New Waters S3 | Episode 4
Saints and Prophets
Whether it’s images in stained glass windows or people described in ancient texts, the idea of “saints” and “prophets” tends to conjure up some obscure religious imagery. But the truth is, both are essential to discerning our place in God’s work in the world today.
In this conversation on the New Waters podcast, Alicia Wilson leads the cast through a discussion about the role and value of voices from unexpected and forgotten places. The cast discusses discernment, the importance of community, and the question of how saints and prophets can help us to stay anchored in God’s work in the world past, present and future.
+ Show Notes
The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann
Soul Survivor by Philip Yancey
+ Transcript
ALICIA: So welcome back to Season Three of the New Waters podcast. My name's Alicia Wilson and I'll be hosting the episode today as we tackle looking at who are our saints and prophets and how do they implicate our faith today. I hail from the Hammer, AKA, Hamilton, Ontario, where I live with a community of misfits. We live in community with about eight other people right now that God has just randomly drawn together, some family, some not, but it's lots of adventures. I'd love for the other cast members to introduce themselves and maybe just something to describe themselves, how they would self-describe themselves.
For me, I think that one of the things that sticks out when people get to know me a bit is my randomness. I'm maybe not what they expected. I have dreadlocks, I listen to country music, I love playing disc golf as my sport. And so there's just a lot of random, different pieces of my personality that don't always fit, but they make me who I am. Maybe I'll throw it over to Sonia to start.
SONIA: Sure. My name is Sonia Friesen and I'm excited to be with you all. This is a little tough because is it do "I" say what I identify as, or what would people say? I'll go with what people would say, I think. I'm known to laugh a lot, and so I have this signature laugh that if I'm in a room you can identify me by it. So whether that's true or not, that's what I've been told. So that's a fun fact for you. I will throw it to Vijay.
VIJAY: Thank you, Sonia. I think that's an important distinction, what we think of ourselves and what others think... I think I'm very funny, but my family says or people say, "Oh, you're enthusiastic." I was like, "Enthusiastic? That hurts." I cannot pass up a country music reference, as Rob pointed out earlier that is a oxymoron, and as I've told my church it's the devil's music. So anyways, Rob.
ROB: Right. Hi, it's Rob Chartrand, Edmonton, Alberta. I just want to say that country music is not music and when we're all gathered in the end times at the great eschaton and everybody is able to gather from all nations and play all music, country will not be there because country is not music.
ALICIA: I highly disagree.
ROB: Unless it's the song "Butterfly Kisses." That song just gets me every time, "Butterfly Kisses"... which is going to play into what I'm going to say about self-identification. Regan says that I'm a rock, and by Regan we mean Regan who's coordinating this whole thing. So he would say that people identify me as a rock, and I particularly like being referenced in correlation with Dwayne Johnson. People, when they see me and they see my not well-sculpted body, they say that all the time, "You are the Rock." But no, really what I would say is I'm actually a big sop, I'm a big teddy bear, a crybaby sometimes, so you might not know that. So "Butterfly Kisses"... I've got two daughters...
VIJAY: Do you cry at movies?
ROB: I cry at movies, yeah. I cried at Rudy twice, when Rudy came out, the little Ruettiger. So the Rock on the outside, Dwayne Johnson, but on the inside I'm like tears of joy and sadness and all of that delicious marshmallow-ness.
ALICIA: Thanks guys. We're going to stay with the same format that we've been working with, and so I'm going to give a little bit of an overview of our topic in a few minutes. But as we start the conversation on saints and prophets and what are the voices from the past and the voices of the present that are leading us into the future, how do we hear the prophetic voices in our times?
I don't know about you guys, but for me often when I thought of saints and prophets, it was those stained glass figures that I saw in the windows of churches and these very angelic-like beings that really for me weren't grounded in any kind of reality of living out our faith today. They were very much the historical people of the past that were written about. I think I easily lost the idea that they were actually people, they actually walked this Earth, struggled the same struggles that we struggle with today, probably more similarities than differences than we realize.
And so I love that we're able to start this conversation with looking at the past and recognizing that so much of the faith that I think we live today, the foundations were laid by those saints of the past, by the people who carried the faith before us and lived it out in godly ways. Sometimes in the Protestant worldview, we have this very like, "Oh, the saints are Catholic, they're not for us, they're not a part of our faith," and that is such a lie I think, that really when we look at this biblical understanding of faith, it was the people who were able to ground themselves in their humanity, to ground themselves in living out the day-to-day journey alongside God, that were anchored in who Jesus is.
And so in this conversation, I think when we look at the saints, we recognize that the saints anchor us to the past, the church and what Jesus is doing today, anchors us in the present, and those prophetic voices draw us into the future. And so when we look at prophetic voices, it's not just the prophetic voices of the Old Testament that we heard in the Old Testament, but it's also the prophetic voices that we hear today that are drawing us into a better future. I'd love to hear a little bit about, from you guys, where do you find yourself listening for those prophetic voices?
VIJAY: I think it was for me just something that I... for the first many years of my Christian life, didn't even realize there were prophetic voices or how to recognize them in a sense... in that often they would be the voices that seemed dissonant, grating against the norms. Even to my own ears I might go, "What? Why would you be saying that?" And just starting to slowly go, "Wait, check that, maybe someone's calling out something that nobody wants to see, or calling out something before anyone else has seen it." So I think in general for me, it's more been a posture of saying that those come from all over the place.
ROB: Yeah, and I would even add to that. I agree with you, Vijay. I mean, my background is from my charismatic drive, the prophetic gifts. The charismatic side of gifts was pretty commonplace in our context. In my early faith journey that was never spooky to me, but I realize for some of our listeners, the minute we start talking about prophecy that there's all sorts of imagination being conjured up and I know we'll talk about that later, so I won't get into it right now. But for me what was surprising sometimes is some people would be a prophetic voice and they wouldn't know it.
They were speaking into a situation on behalf of God and stirring something in us or calling something out in us without saying, "Thus sayeth the Lord." The Spirit was clearly working through them to bring God's truth into the now, into the present, but they didn't even know it. And I just wonder even how many times we've done that as well, including myself is we don't even know that we're speaking into the now and yet, God is using us as a prophetic voice.
SONIA: Yeah, I agree with that, Rob. I do come from a background of the charismatics, and I would have grown up with that being part of the normality of the church. What I do love about that is the experience maybe doesn't have as many filters, but at the same time I would have experienced people sharing things without a title or that they were given something, if that makes sense. They were free to deliver a message and just welcome discernment, but we didn't necessarily put a title on it, if that makes sense.
ALICIA: I think sometimes for myself that I want to look for the prophet before the prophetic voice, that I want to be able to have confidence in the person before necessarily the truth that they're speaking. And in our culture today, there's so many voices. And we talked about social media and so many people giving their opinion of what truth is and their opinion of how we should live or what we should do or what the future looks like... And it can be so easy to get caught up with the person rather than the truth that's being spoken. And maybe we have to look more to the truth of people's words and the truth of maybe these glimpses of the prophetic voices that we can easily miss when we're looking to the wrong people to provide that voice.
VIJAY: Rob and Sonia, you mentioned charismatic traditions and we should talk about discounting or maybe who's the prophet. I think we can get caught even in, when we say that word, it, like you said Rob, conjures up images of what are we talking about. And yeah, that's an important conversation in terms of okay, what is biblical prophecy, what is prophecy post the Book of Acts. I've heard terms like "forthtelling" and "foretelling," how there's a difference between them and that kind of thing.
But I think at a basic level, it just makes me think, okay, even just in terms of God trying to get our attention through the voices of other people, like how... It was a spiritual mentor of mine saying, "Vijay, we all want to hear God's voice. Well, most often God's voice is going to come to us through the voices of other people, and are we listening?" And Rob, you talked about that, we're sometimes unaware that we might be speaking, but we're also then unaware that others might be.
And some of this is, I think what you're saying, Alicia, at a basic level, are we tuning into the fact that God may be using even what sounds like a cacophony of voices to get our attention about something, because he has something to say about it and it gets surfaced by individual people or groups of people who are repeatedly saying something or who are crying out, whether in pain or whatever? It isn't even, "Well, the Lord said this." Maybe this weird to say, but it might not even come through people who know God, but God is using human voices to say, "I want you to listen to this." It's been a growing thing for me going, "Yeah, that's I guess prophecy too."
ROB: Let me push back on that just a little bit, Vijay.
VIJAY: Please.
ROB: It just⏤in terms of a biblical framework, because I agree that God can speak to us in and through everything⏤but I mean, a prophet, technically, is somebody who speaks on behalf of God and it is Spirit speech. So there's this divine unction or compulsion that's part of that, and that's the technical term of prophecy. I don't want to minimize the voices that we hear and that God can use those and speak through those, but are they technically prophetic voices or are they just something similar?
I guess my fear, my concern is then, then every voice is a prophetic voice. So Oprah's like, "You get a prophetic voice, and you get a prophetic voice." So there's that extreme, but then on the other hand, the other extreme is just cessationism, which is just negating the voice of God at all. So I'm just trying to tease out what is a prophet versus what is a prophetic message or a prophetic voice.
VIJAY: Yeah, maybe there's a difference. I just think some of what I see sometimes is the church saying, "Well, where's that in Scripture? That's not in Scripture, that's culture," and realizing wait, culture can arrive at something before the church does and that it can be a God thing.
ROB: Yeah, totally.
VIJAY: So I think I'm speaking in general terms and I know there's a difference between saying, "Well, we think that someone is a voice sent by God or whatever," but I just think maybe sometimes our categories are too narrow and allows us too easily to discount voices and things that we say this is... And by prophetic I mean there's a God weight to it that is actually something that is deeply buried in the heart of God, that is important to God and his kingdom. So I agree with you, we don't want to conflate the terms.
ROB: That's right. And I would add, we're all created in the image of God, we're all given a conscience in terms of God's general natural revelation⏤that's available to every human being and God can work in that and through that. So we're not saying that God... I mean, God can work through a donkey to get someone's attention for crying out loud, and that's not to disparage anybody who's not of the covenant faith as a follower of Jesus, it's not the point I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is just simply that God can and will use everything to get our attention and are we listening.
I agree, sometimes the culture is ahead of us in certain issues. We're not going to maybe dive into it today, but even in matters of race, for example, moving ahead of us and some corners of the Christian faith need to listen to that and say, "Oh, maybe God is actually speaking to us through the culture for once, as a prophetic voice."
SONIA: Yeah, I agree with what you guys are bringing up and I would say I think it's wired in with our experiences and I just think instead of being fearful of it, we should give ourselves to the pursuit of really defining that and really processing through our experiences in bringing that... How does that make sense with what God's wanting to speak at. And so even for those listeners that maybe are tempted to shut this off or make a negative comment, entering this conversation, we just have to be honest that we all have defined prophecy. What has that word defined for you and why? And then, can we get to a place where we can actually live out the fullness of it?
ALICIA: And how do we live in the tension I think too of recognizing that we're probably not necessarily going to have these clear prophets saying, "I am a prophet of God. Here's what God is saying to you," in the same way that we had in the Old Testament. And so being able to hear those voices of truth, but also recognize where they're being Spirit-led. And the discussion, which I hope we'll get into later on, of how do we recognize the false prophets and how do we use our discernment to do that, but that we have to be willing to start hearing and having those conversations in order to recognize that God is speaking today.
ROB: I am always interested in hearing from your own church experiences, how does prophecy find its way into your own church life in terms of a recognized gift or office, or however you want to call it? How is your church handling the... not "handling," that sounds so pejorative... How is your church utilizing the prophetic gifts that are in the midst?
SONIA: For us, we do have a prophetic team and it isn't a team that you sign up for, it's a team that is discerned, if that makes sense. It's not advertised, it's not on your connecting card, but it's just voices that you recognize the gifts of that they're acting in this. Yeah, you see the gift of it consistently, but you also see the character growth as well. And so what we do is we tap them on the shoulder, we discern is this something you'd want to grow in, we identify this in you.
And what I love about it is there's no pressure, it's just a community that begins with well, what even is prophecy and really understanding that. And some are new believers with no faith background, some are believers that have a background that would have said this is entirely wrong, but at least having the spaces to do that. And then we incorporate that, where our prophetic team listens each week for the upcoming Sunday and it's really cool to see that played out.
VIJAY: That's cool.
ROB: Yeah.
SONIA: What I love about it too is it's just freeing in the sense... Because we all bring baggage to this conversation, but it's freeing to have those spaces to talk about it. Maybe we'll get into this later, but we do have that for kids too, we allow that. And I think part of that is I grew up in that space and it was so freeing for me to be able to even just have a place where I remember I was in junior high and I had this vision while leading worship... there was a lady in the church and it was literally the words, "Come to me, come to me." And I remember crying because it was so powerful, and at the same time thinking I'm just a kid, why would I even say that, or you don't even know what to do with that. And I remember sharing it⏤my dad was a pastor⏤so there's a bit of grace there where he's like, "Hey, let's filter this out. How do we deliver this?" And we did. And this woman came to Jesus that day and it was beautiful.
VIJAY: Amazing.
SONIA: But I do see if I would have been shut down there as a child, I think that really would have hindered my growth in this. And so what's been on my heart as I serve is I want those spaces for people. It can be messy, but that's okay. When you're grounded, there are foundational things we look for. Like I said, it isn't something that you open up for everyone necessarily. There's wisdom in a growing church, we're a growing plant, and so there's layers of growing things in different places, but that's one of the ways that we love to just have space for it.
VIJAY: Yeah, it's good. I think you speak to a number of different things, Sonia, that go around prophecy that help it. This idea of discernment is basically that both as individuals and as communities, we're meant to be attentively listening to God and we do it together in community because that protects any one person from feeling like they have heard or have to hear by themselves and somehow know it's God. So teaching people to listen to God from a young age I think is really important, and do your spiritual practices cultivate that?
The other thing we've realized is in the body of Christ, you actually need other people to affirm your gifts. They're not superpowers that you say I have. Paul says they're for the benefit of the body. The body actually has the playback to you. We've seen that in home groups where I'm like at the end of a year of being in a home group with somebody, a few of us, we had a time of affirmation where we just said what we appreciated about each other, and this one person, everyone kept saying, "When you spoke that week it meant ..." And several times over at the end of it, I said to the person, "You might have a prophetic gift because several people were affirming that there was a weight to your words when you spoke."
So I think figuring that out in community, playing that back to each other over time. It's not a declaration that you make about yourself, it's that others say, "When you spoke that, it wasn't just your voice, it was the voice of God." I think that that's a part of it too. So there's humility, there's a community commitment to it, there's a whole bunch of other things around it rather than saying someone's a prophet, they're not, that was a prophetic word or it isn't. It's more than that, it's cultivating a culture around it.
ROB: Yeah, I think the uniqueness about the prophetic gift is that for it to grow, it really does require a couple of things and you've tapped into this. I mean, one is, first of all, an environment that's okay with risk and experimentation, because the way that you grow a prophetic gift is you've got to fail a lot, because you're like, "How do I hear the voice of God?"
Exactly, right, and unless you're performing miracles. The New Testament prophet is different, right? The Acts 2, old men shall dream dreams, young men see visions. So it's a different type of thing, but you do need that experimentation and you need a church then that's going to give someone the freedom to do that.
But also what I love is it also requires mentorship. Whenever I encounter young prophets I say, "Listen, you've got to find some older prophets to get around you and to help you to learn. Learn how to discern, but also learn the whole tension of when to share and when it's not time to share and all those things that are involved in the prophetic gift."
VIJAY: All the character stuff.
ROB: Yeah, totally, because I find some young prophets have a real harshness to them at first, and so just having good mentorship to come alongside and to coach them in that really, really is helpful. Anyway, that's totally cool that your church has something like that in place. Wow, that's a gift, that's a gift, not every church has that.
SONIA: Yeah. And you know what I love about it? At the end of the day, if the people that entered into this team learned how to hear from God, it's a win. Do you know what I mean? In the end of the messiness you learned how to hear from God, you learned that you can actually hear from God. And so I love the baseline of that, and we also hold people accountable to what they share too.
What I love about it, it's like after a Sunday when they shared something and people start reacting, it's like, "Oh, that made complete sense with me." Well, you know what? Later on that day, they could send a prayer request, "You know what? I'm struggling with pride, can you pray for me? I'm struggling with pride after giving that," and just being vulnerable of what the process is after you share something and you get human affirmation and growing that character stuff out.
ALICIA: Thanks for that great dialogue to start us off. As the host today, I'm going to take a chance to give a bit of a presentation, just some biblical foundation on the saints and prophets, but as a start to that, I'd love for us to listen to a sound clip, what I would see as some prophetic statements and voices in this past year and a couple years that I think can teach us a lot.
Audio Clip: I'm a young black man doing all that I can to stand. Oh, but when I look around and I see what's being done to my kind every day, I'm being hunted as prey. My people don't want no trouble, we've had enough struggle. I just want to live. The people who own the factories of the world are disrespecting Mother Earth and making her water sick, they are killing her. ... colours, characters and conditions of man. And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. I have been asked to tell you how to improve the lives of people with Down syndrome. The key is right there in my opening paragraph, it begins with I am a man. See me as a human being, not a birth defect, not a syndrome. I don't need to be medicated, I don't need to be cured. I need to be loved, valued, educated, and sometimes helped... of the land have been under attack since the first invaders landed on our shores. We have been defending our lands... protecting our waters for generations. We have never stopped and we never will. Our laws demand that we uphold our sacred responsibilities... not only for ourselves but for the next seven generations. Our fight and our love for our land… is what connects all. Being a refugee is much more than a political status, it is the most pervasive kind of cruelty that can be exercised against a human being. You are forcibly robbing this human being of all aspects that would make human life not just tolerable but meaningful in many ways... the more imbued you are to people's suffering. That's very, very dangerous. It's critical for us to maintain this humanity... for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet, I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
ALICIA: I know for some of us listening that might not be the idea of what we have as prophetic voices or prophets in themselves. For me, it's not as much about saying this is the prophetic word that we need to hear for today, but how do we open ourselves up to hearing the truth that God's speaking in our culture today, in our world today, to the crises that we have today, maybe from unexpected people, that the voices that we heard were voices of children, were voices of those with disabilities, were voices of those who have come and been displaced from other countries, but also our own people in this land that are experiencing injustices, and our native brothers and sisters and those who are indigenous to the place that we call home. How do we hear those voices even when we might disagree with them, even when we might be unsure of them?
So often we can dismiss someone's words simply because they're not who we think they should come from, that they're not the person that we want to hear those prophetic words for, that they're not from a place of power and privilege. I think we have to humble ourselves to be able to hear God speaking from the unexpected places, from the unexpected places of society.
Historically, the prophets were not at the centre of culture, they were not the norm, they were super weird guys and they did super weird things. I think that we sometimes forget because we're in hindsight, right? And so we look at their words and we say, "Oh yeah, well, then their behaviours made sense." If we look at Ezekiel, for 420 days that he laid on his side, that he baked bread over human waste. Essentially, he barbecued over poo to get his point across. We look at Hosea, and he named his kids Unloved and Not My People. His kids had to go with those names now for the rest of their lives. Jeremiah just didn't wash his underwear to get his point across. So often I think we look at the words of the Old Testament prophets, but we forget of the obscurity that they were in their time.
If we go back to Exodus, Exodus chapter 6 was the first time that we heard in the Hebrew that the word prophet is used and it's when Moses is saying, "I can't be the one that speaks on the Lord's behalf, that I'm not the person. I stutter, I'm not good enough," and so God gives him Aaron and he gives Aaron as the role of the prophet, the one that would speak on behalf of Moses, and therefore, speaking on behalf of God.
And I think in its simplest terms, when we hold onto the fact that the prophetic voice is the one that's speaking on God's behalf, that is speaking the truth of what God is doing in the midst of our crises... we can get so lost in this idea that the prophetic voice is about telling the future, about predicting all things that are to come. And there was an element of that, there was an element of future predictions, but I think that when I think of it, it's less about this mystical, horoscope kind of fortune teller and more about being able to identify if you don't get off this course, these are the consequences, if we don't start moving, these are the consequences that are going to happen.
And so it doesn't take a fortune teller to look at the environmental crisis that we have today and say that if we don't change today, then we're going to destroy the Earth for the future, that we're not going to be able to have it. And so it's not this pie in the sky, I need to hear what's happening, it's how do we identify what's going on today and now in the crises that we have that God is trying to speak truth into, into our churches and into our lives and into our cultures.
I love how Walter Brueggemann gives this quote, "The prophet engages in future fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. Imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing. The same royal consciousness that makes it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks the imagination, because the imagination is a danger. Thus, every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing future alternatives to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one." And that's from his book, The Prophetic Imagination.
And so as we discuss what are the prophetic voices and what are the things anchoring us to what God's doing, I think a starting place is looking at acknowledging that the biblical prophet was primarily concerned with the injustices that were happening around and the exploitation of the most marginalized people. It was not about how to claim power for themselves or how to claim power in the cultural norms, but actually how to care for those who were overlooked, and how to care for those who were being marginalized and being oppressed. And so I think that becomes one of our measuring tools for the prophetic words today is what is trying to be elevated and who is trying to be protected.
And then as we tie in the saints, I think the saints give us a picture of how we live out those prophetic commands and voices. They're the ones that were able to hear what God was doing in their time, that were able to hear the voice of God and that we can look back and go, "Oh, they actually lived it. They lived what they heard and they tangibly figured out a way to be present with God in those moments, in those hurtings and move forward." And it's hard because we need to be able to look to others to be able to inspire and encourage us, and spur us on, and we need to be able to look to those who have lived and walked already the path that we're headed on.
I think it's so easy to just want to forget those who have come before. It's so easy to not look to the generation above us, and maybe that's something that we're missing as the church, are those multi-generational relationships that guide us through the turbulence, that guide us through the uncertainty. How do we stay anchored in the God who's worked through history, the God who is working today, and the God who has a vision for our future? And I think that's where our discussion on saints and prophets needs to land and be shaped by. Those are some of my initial thoughts, but I'd love to hear what you guys have been thinking over the last few minutes.
VIJAY: Yes, really good discussion. It's interesting you pointed out yes there's this kind of telling the future whatever, but actually if we look back often they were... Like you look at Isaiah especially in the first couple of chapters and then all the way through, and then definitely when you get to 58 and on to 61 and then Jesus quoting that passage, and then Amos and Micah and all of them, there were so many calls to live according to the justice and goodness and righteousness of God at that time⏤it had nothing to do with something that was going to happen in the future.
I was thinking, even growing up I was taught the prophecies and how they all pointed to Jesus, and yes of course, but not realizing that they were pointing to Jesus as the ultimate saint in a sense, the fulfillment of these calls to be righteous and do the goodness and justice of God on the Earth for people. Jesus becomes the perfect human, the Israel that failed, always to do God's will. Jesus comes as the new Israelite doing exactly what the prophets had kept calling the people to do. I was like, "Man, I never understood the life of Jesus that way, as the fulfillment of those calls to justice and mercy, compassion, righteousness." So I love that, it brings the prophet and saint thing together, you know that's what Jesus is, the perfect everything in a sense, right?
ALICIA: And that Jesus, the sainthood of Jesus, was grounded in his humanity, right? That's the thing that grounded...
VIJAY: He did it as a human.
ALICIA: Yeah, the divine became human.
ROB: What I find interesting about the prophet, just jumping on what you were saying there, Vijay, is the prophet is looking backwards before he's speaking into the present. And what he's calling Israel back to is covenant faithfulness, to Yahweh, and to return to that initial agreement that they had with God through the Torah. And so the Torah actually included a whole number of different requirements of Israel and how to care for the poor and the marginalized and the alien among them, and Israel was breaking those things. And so there is this aspect of injustice that's there, but ...
So for a prophet to speak into the present, I think it's really important that a prophet is anchored to the past, that a prophet is anchored to the voice of God, because there's no discontinuity with which God has been speaking since the beginning of time into the present. My concern is a lot of the prophetic voices we listen to don't acknowledge that continuity, that we are part of a larger stream that has been going on since God called Abraham and we're speaking into the now in light of that.
A lot of the clips you shared were social justice kinds of clips and I think if anybody should be speaking to that it should be the people of God, because God is concerned about the poor and the marginalized and the widow and the orphan and certainly we should be speaking to it, but a number of those voices don't have that continuity, they don't have that continuity from the past. I think that the gift that the church can bring to the world is this sense of continuity, that we are anchored and tied to this God who has cared for the marginalized since the beginning of time.
And what's unique about us, as the people of God, is we're anchored in something that is much bigger, that's giving much greater reason, rather than just saying, "Well, that's a system of power and therefore all systems of power are bad and let's therefore tear it down." We're saying, "Well, no, that's a system of power and it breaks with Yahweh's vision for the world, and therefore we need to call it out and speak to that." So just pointing out the difference between I guess a cultural prophetic voice and a prophetic voice in our context. That doesn't say that we don't listen to that voice, but I hope that the voices that we're hearing culturally resonate with the voice that we're part of, this continuity that takes place all the way back to the beginning of time.
SONIA: Great thoughts. I did appreciate, Alicia, when you highlighted the purpose of the word and it's a call to action many times, right? I think of 1 Corinthians 14, where it says to strengthen, comfort and encourage, but there is a purpose in the word, it's not just you just drop something and that's it, but there is a weight to it, there is a call for us to be strengthened, for us to be comforted, for us to be encouraged. And so I think that's worthwhile highlighting just the purpose of the words given.
ALICIA: What do we do with that tension of that often those words aren't comfortable, that often they're words that actually have to move us into action? And as leaders, there's always that tension of would I prefer to stay in the comfortable, that I prefer to just stay with the voices that I know where they're taking me. Do you guys wrestle with that tension?
VIJAY: I think some of it is too because there's so many things, there's so many things that are broken in our world that God wants to heal and redeem. So some of it for me is I feel oh my gosh, how do I respond to all of these ... Like even your sound clips, you, I think by intention, cut a swathe across a number of issues. So the easy paralysis that comes in and says, "I don't know, I can't do that, or, "I don't know where to fix," or, "How am I meant to respond to all of them at once?" So one of the things that was actually helpful for us, as a church, is we got involved in human trafficking⏤fighting human trafficking in our area.
ALICIA: I like that you clarified it was the fight against human trafficking.
VIJAY: Yes, exactly. I'm like, "I've gotta find a better way to do this." Yes. We got involved in human trafficking. Was something that was unfolding. Again, it first came to me personally just through another pastor who was getting involved and his stories were just wrecking me and I started saying, "Jesus, are you calling me to do something? I'm a pastor, but does this mean that you're wrecking me, am I supposed to now go and wreck my church too with this? Is this something for them too?" That's an important thing, because sometimes, as a leader, God's doing something in us, it doesn't mean it's necessarily for everyone, but it might.
So that's where it started and then one thing led to another and then God brought other people and it became clear to us, like yeah, this is something that our office lands in an area of the city that is zoned for strip clubs, massage parlours and we know there's prostitution going on. So it was just a number of things over time. We talk about the voice of God, God directing. Some of them we were getting were from voices that don't know the biblical narrative, don't know the redemptive plan of God, but we knew this was absolutely a part of God's redemptive plan. Like Rob said, we point back and say, "Of course God would be calling this out as a place he wants to bring healing and renewal." So that helped us and I think it was helpful for us to go, "Okay, we can't fix everything, but there's this little group of people and even this geography that maybe God has entrusted to us that he wants to bring healing and redemption here. And so if not us, then who?"
And so we were doing this prayer walk in the neighbourhood around all these places and this cop car pulls up beside us and says, "What are you guys doing here?" because it's not the nicest part of town. I know you were shocked by that, Alicia, on your drive here, but it's a very industrial area and whatever, and it's the area of the city that's zoned for this stuff. And he says, "What are you guys doing?" I said, "Do you really want to know?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Well, we're prayer walking because we think that there's some human trafficking going on in the area and we just feel like we want God to bring healing, we want to be a part of it." He's like, "Okay."
So he leaves then he comes back and he's like, "Wait, what are you doing?" So I told him again and he said, "Well, do you want a police escort while you guys walk around and pray?" And we were like, "Yeah, that's cool." And he said at the end, he said, "I'm glad you're here, I just started to believe there was not a lot of light coming from this part of the city."
So if you were in the first season, you probably heard me tell that story and a couple of years later now, we've just seen God bring more people around us to be involved in this, have been building relationships with people who are survivors and even to parents of survivors. So that was one of those things where it freed us from the paralysis of how to respond is just begin somewhere. And God directs you because it's his work and his kingdom, so that was a helpful thing that I think saved me from just wanting to ignore, like you said, when those disturbances come or just feel like, well, I can't do anything, so I'm going to do nothing.
ALICIA: That's so important because it is so easy to get overwhelmed, but when we realize that God is not calling us for every injustice, but rather that he's calling us for specific places and times, I think it's easier to say, "Oh yeah, I can do this one thing that God's calling at me." Maybe we as a church can't fix everything, but we can do this one thing. Even in my own life, I look at starting restoration projects, it was really God giving me a vision, not so that people with developmental disabilities could learn woodworking, but so that they would have a place to belong.
I remember at the beginning going, "I'm supposed to start this. I have no woodworking experience," and so I was like, "Man, God, how am I supposed to start a non-profit? I don't know how to run a non-profit, I don't know how to run a business, and I don't know woodworking, so none of this makes sense and this just seems like the most random thing." And also, giving people with special needs power tools and me who's the most accident-prone person in the world given power tools, is this the right way to go?
But I think in that process I learned that all I can do is take one step forward at a time and see if God opens doors. And I think that's what we're being called to, Is how do we take that one step as a leader that maybe this is the voice I'm supposed to be listening to. And I think that was your story too, Vijay, right? How do I just take that one step and see if God brings the people around?
ROB: The question I have is then when you hear so many different voices trying to call something out in you, how do you discern? What do you guys do to discern well, this is God speaking and this maybe isn't God speaking? Because like Alicia says, we can't do everything, but we must at least do something. So what is the something that God is calling out in us and how do we discern that as a prophetic voice for us in our time?
SONIA: I think one of the good questions to start is do we want to hear, because I think that opens the door for discernment, like are we even closed off, do we actually even want to listen? And if we do want to listen, what are our expectations in the listening, what do I expect? And it would depend too on who's the deliverer too, because like you said, we have so many voices and are overwhelmed, but even in that we still get to choose who we're hearing from. We have the power of the play and pause button, and so I think even in that, the awareness of is my heart postured to even want to hear?
ALICIA: For me I think one of the things is to be able to step away from the voices, to be able to quiet my head. I think once I've heard that nudge or heard that truth, then to be able to step away and go, "Does this sit? Does this sit with who I know God to be? Does this sit with what I can understand from Scripture?" And once I've come to peace with something sitting, then it's going back into community and saying, "What do you think of this? What are your thoughts?"
And really using the community as a litmus test, even just for my openness, because if they are opposing it or are pushing back against it, trying to figure out what am I being defensive against and why. And that if I can start wrestling through those things that when something's not sitting right, trying to figure out the why. Is it not sitting right because I'm afraid? Is it not sitting right because I just don't want to do that in the sense of it seems like too much work, or it's too hard, or it's going to put me on the outside. And when I can start wrestling through those things, it's much easier that if it's my own personal, "I just don't want to do that because I'm unsure," is different than, "Oh, I'm unsure because does this line up with what I think God is doing?" I think really trying to line up with why it's not sitting well necessarily, so maybe I go with my gut more than anything.
ROB: Like George Bush, there are weapons of mass destruction, I feel it in my gut. Sorry.
VIJAY: It comes back to we mentioned discernment earlier on, this deep conviction that God speaks and that he is still speaking and are we committed, like you said Sonia, to hearing his voice. But I think yeah, community discernment is a big part. And I was just thinking, if you're listening and you're a senior leader, like I was talking about my process in terms of okay, I feel like God's stirring something in me but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm supposed to drop it on my church and pull them somewhere on my team and say, "We need to do this." Sometimes when your heart gets wrecked with something, you immediately think okay, I have to do something. So that time, like you said Alicia, quietness and listening and just saying, "Lord, is this from you? What do you want me to do with it?"
If you're not a senior leader, say you're someone within a community connected to a faith community, or maybe you're on staff but you're not the lead person or whatever, those can be hard too because it's like, "Well, I feel really strongly about this, there's a need in our community or in our congregation and we, as a faith community, don't seem to be oriented towards that," what do you do? I still think it calls for discernment in terms of saying, "Lord, what is my role in this?" I would feel sad that people would just not say anything or maybe I know it's hard when you try and then you're rebuffed and then you just say, "Okay. Well, then nobody wants to hear this," and that's hard when you don't have decision making.
But if God is really putting it in your heart, saying, "Okay, Lord, what do you want me to do with this? Who else are you bringing alongside because I'm meant to discern this in community and submit it to people for consideration and discernment?" Because when God speaks, when God convinces us of something, as opposed to us convincing each other of something, there's just way more power in it and we'll stick to it together, and I think as a community that's an important thing.
And even as an individual, like in your case, Alicia, you're contemplating a vocational change as an individual to start something, that still needs to be submitted to community to say, "Okay, for the people I value in my life, okay, the saints. Who are the saints around me now who can discern with me?" so that when difficulty and challenge come you don't go back and say, "I was too impulsive," or, "I was just emotionally stirred." It's like, "No, I know God led me into this and that was affirmed and confirmed and reaffirmed."
So I think discernment, I know as a staff and as a church when the Alliance was doing this a while ago, community discernment, Ruth Haley Barton stuff, has become really helpful for us as a way of considering where God might be moving, and it allows for something that might be totally disruptive and seem like out of left field to actually become something we say, "No, we know we're actually meant to reorient around this word that God is bringing."
ALICIA: I love, Vijay, that you said, "When my heart is wrecked .. Are we really being broken by something," and to look at the longevity or the weight that often, in the Old Testament, the prophets carried, that carrying that prophetic word was not something that was easy or convenient, that it actually wrecked them. Isaiah was naked for, what was it, three years, right? And so am I really willing to commit to something like being naked for three years? Probably not, or at least in that context, that might not be the best example. But yeah, are we wrecked to the point that we're willing to say I'm going to commit my life to this cause I think is an important question.
ROB: Yeah, and I would add to that, longevity even when you no longer feel wrecked. A lot of what we see online is really rooted in emotivism and catching you in that moment. And then what's sad is there's these ebbs and flows, this is the popular thing of now and then it's gone, and the question is where are the long-suffering prophets who are sticking with it? And I don't mean just over three months on socials, I mean like 20 years, 30 years of their life, that they're committed to it, even when they don't feel like it sometimes. Like even when they feel like they want to run in the other direction like Jonah, but they're just like, "I know God called me, I'm going to stick to it, I'm here, and I'm going to be this voice on mornings when I don't even want to get out of bed."
So that endurance I think is important and I think it's rooted in the call of Yahweh, it's rooted in that initial call when God said, "Go, and you do this," and it's like, "Well, I can't do any other I guess. I'm going to do this even when it's difficult." So I appreciate that long-suffering as a prophet, it's not just what's most novel today and what everybody's into, but it's really a call from God.
Well, just to get back to that idea of disparate voices being able to speak within the church, I think the New Testament vision for the church is one in which everybody has the potential to be able to speak to the body of Christ as a prophetic voice. I think of Acts 2, the following of the Holy Spirit, the inauguration of the church and their interpreting the Book of Joel's prophecy and as in the last days God declares, "I'll pour out my spirit on all flesh, sons and daughters." So there's no gender difference here, young men and old men, so there's no generational difference here. There's God's capacity to speak through everyone and we find that even in 1 Corinthians 12, charismatic gifts are not contingent upon your race, they're not contingent upon your age, they're not contingent on your ability, your socioeconomic status... God gives his Spirit freely to everyone and gives everybody spiritual gifts.
And so we do have structures in place in our church and that structure's not a bad thing, but I guess the challenge is how do we work within our structures or even beyond our structures to see the gifts, particularly the prophetic gifts, being used and being released within our churches and that it's not just to people who are in positions of power or leadership, but everyone, everyone within the body of Christ, because I do think that's a New Testament vision.
VIJAY: And actually, one of the comments coming back to a previous episode, one of the observations that people who are writing on power dynamics and abuses of power are noting is one of the healthiest things that churches can do is empower others with decision-making, with voice, with spread out leadership and multiply, and in the sense of leadership multiply decisions, not just delegating tasks but decisions, and growing people's ability to hear the voice of God.
Sonia, I love that picture of young people from young ages learning to do that. When we do that, we're going to hopefully have generations of people that know how to hear the word of God together in community. So that idea, Rob, of sharing that and to assume that as a pastor, which is almost the default assumption, I'm supposed to know and have the answers, I'm supposed to know where God is leading. It's like no, I'm maybe like a big toe or a middle toe on the body, I have one role, one part of body like every other, so how does that even work? And like you said, some of our structures don't actually work towards that, so probably need to be dismantled in some ways or changed.
ROB: Yeah, so how do we create concentric circles of dialogue, of openness to different functions of the gifts, so that we can hear clearly and liberate people to be able to speak in those contexts?
ALICIA: Liberate and I think also being able to amplify the voices that others may not be willing to listen to. Sonia, for you guys with children and teaching them to hear from God, what does that look like then to present those words to a congregation, or to create spaces that the whole body is able to listen to maybe those quiet voices?
SONIA: So practically, let's go for the angle of kids, a practical step we do we call them "love blasts." We run a rhythm, so every four weeks we do it's just heading as a party of week. So in party week, the kids get to spend some time in meditation, we put on music, and we highlight one child that day in their classroom and they get to listen to see what words come to them for this child. And then the teacher at that point, they're trained in how to receive those words and they filter it out and they put it on a paper and then that child gets to take that home.
VIJAY: It's so cool.
SONIA: And so it's filtered out, like in the sense of the teacher's already been trained to help the kids discern. And of course like anyone, I don't think it's age-based, if you're starting this at 50 or if you're starting at three years old. We'll also have a healing service once a year where the kids get to be a part of it, where they actually listen for people that are going to come with physical needs and they actually get to pray for them and deliver some of those words over them. And so there's the safety of you have trained teachers doing this, but then you also bring the body together, so the kids can actually see, "Hey, my words actually can be received by someone older," and vice versa when we get the adults to pray for the kids. And so it's this bridging of generations, but just allowing those spaces for those little ones.
And to be said it can sound pretty, but it's messy, there is a mess that I don't want to undersell in a sense, because there is a fence for some when a child has a word or has something that they want to share because they might just think, "Oh, that's cute," but sometimes those words are very powerful of what God really wants to get to that person. You can't talk about it without the reality that there are fences in our hearts or defenses, where it can hinder these processes, but without having the space to talk about it, then I don't know how we move forward.
ALICIA: I feel like that's such a beautiful picture of children being able to speak into the lives of the older generation. Unfortunately I think it's probably more of an exception than the norm, that we don't often create those spaces, and so I think one of the questions is within our contexts, how do we create more space to hear those prophetic voices and the voices of the saints? What are the things that we have to do to make that not just the exception but more of the norm?
VIJAY: I think it does come to, and this sounds so basic, but like A, do we believe that God still speaks today through his people? Yes. Okay, B, then how do people actually hear the voice of God as individuals and then in community? That would be a really important discipleship piece to include when we talk about ... We're talking so much about the discipleship crisis in the church, and the Gen Z and the youth exit from the church, those two things, are people really disciples and our youth are leaving.
You talk about mess, Sonia, which mess do you want? Do you want the mess of saying, "Oh, all our young people are leaving the church, they don't want anything to do with God," or do you want the mess of saying, "They didn't quite get hearing the voice of God right, but they believe God speaks and actually they heard him." And so it's just which mess are you going to embrace, you can't avoid it. And if we think that God speaks, it would seem to be one of the most important things in discipleship as opposed to only thinking about discipleship as in what are the basic theological truths that people need to know about God. It's also how are they giving God access to their lives.
VIJAY: We talked about this in one of the past episode, spiritual practices as being means of God accessing our hearts and us accessing God's life through the Spirit. If we think that's true, then why wouldn't you start with the youngest people in saying this is what we're trying to disciple people into? That would, I would think, affect everything, what you teach from the front, what you talk about in home groups, what you teach kids, how you equip teachers of kids. If you start from that beginning point that God speaks and that we want to hear, it'll probably start to shift some things in saying where are we creating spaces for that to happen.
ALICIA: Maybe part of the concern should be when we look around our communities, are we inviting all people to be equal participants? So what I mean is when we look at our church congregations, do we see that children are part of the community as a whole? Do we see those with disabilities represented, not only just in the congregation, but as participants and leaders in our worship bands, in our leadership meetings, in our home groups? And people from all different economic backgrounds, are we seeing that represented in our bodies, because if we don't see them in our bodies just participating in the regular communion of the saints, then hearing them as prophetic voices is almost impossible, right? And so part of it maybe is how do we actually open our communities up to say that are we allowing people to be full members that are giving to our communities?
VIJAY: And you mentioned this, Alicia, early on, rescuing this idea of saints from, "Oh, that's Catholic theology," instead of saying, "The life of Christ is lived out by many people, not perfectly, but in ways that give us a human picture of what it could look like."
I came across this book by Philip Yancey called Soul Survivor and it was 13 people who saved me from the church or something like that. And it's basically 13 chapters of 13 different people whose lives rescued him from a very racist, uber-conservative, dysfunctional church upbringing that almost to the point drove him away from Jesus completely. And interestingly he said, "Of the 13, 11 of them are believers, 2 of them are not followers of Christ, but," he said, "you'll know why I included them in there, because they were heavily influenced by Jesus."
And one of them is Tolstoy and one of them is Gandhi and one of them is Dr. Paul Brand, who worked with leprosy victims in India, one of them is MLK, and John Perkins is mentioned as a part of that. So just reading that book for me has been so good, and it is, they're saints, they're where the work of Scripture continues on in the modern work of the church. I think it's important for us to realize the story of Scripture continues and lived out in people's lives. If we think it's only for that day, only for that time and that's where saints and prophets live, we miss the rich tradition of Jesus followers that have given us pictures in different professions.
That's what I loved about his book too, it cut across all... These weren't just pastors or whatever and it wasn't the top five you'd normally mention, it was people that at first some of them I had never heard of and I'm embarrassed to say that now when I read their stories going, "Wow, incredible." But people from professional backgrounds and legal backgrounds and medicine, or people who grew up in very hard families and circumstances, and it's like yes, saints and prophets, they anchor us in these things. So I've been challenged in recent days to read more biographies because it inspires and gives pictures for me of what could this actually look like in my own life.
ROB: I want to jump on that, I'm glad you've turned the corner back to saints because I felt they didn't get enough air time. But I'd love to hear from the rest of you guys about that, because I don't know if you've noticed this trend, but it just seems that if you're paying to attention to the social media world or YouTube, there's a lot of speakers who are speaking, who are somewhere between the age of 25 and 40 and they're getting a ton of airtime. I'm not saying it's anything wrong with that, but does it feel like we're missing something? We're going after the voices that are new, that are trendy, that are on the rise, that are out there, but we're not paying attention to the voices of those who have come before us, to these saints that have so much to say to us from across the generations and from across the decades and centuries. Am I wrong in that?
ALICIA: Sorry.
ROB: Am I crazy? I like kickback.
ALICIA: My tension is that I have always preferred the more ancient saints than our more pop culture pastors. We talked last episode about so many of our leaders failing us, that there's actually a trust in someone whose life is done. I don't get the whole picture of their whole life, but there's this comfort in knowing they lived out what they taught and it's still holding true hundreds of years later.
ROB: Alicia, why do you think that people will gravitate towards what's the novel and what's the new?
ALICIA: I wonder if part of it's just being able to... that's the easy relate, that I can see myself easier in this person than in this context, and so it's comfortable that there's actually this... They're telling me what I want to hear. And sometimes I think that we can easily just gravitate to what we want to hear, rather than the thing that's challenging.
VIJAY: I think there's just more nuance in it too than we want to admit. A 15-minute TED Talk or a short Instagram post or whatever can communicate truth in some way, but the life of someone, like you said Alicia, over decades adds more texture and shape and sometimes contrast and contradiction to some of the stuff that doesn't fit with our paradigm of what we believe and wants to challenge that. And so I think that's another advantage of looking back and looking at a longer view of someone's life and writing, because like in this book that I was referencing, he notes how many of these saints, they had shadow sides. They had stuff in their life that would cause us to be able to write them off and say, "They said this, but they did this." And we talked about the tension of that in our last session, but I do think it adds more ...
We need more complex discussions and we're talking about very complicated issues in very simple ways oftentimes. And you can ask a question simply, but the answer's way more complex. That doesn't mean you don't engage, but anyone who's been involved in certainly social justice, you realize the deeper you get into the issue the more complicated it is. And sometimes history tells us more of that and encourages us to stay at it, than the quick flare-up, "Oh, this an issue, we need to fix it," but it's like, "Yeah, but it's complicated." So I think that the historical perspective is really important.
ROB: I think for me one of the things the ancient saints do is they ground me in this realism that I'm just part of a much bigger story and that the issues I'm going through today will pass by and there'll be other issues that will come after that, and that there were issues that went before and they walk through it and they live through it and they were grounded in, again, this simplicity of faith and God led them through it. So it helps me to, I don't know, realize that I'm really not that significant, God is, but I'm really not. This will pass me by and I just get the opportunity in the day in which I am living in to be faithful to what God has called me to do and I may be forgotten. I likely will be forgotten. I will not be appearing in the pages of the next edition of the Alliance History and Thought textbook when it is published in digital form, when they talk about the next century.
VIJAY: I'm sure somebody could arrange that, Rob, if that's important to you. I'm sure we could.
ALICIA: Life goals.
ROB: Yeah, a life goal, I just want my name in print, "And in Edmonton, Rob served in this church for this period." We talked about this where so many are vying for platform and so many people want to be famous, I think we're just reminded that we're just part of history and the saints just remind us of that, that we're tapped into something bigger than us and that's okay just to be, just to fade into obscurity and that's all right.
SONIA: Those are great points there, Rob, about saints and I think about prophets in our time and how much we need them part of this body. And I love that there isn't fear when we come to Jesus, there isn't fear in discernment because he has us, and just as we filter out the voices and what's going around us, it's okay to risk it because we're safe with him, with his truth.
And I think of a story as we've been talking about kids. We had moved to Neepawa and we own a house in Saskatoon, that's where we come from, my husband and I, and we were concerned about how's this all going to work out, the market, how long are we going to be out here. I remember this child coming up to me and I could've dismissed her, she was about 10, and she just said, "Hey, I just want to let you know that God's taking care of your house," and she walked away.
And so do we need the prophets today? Yeah, we do. That blessed my heart and it was just a reminder again, God you're in the details. And so I just think what beauty there is even as we talk about this conversation that we're safe to process it with Jesus.
ALICIA: This was such a great conversation and I really appreciate all your points and the openness of what God's been doing in the past, what he's doing now, but also the hope for what is to come and the things that he's going to do in the future, and so thank you all for participating. And those who are listening, I hope it's a conversation that we can continue on as we move forward.