Chapter 9
Transformative Revival:
Prophetic Models in the City

The work of culture and the creation of enduring institutions are the realisation of visions and dreams of relatively small creative elites who by inspiration project a future worthy of imitation (mimesis). The immediate consequence of their actions may appear to be failure.… (Tonsor, 1998:99).

Introduction: Creative Minorities

There are prophetic elements in each of the five phases of transformative revival in the previous chapters. How do the Scriptures inform the nature of the prophetic in initiating revival movements (phase 1), in cultural engagement (phase 4) and in generating the response of cultural revitalisation (phase 5)?

Arnold Toynbee in his monumental Study of History (1972:127ff) argues for the determinative role of creative minorities in the development of civilisations. I examine this by reflecting on characteristics of the prophetic in the anthropology of religion and in theology, so as to expand limited Pentecostal understandings. I then supplement this by identifying significant prophetic roles in the Old Testament prophets and Jesus. This results in definition of eight prophetic roles, measurable as a revival enters into cultural engagement.

In examining the first phase of initiation of movements, A.F.C. Wallace identifies the prophetic as the beginning of revitalisation movements (including revivals). “With a few exceptions, every religious revitalisation movement with which I am acquainted has been originally conceived in one or several hallucinatory visions by a single individual. A supernatural being appears to the prophet-to-be …” (2003:17). The dreamer seeks to preach his revelations: he becomes a prophet, makes converts. Wallace is building on Max Weber’s understanding of charisma (1947), when he indicates that because of the moral ascendancy and uncanny authority of the charismatic leader, his/her followers organise into a movement. “Followers defer to the charismatic leader, not because of his status in existing authority structure, but because of his fascinating personal “power” often ascribed to supernatural sources and validated in successful performance.”

Wallace’s study was primarily of tribal contexts. In this study, I deal with city leadership in a multi-sectored, multi-ethnic city, involving “tribal leadership” of the religious movements in the revival, as well as the emergence of Christian leaders in societal leadership roles.[1]

The released creativity of the Holy Spirit in the second and third phase, beyond the initiation of revival, involves a wave of releasing prophetic giftings to new prophets in the midst of revival. The emphasis on this particular gift is reasonable as the Scriptures elevate the desire for the gift of prophesying[2] above all others (1 Cor 14: 1, 2).

The training of the nebiim, the school of prophets of Elijah, included a linking of the ecstasy of worship and power gifts, to an expectation of speaking the direct oracle, the Word from God. Similarly, the charismatic movement and Pentecostalism are a global expansion for millions today into the exercise of types of prophetic ministry accompanied by similar manifestations. Some would critique these as excess and error. But, as Moses says when faced with the same unauthorised outbreak of prophecy among his elders, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” (Num 11:29). The Old Testament panoply of ecstatic experiences, sense of divine presence, divine healing and signs and their relationship with the immanence of the living God have clear parallels in both New Testament prophetic activity and modern charismatic and Pentecostal norms.

There is a parallelism between Old Testament prophetic activity and that of the New Testament prophets. This contrasts with most Pentecostal understandings of New Testament prophetic roles as primarily within the church, while Old Testament roles were towards society, therefore the church has no responsibility for the prophetic to society – a spurious argument from silence, as in the first decades of the church there were few in positions to speak prophetically to nations. Gentile (2002: 143-157) in an extensive chapter “Comparing Prophecy in both Testaments” writes, “The term prophet is used by both ancient Hebrews and the early Church and the Christians did not seem to struggle with a difference in meaning.  They saw continuity between the Hebrew prophets and the New Testament prophets…Some important variations did exist in the use of prophecy between the two Testaments [He analyses six]…but the essence of prophecy has not changed”. I would add to this continuum the parallelism with sociological and anthropological studies. Overholt, for example interfaces anthropological studies with Biblical studies of the prophetic (1996) or at the foundations of sociology, Weber reflects on the nature of the exemplary and ethical prophets (Morris, 1987; Weber, 1963b) , not just as a spiritual gift in Christian circles but as one that can be manifested in the context of other religions. Thus, the occurrence of the prophetic appears to be consistent across time and cultures. This gift may be utilised by the Holy Spirit or by other spirits, or be an expression of the human spirit of an individual. The testing of the Spirits and of prophecy required by Scripture are useful in determining the difference. Kurt Koch, psychiatrist and theologian summarizes differentiation from a psychoanalytic perspective (1972/1994:268); Gentile analyses the theological basis for differentiation (2002: 330-351).

Phase 4 of cultural engagement involves the expanding network of creative change agents and prophetic institutions at city leadership levels. In my earlier studies of city leaderships globally, there are generally many prophetic persons recognised in a mega-city at culture changing leadership levels. Not scores. Not just individuals.

The unity and communality of these is a crucial issue. The relationship of these prophets to the apostles who would implement and structure their movements is also crucial. I have dealt with the nature of prayer and networking elements of this in Transforming Cities on “Building City Leadership Teams” (Grigg, 1997d:53-66). Such leadership teams, with their networked institutions, may become a creative prophetic minority within a culture.

Whitefield, the prophet of the First Great Awakening, along with Charles Wesley, its poet and its apostolic organiser John Wesley, demonstrate such unity, developed in revival experiences.

At New Years 1739, George Whitefield, my brother Charles, three others and I, with about sixty of our brethren, were present at a love feast in Fetter Lane. About three in the morning, as we were continuing in prayer, the power of God came upon us so mightily that many cried out in holy joy, while others were knocked to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from the awe and amazement at the presence of God, we broke out in one voice, “We praise Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be Lord.” (Weakley, 1987:75).

Phase 5 involves a cultural response of repentance, a rapid cultural change of direction, an acceptance of the alternative public consciousness created by the prophets – a cultural revitalisation. “The invention of a culture by a creative minority is rarely the work of a dominant minority employing the mechanisms of power” (Tonsor, 1998: 92).

Redefining the Nature of Prophecy

To accomplish the fourth and fifth phases in the multi-sectoral milieux of 21^st century cities, a redefinition for Pentecostals and charismatics is required, an expansion of their popular understandings of the prophecy from a cultic, church-centred view to the comprehensiveness of national and city-level prophecy. Robeck indicates alternative definitions:

·         A predictive word of future events. (This, he indicates, has ancient precedents but is an insufficient basis for understanding the gift).

·         An oracle, spontaneously inspired by the Holy Spirit and spoken in a specific situation.

·         A form of expositional preaching from the biblical text.

·         A public pronouncement of a moral or ethical nature that confronts society.

Pentecostal and charismatic Christians tend to emphasize the nature of prophecy as spontaneous, though many allow for the prophetic gifts to function in ‘anointed’ preaching and in some ‘inspired’ social commentary (Robeck, 1988:728).

Among Pentecostals, some prophets rove among the churches and have words of knowledge for people. These are direct revelations of the needs and directions of people’s lives. The validity of one who calls himself a prophet is confirmed by the clarity and accuracy of these perceptions. The following story illustrates their significance.

Two Prophets from the South

Twenty students and staff in an Auckland Bible School sit quietly praying, occasionally led in some rousing choruses, arms uplifted. In between, two prophets ‘from the South Island’, call out one or two, lay hands on them and pray, identifying elements of God’s call on their lives, defining areas of sin, inviting the Spirit to bring healing. There is the sense of the presence of God at many points. Knowing many of the students personally, I am silent witness to the veracity of many things that are said by these two farmers who knew nothing of these students before.

But the way forward theologically into new patterns of societal transformation is to be found in the expansion of the nature of the prophetic role in charismatic and Pentecostal thought to include all four of Robeck’s categories. Theological integrity requires it. This involves an expansion from simple emphasis on the spontaneous oracle, to an understanding of the full declamatory force of the prophets as societal conscience, as oracles at the public level. It also meshes the spontaneity of the oracle with wisdom as to the issues of the time.^[3]

Dispensationalism and reductionism in fundamentalist groups and the narrowness of Pentecostal definitions of the prophetic role preclude addressing societal issues for both groups and exclude a lifetime of intellectual study or the kind of social analysis such as Moses and Isaiah were skilled in. Such study tends to be relegated to “less spiritual” patterns of Christianity. Yet biblically, the prophetic word of judgement and hope is much more complex than simple words of knowledge. The prophetic imagination always interprets the social analysis in the light of the spiritual dynamics underlying it, but without social analysis there is little accurate perception of the issues.^[4] The biblical prophets examined societal structures and norms by examining their underlying soul. In a complex society, that involves both intuitive understanding and complex social analysis.

Yet on the other hand, one must not err in overemphasising social analysis not rooted in divine revelation. Some it is true, like Isaiah or Ezekiel, had highly formulated academic and literary societal analyses. Others such as Joel or Jonah, appear to have heard directly from God in divine inspiration related only cursorily to any intellectual analysis. Ultimately, the core of the prophetic word has the Pentecostal emphasis on direct oracle, commonly understood to involve the “word of wisdom” and the “word of knowledge” of I Corinthians 12:8 and 14:6.

In either case, through direct revelation or through God-breathed social analysis, the prophets speak the poetry, the pathos of God, to the poetic soul of nations or cities. In this vein, Walter Brueggeman argues from the Scriptures for freedom from stereotypes of prophets as foretellers or social protesters to a wider cultural leadership role:

The prophet is primarily addressing the underlying vision of the nation. He is energising that ‘dominant consciousness within the culture and energising persons and communities with the promise of another time and situation towards which the community can move (1978:15).

Prophetic Sources of Revival in Urban Cultures

I will review roles of several OT prophets to illustrate the prophetic role in the fourth and fifth phases of transformative revival. This is a conversation between a modern prophetic emphasis and the OT prophets. I base this on the principle of continuity of prophetic styles across the OT, NT and the present. My categories have been formed by years of reflection on the classics of Heschel (2001), Brueggeman (1978), Harold Knight (1947) and Rauschenbusch (1907/1991), in their in-depth studies of the prophetic, supplemented by Weber’s sociological studies (1963a) and anthropological studies of the prophetic in tribal movements. What is new is my relating these themes to revival in the city.

If we turn to the transformative revival of the nation of Israel under Moses, we find the model of a prophet giving a recurrent call for repentance by oppressive leadership, a pattern repeated throughout the Scriptures. Moses’ prophetic thunder against Pharaoh, can be understood in terms of revelation and repentant response of one people against the unrepentant response of Pharaoh.[5]

The appearance of a new social reality through his words is unprecedented and unrepeated. The corollary is that without prophecy, new social realities do not emerge and old social realities decline in evil and corruption. The failure of the prophetic voice in the public square is as much at fault as ungodly leadership in the process of a nation morally decaying.^[6]

The results of the time of prophetic encounter required the remaking of a moral value system, expressed in the Ten Commandments. Later this study will return to the progression of prophetic to apostolic, but it is significant to note Moses modelling this combination, as over forty years, he builds a people of God from an oppressed people, transforming the mindset of poverty and dependency.

Jeremiah also highlights crucial prophetic roles in an urban and globalized context of non-responsiveness not dissimilar to New Zealand, where prophetic cultural engagement has met with a cold shoulder from the nation’s leaders. Jeremiah 8:4-9:26 is a collection of prophetic sayings concerning national evil, against the city-state of Jerusalem-Judah, in a time of momentous social change.^[7]

The “revival” under Josiah had collapsed. The prophet highlights the non-responsiveness of this people, using rhetorical questions, “Why then have these people turned away? Why does Jerusalem always turn away” (8:4,5). Then in verse 7, Jeremiah examines their fickleness by using an analogy from nature, “Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the Lord.”

Here is an indication of the first step in the prophetic role in bringing revival, the cry against the blindness of the people to their own sin and identification of it as a time of repentance.

Then Jeremiah moves to an oracle of judgement on the people as a whole (10-12), with a question about shame: “Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush” (12). Heschel (1965:112-114), speaks of such “loss of embarrassment” as a decisive step towards “loss of humanness.”

Jeremiah goes on to speak of the lack of shalom, peace and of future judgment. Why is there no healing? “Is there no balm in Gilead?” he asks. Gilead was the valley of healing, the place of spices and medicinal herbs. Only later (30:17), we find a promise to the chastised, humbled and repentant ones of a healed future, “‘But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,’ declares the Lord.” This is part of the prophet’s wider role, to envision a future of hope for the exiles, both within Babylon (29:4-7) and beyond, “for I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, to give you a future and a hope” (29:11).

To extend the concept in Moses and Jeremiah, of the prophet as the initiator of urban conversation, we may glance at another narrative from Ezekiel, the priest-prophet, living in the international city of Babylon as exile.[8] In the first 24 chapters of his book, he looks from exile at his nation and city of Jerusalem. This is a conversation with the people of his city predicting its fall, specifying the sources of its judgements. He speaks of the sins of leadership: “Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey…” (Ezek 22:27). Then he defines a new kind of leader, the intercessor, “I looked for one among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it but I found none…”(Ezek 22:30). Ezekiel’s cry is for an intercessor who engages in a “conversation,” “petition,” “pleading” (see Vines analysis of “intercessions” (uperentulcanv) (1996: 330),  for the people, before the Lord.

This concept of an intercessor is more than the Pentecostal definition of one who simply prays with intensity. It includes that, but the location of such a person is one who “stands in place,” “stands between,” and as such prays with knowledge and wisdom. In Ezekiel 13:5, he defines the qualities of a true prophet as one who goes up to the gaps in the wall and repairs them, so that it will stand firm in the day of battle. This may be correlated to the concept in 3:17-21 and 33:7-9 of the prophets being like watchmen on the walls, sounding the trumpet of alarm (Jer 6:17), the progress of a battle (I Sam 14:16) or the approach of messengers (II Sam 18:24-27). There is documented evidence globally supporting the thesis that the creation of intercessory movements in the city is the source of motivation, mobilisation, new vision for rebuilding.^[9] But ten years of such documentation, have also left some city leaders who have worked with this thesis, skeptical that the common idea of intercessors, dissociated from the hard work of engagement in the public forum, have significance in terms of social change.

The prophets declared God’s concern for justice within society. We can turn from the prophets to the historical books to see the outworking of such a theme. Nehemiah, the builder of a city, models this understanding of the completed prophetic. He begins where Ezekiel has left us — as a weeping intercessor serving a meal to a King. Then the tears of intercession are converted into audacious action with a plan that a worthy King would respond to. The book of his rebuilding Jerusalem is used as a model of urban rebuilding through community organisation.^[10] It includes divine encounter, envisaging, resourcing, mobilising of the people, dealing with opposition, developing teamwork, strategy and sustaining discipline. We might also conclude that activists may experience the divine call in the midst of an intercessory lifestyle.

The role of the apostle, prophet, pastor-teacher is to prepare workers for such public service (Eph 4:11, 12). I suggest that the training of functional prophets occurs in the training of Nehemiahs, men and women who intercede between God and the people as they serve the nation in public affairs, neither neglecting the intercessory closet, nor the public debate.

Jesus’ Model of Defining Core Values

In seeking to understand the prophetic element in processes of transformative revival, what is the focus of Jesus, the ultimate prophet? His emphasis was neither dismantling society, nor building its physical structure but inaugurating a new values system and a new web of relationships. His prophetic critique was direct, forceful, cutting to the values of the culture. His was a creation of alternative spiritual, personal and social values of the Sermon on the Mount, then an apostolic process of building those prophetic values into the character of the disciples and their communal relationships. The model of Jesus requires us to examine the values changes that might mark transformative revival in Auckland and how to embody these into structures in such a way that the structures become the vehicle of the ongoing prophetic voice.

Personal values are part of the daily transformational conversation for many revived believers as they are forced into prophetic definition of values by confrontations with the culture of the office or government-imposed values in the school system.

Values Education

As my children learned to read in class J1 with officially approved government readers, I noticed that none of the readers contained any values teaching (with the exception of tolerance of cultural pluralism). I took William Bennett’s Book of Virtues to the principal and asked if there was any statement in the school’s policy about teaching values. There was not.

Should there be? I suggested that I was coming from a Christian perspective, but that William Bennett, in the Book of Virtues (1993), had developed a compendium of stories for moulding children’s values around universally acceptable themes such as self-discipline, compassion, responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty, faith, love and so on. that could be used across cultures and religions. The school then introduced an alternative to Bible in Schools developed along Bennett’s lines, but led by a Hindu Brahmin!

There are problems with the use of values. Ball (1996), demonstrates how pervasive use of the word “values” in its derivation from the social sciences has subsumed issues of moral principle, religious conviction and ethical precept into a single category. This legitimises a fact/ value distinction where values say nothing of the thing judged but become merely an expression of the speaker’s attitudes — and hence meaningless.

Secondly, the possibilities of establishing a consensus on values in a postmodern city are limited. Brazilian Catholic urban theologian, Libanio, in a chapter on “The Structure of Values” demonstrates the disintegrating effects of postmodern urbanism on a values system:

Modern urbanism presents a horizon of pluralistic values, conflicting, subjective, individualistic, fragmented. Pluralistic, because they have developed in diverse cultural and religious traditions. Conflicting, because they reflect fundamentally different postures about life, humanity and the Transcendental. Individualistically subjective, because people may oscillate in their own acceptance of universals, without sensing an obligation to follow all norms. Fragmented, because their values don’t necessarily come from a unified tradition and may be incompatible (Libanio, 2001: 178, tr. from Portuguese, mine).

Yet there is evidence for teaching on values change, to be a fruitful field of societal change in education, business and medicine.^[11] It anchors transformational theology into the locus of specialist societal issues and of professionals who are Christians. Given the genesis of Pentecostalism as a values-based movement (Sheppard, 1988:796; Martin, 1995:27), redefinition of some cultural values is a significant possibility.

On the other hand, Pentecostals and to a lesser extent charismatic Evangelicals, are activists. Two recent studies have sought to develop a Pentecostal social ethic in Latin America, based on ethics as pneumatological (Petersen, 1996:186-226; Villafañe, 1993: 193-221). They focus on both the pneumatological and the Kingdom of God. My observation is that the ethics taught among Pentecostals tend to develop in action more than being related to a theology of being. Thus, an arbitrary choice has been made to include values within the broader activist theme of the Kingdom of God of Error! Reference source not found..

Conclusion

In this chapter I have examined the prophetic at each phase of transformative revival theory, expanding the nature of the prophetic from Pentecostal definitions and considered revival as a process for developing a creative minority (phase 3 & 4). I have also discussed the initial concept of a progression from the prophetic to new apostolic structures that engage society (phase 4). At times, with divine intervention or because of repentant response, the whole culture may move into a cultural revitalisation and the prophetic becomes the basis of an apostolic building phase, as in the cases of Moses or Nehemiah (phase 5).

Reflecting on the roles of Old Testament prophets and on Jesus, I have sought to reflect on the nature of the prophetic within transformative revival. These prophetic roles form criteria for evaluation of transformative revival progressions (recognising that the principles are rarely integrated in logical steps). They become eight measurable characteristics of prophetic initiation at phase 4, cultural engagement and the response of cultural revitalisation (phase 5).

A cursory glance at the New Zealand revival, using these criteria, seems to indicate that apart from failure of the culture to move from the lack of shame to a repentant response and cultural revitalisation, all other prophetic elements are present.

Fig. 1: Prophetic Roles in Cultural Revival

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fig. 1:Eight measurable criteria for prophetic engagement in cultural engagement with a society leading to cultural revitalisation and the biblical models used in this chapter as a basis for their selection.

To demonstrate this further, apostolic engagement in sectors of society where the development of creative minorities and prophetic roles is occurring will be examined in the next chapter. Conversational spaces about values manifest in business Chapter 11, defined by the urban chapters 12 & 13 and postmodern contexts (chapters 14 & 15) will be examined in part 3.

  

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