My class blogs on Blackboard are actively updated, while my personal blog has been neglected. While I search for time to update the virtual world on a myriad of thoughts, I figured I could share a glimpse of my coursework. Here is a slightly edited excerpt from my Church and Ministry class blog on a module focuses on the prophetic ministry and social justice. The scripture referenced below is 1 Cor. 14:32.
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"The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets."
Prophecy
is God's truth for the edification of the body and is used by God "to
help direct a church into a proper balanced social and political action
and concern for the community within and around the church" (lecture).
Prophetic ministry still exists today, but it is up to those with
prophetic insight to share and act upon their prophetic insight.
I think
that one of the biggest injustices in the church today is a suppression of the prophetic. With that said, the lecture for this week's module
was like a breath of fresh air.
Prophetic ministry exists for
the purpose of building God's Kingdom and spreading redemption, but I
think all too often the church prefers "strategic" ministry for the
purpose of building their congregation and enhancing comfort. The church
as become more than complacent. The
Megachurch Myths book
explains that 54% of large congregations would strongly agree that
their church as a strong concern for the greater community. It seems to
me that the authors present this information to ease concern that
churches are concerned for themselves. I find this to be quite disheartening. It
means that 46% of the church members feel that the church isn't
concerned about the greater community. No one should be content that we
barely surpassed the half way point.
The church is called to be an
incarnational example of the Gospel and a glimpse of the Kingdom of God
in a fallen world, and the church that I see is far from it.
Churches
that I have attended like their hospitality, their media, their
mission trips, and their programing... but all of these positive
outreaches are a band-aided facade that glosses over the bigger picture
that the church isn't the incarnational ministry that we should be. When
a group of people get together and make a strive for social justice, we
rejoice at their effort and check it off the spiritual success
inventory. Yet,
we shouldn't be satisfied with glimpses of social justice; we shouldn't be even remotely satisfied until the world is restored to perfect justice.
[Truncated by removing examples]
I think that the church needs to accept
responsibility to pray for and serve the surrounding community in a greater capacity. The
church needs to lay down it's pride and begin being the organism of
servant leadership that has Christ as the head, yields to the direction
of the Holy Spirit, builds missional fellowship, and makes valuable
contributions to the health of the whole (
Odgen 227). In order to
regain it's place in restoring God's justice to a broken world, the
church needs to allow people to exercise a prophetic voice.
The church needs to
be build up, called out, and stirred up so that there is an urgency
concerning the lost, a devotion to seeing God's Kingdom come to
fruition, and a righteous anger at the injustices of the people.... [examples removed again]... I must confess that I have been
the reluctant disciple at times, the
person that chooses not to prophetically speak to the congregation and
in those moments, I am inadvertently advocating for a continuation of
injustice and
disobedience as well.
With that said, I am reminded that: The
spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet, and the lack of
prophetic ministry is due to those with prophetic insight not exercising
their gifts. Granted, I know that the church isn't always receptive,
but if prophetic voices don't speak to these blind spots, who will?
Injustice will continue, and
to a certain extent the injustice is
subject to the prophet and his/her refusal to speak. If not one speaks
truth and call the body to be responsible for its community, how will
the body ever grow and mature?
Recently, I had a
conversation with someone about the difference between
idealism and faith. The distinction is that faith becomes viewed as
idealistic once prophetic ministry ceases and no one reminds the
faithful what it means to actually be faithful. The role of the church
is to be a living example of faith to the community, the role of the
prophetic is to remind the church what it means to be faithful to
Christ. We cannot sustain a ministry to the community without the voice
of the prophetic, but we have tried to do so for quite some time.
My
prayer is that God will compel people to be prophetic voices for the
modern church and that faith would infiltrate the darkness and bring the
light and hope of the Gospel to our communities.
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