At my friend Rick's funeral last week, the minister read out some quotes and notes he'd found in Rick's Bible.
Rick had written on a jagged edged scrap of paper that we needed more trouble makers. We needed more stirrers who would cause us to think again, to rethink who we are and what we are doing.
Rick was like that yet in a very likable way, the over 1500 people who filed past to greet his wife and family were testimony to Rick's good and generous heart.
Quietly and gently, yet with strength of conviction behind him, Rick often asked the hard questions, revisited issues that were unresolved and sought God's heart on decisions or plans for the organisations in which he was involved.
In conversation with some ladies later, they commented that they too seemed to be troublemakers, but that they meant well. I told them that irritants in oysters become pearls. The ladies beamed with hope that their efforts were not in vain.
But we need more than protesters, stirrers and troublemakers.
Rick had written on a jagged edged scrap of paper that we needed more trouble makers. We needed more stirrers who would cause us to think again, to rethink who we are and what we are doing.Rick was like that yet in a very likable way, the over 1500 people who filed past to greet his wife and family were testimony to Rick's good and generous heart.
Quietly and gently, yet with strength of conviction behind him, Rick often asked the hard questions, revisited issues that were unresolved and sought God's heart on decisions or plans for the organisations in which he was involved.
In conversation with some ladies later, they commented that they too seemed to be troublemakers, but that they meant well. I told them that irritants in oysters become pearls. The ladies beamed with hope that their efforts were not in vain.
But we need more than protesters, stirrers and troublemakers.
"Protesters are everywhere, but I 
think the world is desperately in need of prophets, those little voices that can point us toward another future... Most people are aware that something is wrong. The real question is, What are the alternatives?"
think the world is desperately in need of prophets, those little voices that can point us toward another future... Most people are aware that something is wrong. The real question is, What are the alternatives?"(Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution)
Malcolm Irwin says,
"The prophet is the one who, by use of... tools of hope, contradicts the presumed world of kings, showing both that that presumed world does not square with the facts and that we have been taught a lie and have believed it because the people with the hardware and the printing press (and the official rubber stamp) told us it was that way. And so the offering of ...(hope) is a job not for a timid clerk who simply shares the inventory but for people who know something different and are prepared, out of their own anguish and amazement, to know that the closed world of managed reality is false. The prophetic imagination knows that the real world is the one that has its beginning and dynamic in the promising speech of God and that this is true even in a world where kings have tried to banish all speech but their own."
Comments?
Malcolm Irwin says,
The conversations I'm involved in keep on coming back to what is a false though nagging source of tension ... management or mission... maintaining what we have or prophetically re-imagining what could be... fiscal responsibility or responsive trust... what is the difference? If I could make the call, (and many may thank God I can't), I'd err on the side of the missional and the prophetic... I think that is closer to who God is and closer to who we were called to be...
The prophetic experience is always
bestowed on the individual, usually
unprepared for the experience, by
the Divine, and this often causes the
prophet to undergo travel, and often
privations and persecution due to the
unwelcome contents of the message he
or she bring to those for whom it is intended.
bestowed on the individual, usually
unprepared for the experience, by
the Divine, and this often causes the
prophet to undergo travel, and often
privations and persecution due to the
unwelcome contents of the message he
or she bring to those for whom it is intended.
"The prophet is the one who, by use of... tools of hope, contradicts the presumed world of kings, showing both that that presumed world does not square with the facts and that we have been taught a lie and have believed it because the people with the hardware and the printing press (and the official rubber stamp) told us it was that way. And so the offering of ...(hope) is a job not for a timid clerk who simply shares the inventory but for people who know something different and are prepared, out of their own anguish and amazement, to know that the closed world of managed reality is false. The prophetic imagination knows that the real world is the one that has its beginning and dynamic in the promising speech of God and that this is true even in a world where kings have tried to banish all speech but their own."
(Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, emphasis Malcolm's).
Comments?
Comments
My mother was a prophetic troublemaker - her wisdom and insight meant often she had valuable offerings into her church communities. However - those voices are not always easily heard, especially when it rallies against the presumed and challenges the reality.
May I be a troublemaker just like her - and many others also, because the alternative seems too much like accepting what is, as all that will be.