Can your gifting impair your vision? Why some pastors won’t talk about current events
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by Pastor Donald Lamb, guest writer
It Is Unavoidable That Our Primary Gift Will Shape The Way We View What Is Going On In The World. That Is Why We Need Each Other
“For Dietrich Bonhoeffer it was not enough to follow Christ by preaching, teaching, and writing. No, he was in deadly earnest when he called for Christian action and self-sacrifice. This explains why Bonhoeffer always acted spontaneously. Why he considered self-righteousness and complacency great sins against the Holy Spirit, and regarded laziness as the starting line on the road to hell.” G. Leibholz
One major stream of gifting in the Body of Christ (the prophetic/intercessors) sees the absolute chaos of our nation as a result of what God is doing in this hour: disciplining the Church for her prayerlessness, compromise, and disengagement from the world and culture in the guise of keeping to the exclusiveness of preaching the Gospel.
The other major stream of gifting (the pastoral/teaching) sees the passion in Christians to engage the culture through being salt and light in the political and governmental gates of influence as Christian nationalism and political idolatry. How do we reconcile this?
It seems possible that the prophetic may be better equipped to see providentially what God is doing in the messiness – God allowed the craziness of the political nightmare in America and especially the election of 2016 to show us how far gone our nation was. Following on we lived four years of non-stop railing, judgment, and accusation against President Donald Trump who was viewed as a providential firewall against globalism and the accelerated destruction of America – but many evangelicals did not see it that way because the majority of its pastoral leaders do not embrace the prophetic.
The pastoral/teaching leaders seem better equipped to discern the real dangers of overly relying on government and the institutions of Babylon to save our country without using the saving influence of the Gospel. Unfortunately, they also lend themselves to disengagement. Yes, they can warn about political idolatry and help reinforce the centrality of the Gospel as the ultimate hope for our nation but their practical silence on major social issues are unhelpful and only repeat the previous mistakes of disengagement from the gates of influence. They inadvertently promote a spiritualized apathy toward influencing the political process while focusing on preaching the Gospel.
Harmony between the Pastoral and Prophetic callings
Most bizarre is that the body of Christ can see the exact same moment in history so completely differently. And, as a result, we kind of all end up with our differences because of the gift that God has given us. And that’s why we need the harmony between the prophetic and pastoral gifts more than ever. The truly integrated ministry is able to champion all the gifts; validate all the gifts and cause people to walk together in a cohesive vision. Without an integrated five-fold ministry we all become an echo-chamber within our particular gifting. The prophetic leadership becomes very bold the pastoral mercy leadership becomes very concerned about the arm of the flesh and tends to silo themselves into a compartmentalized vision of the Church. It seems unavoidable that these responses take place because we’re all looking at the same thing through our own lens.
It’s like the three blind guys who run into the elephant in the middle of the jungle and they all grab the part of the elephant they can touch and describe it. Consequently, they believe they’ve run into a tree, or they’ve run into a small rope, or into a large hose.
Essentially, this is what has happened in the last eight years. If a person is not prophetic and they don’t see the providence of God in everything that is happening they believe that this is all hysteria created by Christian nationalists who want to save their country through a political messiah. On the other hand, when you realize what is happening prophetically (through the lens of God’s shaking and providence) we understand that God took the most basic responsibility of Christians which is engaging our country and culture and showed us that we had walked away from it in the guise of spirituality. This happened because we were primarily led by pastors who were solely focused on the Gospel and promoted the idea that this would take care of everything else. (A misapplication of “seek first the Kingdom of God and all these others things will be added.”) What we didn’t realize was that by not getting messy and participating at the political gates of influence we lost most of our nation to wokeness and all the craziness because we left our country to be guarded by godless leaders.
Not relying on the arm of the flesh
Now I acknowledge that if the Christian patriots who love their nation are not guided with the help of an integrated ministry that they can become dependent on the “arm of the flesh” and they might try to save America through carnal means alone. Furthermore, they can be tempted to raise or lower their faith level, or emotional level, or spiritual expectation based upon who’s in the White House. Clearly, that is unbiblical and unhealthy but that doesn’t mean we walk away from that gate of influence because it’s not the ultimate answer to America.
Yes, the most strategic strategy to save America is receiving the ascendancy of the kingdom of God through radical intercession that ushers in real revival and also through an awakened Church that is consecrated and boldly shares the Gospel while standing at the gates of influence. In contrast, reformation for a dying nation will definitely not come about from staying away from the messiness and not engaging the world where God has called forth the different Kingdom anointings.
Obviously, without the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit any of us could become obsessed with trying to fix all the problems politically and not receiving the power of the eternal Kingdom to transform people. It’s very interesting that we can validate each other’s gifts and yet our own gifting puts a lens on our spiritual understanding of the times and hinders us from seeing the whole picture.
Finally, we’re not going to roll over and pretend that we are not in a battle. But what is really crazy to me is this – I don’t know anyone seriously, and in a godly way, engaging the political mountain that doesn’t have to fight a fight daily – almost holding their nose to endure the stench of that broken system as they stand for truth. And for sure they need to be so prayed up and backed up by intercessors to keep a right heart about it all. How in the world can you call that political idolatry?
Photo Credit Karsten Madsen
3 Comments
My comment to Pastor Don: there are some good insights here. You have a lot of grace for the clergy who refuse to talk about current events. Because you connect with so many of them regularly, you probably have insights that I do not. My tendency is to observe that it takes no real courage for pastors to preach the gospel in America if the good news doesn’t include getting very specific about sin, both personal and the bloodguilt of a nation. It takes a real love of God and His jealousy for truth to tell a couple living together attending your church that while you care for them, they cannot continue in this lifestyle and have it be blessed of God and what can the church do to help them get married, by way of example.
Your point about the political idolatry is poignant. Why would anyone wish to get chided and derided continually, not only by professors and peers, but also by family and friends for taking a stand against the popular philiosophies perpetuated by the news media and pop culture? Those thus making the “political idolatry” claim might examine whether or not they themselves have a “fear of man” idolatry (Proverbs 29:25) that inhibits their courage to stem the tide and fight where the battle’s most heated.
As respected was the witing prophets of the Old Testament many were despised by the Jewish community and the clergy of their day. And yet it is their writings we live and breathe the essence of God every Sunday during a pastors sermon. Few if any priest liturgy is before us to learn from the temple of that time. They become history and example for us as Christians to learn and improve our behavior before God. Prophets are known as “preachers of righteousness” and they hear from God. Shouldn’t that be the case for pastors? It seems pastors more on taking the petition of the people to God with less emphasis on hearing certain truths from God to tell the people. Most OT prophets end up preaching in the streets, or are loners as they go forward in faith, being often rejected.
Harmony, as you suggest, is meant to be between pastors & prophets. Regardless, God will have the prophets of our age to stand up and declare a few things in these troubling times. The gift of prophecy is there but held back due to much unbelief by the masses including pastors. The outpouring of the HolySpirit awaits the appointed time. I will say that the right questions are not being asked to get the better answer the HolySpirit wants to give. It is written in John 16:13 “How be it, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak and will show all thing to come” This is one of the many operatives of the HolySpirit our Advocate. The people have to want truth, Christ, His righteousness, His kingdom, not nationalism, tradition, the American dream, MAGA. These are fleshy concerns good though temporary comfort they may provide. The coming Millenial kingdom will challenge every one of these ideals and everybody. We are all trying to hang on to the old wineskin while God is pouring out New Wine. It is spilling all over the churches and the pastors are lacking the vision to see what the prophets(speakers of biblical prophecy) of our day see based on the written word of God. Discord is not meant to be but God foreknowledge knows that harmony is not our human nature! The enmity is growing among wheat and tares. I may have strayed a bit Emily, please forgive me. Blessings to your ministry InChristLov
Greg, thanks for your thoughts (and I’m only seeing this now – apologies, comments sometimes come through my spam folder but didn’t see this one). Agree that pastors should be hearing from the Lord and harmony is always the outworking of the Holy Spirit.
“The people have to want truth, Christ, His righteousness, His kingdom, not nationalism, tradition, the American dream, MAGA. These are fleshy concerns good though temporary comfort they may provide.” What do truth, righteousness, and His kingdom look like in practical terms? First and foremost, they look like life, and life more abundantly. That means the systematic death of the unborn (and in some states, the homicide up to nine months of babies) MUST be eradicated. Who is working to do this? We must support them in every effort. In fact, I am leaving here shortly to do a Walk of Love in which we pray outside an abortion mill (a for-profit entity which operates deliberately in a poor neighborhood in a minority community). While I pray, I am always urging lawmakers to shut down this most vile aberration of justice and war on Christ’s kingdom, and voting for those who champion life.
Freedom is always the byproduct of Christ’s kingdom. This is why nations that have embraced Christian principles have always enjoyed liberties that other nations have not. When the Wesleys and Wilberforce came on the scene and urged repentance from the Big Interest of the Slave Trade, not only did this evil empire topple, but in its wake followed many other societal reforms that brought life more abundantly, including the end of widespread infanticide in London. Nationalism, MAGA, etc are buzzwords. They’re being used to gloss over real issues and arguments and to scold those who engage pro-life and who wish to hold onto the Constitutional freedoms that afford us the very right to preach the gospel.
When we throw out God-given liberties because we deem them fleshly, we despise our inheritance. If anyone feels conviction to preach the gospel to the exclusion of engaging righteousness in the public arena, I challenge them that they must also agree that the German Christians under National Socialism ought not to have spoken out against what was being done in the 1930s (remember, abortion and euthanasia were the initial outworkings of Secular Humanism under the Nazis – extermination of the Jews came later). I can’t in faith be silent or neutral.