Where have all the prophets gone?
Absolutely riveting (and personally challenging) message by George Mason, senior pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas)
Here's the link and below that I've embedded some of the text (it's rather long, so you might want to go the link to get the whole article):
http://txbc.org/Wherehaveprophetsgone.htm
Where Have All the Prophets Gone
By Phil Strickland Executive Director, BGCT Christian Life Commission (The speech was delivered to the Texas Baptists Committed breakfast at the Baptist General Convention of Texas meeting, Nov. 14, 2005, in his absence by George Mason, Senior Pastor, Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas)
“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various tongues … " (1 Cor. 12:27-29).
Prophets! I thought we got rid of them a long time ago. Actually, I haven't seen many around lately. Where have all the prophets gone?
You may remember the Pete Seeger song made popular by Peter, Paul and Mary— Where Have All the Flowers Gone . Well, I think we need new words to that tune. On any given Sunday morning in a Baptist church there are plenty of flowers in front of the pulpit, but not a prophet to be found behind it.
Where have all the prophets gone?
Lord knows we need them. Consider:
--One half the world is living on $2 a day. But that's the other half, right? They are used to that;
--25% of our Texas children living in poverty. But that's other people's children, right? Figure that's the way
God thinks of them?
--Religious liberty is being lost without our seeming to notice. It's oozing away through our fingers like a fist full of sand until we open it all too late to discover there is not much of it left in our grasp;
--And then there's the dramatic and continuing shift of the world's wealth away from the poor and the middle class to the largest corporations and the wealthiest people. But not to worry, we can trust them to do the right thing with all that money, right? After all, the marketplace evens everything out in the end. Isn't that where we can depend upon the “invisible hand” of God to work? Or was that just Adam Smith's hand?
--Environmental regulations are disappearing every day. But we are given by God the right to have dominion over all the earth, aren't we? Well, something like that;
--And what about another tax cut of $70 billion dollars that will be funded by $50 billion dollars of cuts to children? That proposal will probably be passed by the House this week and is supported by the administration. 300,000 people will lose food stamps and another 300,000 will lose access to daycare. The bill cuts Medicaid by $45 billion when we already have 45 million people who have no health insurance. Something tells me that's not what Jesus meant by “Suffer the little children ….”
Where have all the prophets gone?
Have they all disappeared? Or is it possible that some of them are around but aren't doing their job? Is it possible that God is still appointing them, but not many of us want the job? I mean, we know what happened to Jonah, and the belly of a whale doesn't sound like fun, does it?
Walter Brueggemann is one of our best Old Testament scholars. In books like his wonderful work, The Prophetic Imagination (and Finally Comes the Poet ), he doesn't let us relegate prophecy to biblical times. Prophets are not obsolete, although they seem rather rare these days, despite the great need for them in our churches and in our world.
I want to suggest that pretty much all of us are called to have an element of the prophet in us. Yes, I understand that is not the primary role for many of us, but I'm thinking that being overcrowded with prophets is not our problem right now.
I'm suggesting that for pastors, for example, as we call them to the role of pastor/preacher, we might also want to add the word prophet —pastor/ preacher/ prophet. Such pastors will value our values and will fight for them. The title of prophet might even apply to laymen, or, God forbid, to a denomination! These groups, with a little prophetic imagination, could become the cutting edge of the prophetic in our society, rather than the six to eight “prophets” we hear on TV whose prophetic imagination is limited to Armageddon. These genuine prophets would be ready and willing to confront the principalities and powers, whether they be school boards, city councils, the legislature, Congress, or even our own Baptist institutions.
But seldom do I go to churches and hear prophetic, or even strong ethical preaching. And the brave pastors that want me to preach for them often say a word to me before I go. It goes something like this: “Now, Phil, our church is not really in a place where it can deal with anything controversial.” Which tells me that they don't want to do anything that involves risk. Which tells me that no prophecy is happening there since prophecy always contains an element of risk!
Back to our $70 billion tax cut being currently being considered, funded partially, as I said, with $50 billion being cut from programs that are used for poor children. If the pastor as prophet wanted to point out the injustice of that, how would that go over with some of the members of the church?
Well, I think I can answer that for Phil. They would cry “Politics!” They would suddenly become strict church-state separationists. Of course, what they really are saying is that they don't want God and government to go together if it's not their brand of politics. I'll also tell you that there's a widespread feeling in many church pews that has to be challenged. People think government is by nature always bad and needs constraining. They think government is lousy at caring for the poor and that that's really the church's business. But I can tell you that I have never once seen a line of those folks forming at my door begging for ways to give the church more money to care for the poor or eager to start new ministries that would do it better than the government.
So what is happening to prophetic voices? What is the juggler that trumps the pastoral voice? Is it lack of courage? Or ambition? Courage and ambition seldom hang out together. Or is it just the desire not to rock any boats?
(continued at link above)
posted by More Questions Than Answers @ 3:21 PM
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