’s wife, a pale red haired descendent of Irish potato farmers who has a propensity for wearing Christian T-shirts, is stunned by their beauty. The artist speaks to her. He may have been devout, or perverse, but here in this chapel, with gifts both given and cultivated he proclaims the resurrection of Christ. Only a blind man would be unable to read this message. Yet, the works of men are fleeting. Some of the greatest artists’ works, paid for by the richest rulers, are dismantled and sold in an American antique store.
As Gilbert walked away from Larry he ran into one of those young people with clipboards; the kind who try to get you to sign a petition or give money to some cause. Gilbert tried to avoid eye contact with this particular one. She was an attractive young white girl with a picture of Gandhi on her clipboard. “Do you have a minute for peace?” She asked.
How could he say no?
On Wednesday Gilbert went to a sports bar in southeast Portland known as The Scoreboard. It’s a dive. He was putting off doing a paper for his New Testament Critical Issues class. Gilbert likes The Scoreboard because it isn’t the kind of place that relevant Christians go to. It couldn’t be glamorized, nor did it have any ironic charm. Years before, when it was called Darwin’s Theory, it had been the sight of a thriving social scene. As the regulars got older, the bar became dilapidated. It got a new name and a big screen T.V., but not much else. Gilbert ordered a Roots IPA and sat down on a lumpy booth seat. A football game was on the T.V. Gilbert was putting off his paper concerning the story of the rich young ruler, because it disturbed him. He entertained the idea of selling everything, living on the streets. He didn’t think his wife would agree to this and what was he supposed to do when they had kids? But, he did feel like he had to do something big, something really extravagant. Maybe he could start a new monastic order. Really, he was perplexed. He had started Seminary with the intention of becoming a youth pastor when he was done. After a few years of that he might try to get a job as a professor at a small Bible college. What he got was a whole lot of talk about being missional, and incarnational. Of course it seemed very similar to how everyone in undergrad had talked about postmodernism. No one really new what it was, they just knew it was important.
Gilbert thought that he was a pretty normal guy. He didn’t need to change the world. He just wanted a fun job that paid all right. He’d done youth work before and liked the schedule of church work. Gilbert was a good teacher. He knew his Bible well and was good at encouraging people. Both the cool kids and the geeks liked him. With Suzan’s help he had put on some big events and had gotten a lot of kids to come to the Church. Well they mainly would just come to the Wednesday night meetings and Camp. It seemed to Gilbert that the Church’s biggest problem was attracting people in their twenties and thirties. The church needs to be relevant, thought Gilbert. He could do that.
He was told once that a pastor needed to keep his distance from the congregation. They needed to respect him, and needed to be able to put him on a pedestal. He had seen some guys in undergrad get up in front of a men’s chapel and tell about all their sexual deviations. They would break down blubbering. He’d seen this before for drinking, and drugs as well. Everyone was so sorry, but they looked like asses. And, they probably went right back to doing what they did before. The ones he knew had. It didn’t really seem like anyone really changed. Take care of the church kids; don’t lose them to the world. Or, at least, indoctrinate them enough so that they come back when they have their own kids. Get the cool kids to come to your church, and the pretty girls. That’ll bring in enough of the other kids. Keep them entertained so they won’t go looking for fun elsewhere. What else could you do?
His friend Paul walked in the door. He was the guy that introduced the bar to Gilbert. Paul wasn’t a Christian, though he had grown up as one. Paul left the Church, because he didn’t think God was there, or at least not just there in some special way. Marlow was with him. Gilbert didn’t know him, but had seen him before at the Artistery, which is a play on the word “monastery”. It used to be connected with a big church in town called Imago Dei Community. The Artistery was for Christian artists to learn how to be better artists and people – presumably better Christians. Now Gilbert thinks it’s hardly Christian at all, and there doesn’t seem to be much art happening there either. They do host a lot of concerts. Gilbert thinks Marlow is one of the problems. This guy has a lot of tattoos, on one hand Zion is written on his knuckles, but then he’s got 666 on the thumb of his other hand. The guy has a pseudo Mohawk now, but used to have some dreads. It seems like half of the people at the Artistery get mohawks when they move in. This guy looks like the worst of them. A bunch of people raised Christian, but now trying to be rebellious – drinking, smoking, screwing around. What kind of witness did these people have, Gilbert wonders.
Gilbert didn’t want to talk to Marlow, so after a cursory greeting he got up, settled his tab and left. As he walked to his car his cell phone rang. It was Darlene, the secretary from the church he attends – called The Inferno— used to be called Calvary Baptist. Gilbert had been in charge of putting up the crèche that afternoon.
“The baby Jesus is missing,” she said. “Did it get set up?”
“I put it up myself. Is the whole manger missing, or just Jesus?
“No, the manger’s there. But where’s Jesus?”
Gilbert didn’t have a clue.
A Prophet is a person who communicates a God-inspired message. They proclaim that revelation through words, or symbolic actions. Jesus was a revelation from God. Not only did he carry a message from God, Jesus was the Word. He did not simply point the way towards God; he is the Way. The Church is the body of Jesus. Therefore the Church is the present incarnation of Jesus on earth. Whatever we say or do is a representation of God. We represent Jesus. We act on behalf of Jesus. Whatever we do, or say, as individuals, or as a group is a chance to be prophetic. We are given the awesome privilege of speaking and acting on behalf of God. We are given the frightening responsibility of representing God. We are set apart, made sacred, so that we may be mediators between God and man. The Church is a prophet.