Introduction: Ministry in a Divided Society
Ruth Hutchinson

Comment: Conscientious Objector
Adam Turkington

From the Director
David Porter

Christian Perspectives on Reconciliation
Norman Taggart

Ministry in a divided society
1. Pastor John Dickinson
2. Priest Ken Clarke

The Laughing Minister
Graham Cheesman

Forgetting to Remember
Peter Stevenson

Ministry in a divided society
3. Prophet Derek Poole
4. Peacemaker David Porter

Review: A New Start
Heather Morris

< Past Issues Archive

MINISTRY IN A DIVIDED SOCIETY
Part 3: Ministry as Prophet
The cultural and political trauma of the last thirty years has both judged the Christian community and created an opportunity to revisit areas of theological neglect. In particular the climate now exists to consider the failure of Evangelical conscience in the face of historical alienation and sectarian hostility; to question the role of the church as tribal chaplain; to recover the biblical imperatives of peace, justice and reconciliation; and to articulate a biblically informed social vision that offers genuine healing and hope to a society that has grown sick of the politics of fear and the religion of hate. The fulfilment of this vision necessities a rediscovering of the radical nature of the gospel and the prophetic ministry of the Church.

A biblical vision of social transformation is not some trendy, politically correct euphemism for ‘woolly liberalism’. The Evangelical tradition has been populated with men and women who understood the gospel in both personal and social terms. Their inspiration was not only for the eternal security of others but equally for the temporal well being of lives inflicted by the sin and injustice of the world. They saw no contradiction in ‘winning souls for Christ’ and working for political and social conditions in which these same souls might live full and dignified human lives. They held creatively the tension between the eternal things that mattered above all else and yet attended to the transitory things that mattered because men and women are made in the image of God. The Evangelical heritage when rediscovered is seen to be an ethically responsible one. Its social witness, though seriously eclipsed by decades of fundamentalist/modernist controversy, was concerned with both the individual and the nature of the society in which he lives.

A Christian vision for social transformation finds its impetus in the great biblical themes that allude to what theologians call the eschatological hope. The bible witnesses to a time when all things will be fulfilled. When the fullness of God’s redemptive work in Jesus Christ will be realised. This is our hope and it is made credible when Christians live in the present the reality of what we believe is to come. To consign God's promises to another world is to reduce them to sentimentality. To be engaged in peace, justice and reconciliation is to take seriously God’s promise of hope and healing in this world, no matter how precarious and limited that might be. Biblical hope longs to make visible the nature of God’s rule. It announces that the present is not permanent, that sin and death will not have the final word, that God is giving us a new future.

The biblical themes that give shape to this vision are numerous. They include the passionate call of the Prophets for the end of injustice and exploitation. The radical ethics of Jesus who invites us to make peace in a world fixated with violence. The universal vision of Paul who proclaimed that in Christ was the reconciliation of all things, and the longing of John the Seer who saw in a vision the healing of the nations. To read the biblical witness of God’s action in history and not be struck by the ethical implications for our relationships in this world is only possible when faith has degenerated into religious escapism and personal piety.

The Church, as keeper of this redemptive vision, lives in anticipation of its fulfilment. Although this is received as promise, it is not a formalistic ideal assigned to a future heaven. It is a concrete reality of love and justice whose demands impinge on our lives and lifestyles here and now. “Repent,” Jesus tells, “for the Kingdom of God is near.” (Mk.1.15) Christians live in the tension between ‘the already’ of God's reign in the world and ‘the not yet’ of its fulfilment. It is this tension that invites us to live prophetically, that is to live in ways that authenticate the reality of the coming Kingdom.

Prophetic ministry entails at least three aspects of Christian witness in the world. Firstly, fundamental to the Church’s prophetic witness is its willingness to critique the assumptions and ideologies of the dominant culture in the light of the gospel of Christ. As David Hollenburg states, “Prophecy is the largely negative task of criticising the ideological tendencies of all political attempts to capture the transcendent meaning of justice and love within a political program or social system.”

In this critical role the Church refuses to allow the gospel to be co-opted into the service of political and cultural ideologies. It recognises that it is imperative for its survival to resist the temptations of enculturation even when the rewards are power and influence. This of course raises important issues about the tension that exists between the Church’s pastoral presence to the world and her vocation to be in the world but not of it.

The Church is concerned with this tension but is not willing to ease it by avoiding the critical aspect of its prophetic voice. The Church is only the Church when it is willing to speak in opposition to all ideological and structural powers that diminish human life and hold life captive to the rule of death. The Church names as sin all attitudes and practice that is incompatible with the Biblical vision of justice and peace. It identifies, in particular times and places, the structural and institutionalised sins of nations — racism, militarism, extreme nationalism, rampant materialism, sexism etc — and renounces them. In our own context we have in recent years found the confidence to name sectarianism for what it is. Turning from it may prove to be even more difficult.

Naming is an aspect of the Church’s prophetic role that necessitates prayerful wisdom and discernment. In every society there are hidden powers that subtly infuse our language and behaviour. By normalising the abnormal, attitudes like sectarianism become part of the ‘taken for granted’ assumptions that shape our lives. We are more conditioned by destructive powers than we know. It is the gospel, faithfully proclaimed, that brings to light the true nature of these ‘learned’ attitudes and names them as sin. Our pastoral integrity is inseparable from prophetic fidelity.

Secondly, the most authentic prophetic criticism of the dominant culture is not the ‘thus says the Lord’ proclaimed in Old Testament idiom. What gives substance and reality to prophetic ministry is the Church as a living hermeneutical community, that is the word made flesh in the life, faith, practice of local church families.

The vision of a prophetic community, rather than a unique individual, begins with Moses, the prototypical prophet, who longed for all God’s people to be prophets. This is fulfilled with the birth of the Church when the Spirit fell on a disparate people and created a new kind of humanity in the world, a new kind of community. The spirit of prophecy that characterised the infant church was a bold willingness to proclaim in the public space the Lordship of Christ in the face of the false claims of Caesar and every other power.

Nothing critiques the world more that the presence and practice of an alternative faith community. For no matter how prophetic the content of our words they are only as authoritative as the life of the community from which they come. However, the concept of an alternative people is not a form of social oddness or spiritual separatism, but a faith community with a genuine love and respect for humanity. It is a people who live differently because they have a different consciousness about what is good and right and just, a people living in the life and joy of the risen Lord. As the Apostle Paul puts it, alternative communities are made up of those who have not conformed to this world but are being transformed by the renewal of their minds (Rom.12:1). When we have models of church that reflect in the present the values and relationships of the Kingdom to come, that place will be a prophetic presence in the world.

It is at this point that the pastoral and prophetic aspects of ministry inform each other. For pastoral care is more than the spiritual maintenance of people in a secular existence. We pastor people in prophetic living, that the Church might model alternative relationships, be energised by the hope of God’s reign, and inspired by a vision of peace, justice and reconciliation. Our life together will give this vision authenticity or discredit it altogether.

Finally, the Church as an alternative community in the world lives in anticipation of a city whose builder and maker is God. Consequently God’s people resist all attempts to close history down. The Church challenges the tendency of all political and cultural ideologies to consummate the historical process around its own agenda. The Church in resisting the spirit of the age keeps history open to God, to newness, to hope and the fulfilment of promise. As Jurgan Moltmann argues, the task of the church is ‘to resist the institutional stabilising of things, and by raising questions of meaning to make things uncertain and keep things moving and elastic in the process of history’. I would replace the word ‘things’ with life. The task of the Church is to keep life open to God and to nurture a prophetic hope in the power of God to transform our broken world. .

Derek Poole - Programme Officer with ECONI