I’m almost finished reading David Kinnaman’s book UnChristian, and I don’t need to review it since there are reviews galore. His statistical analysis, which is not surprising, is an indictment on the church.

As Ed Stetzer says in this USA Today Article on statistics and trends, “There will always be the stumbling block of the cross. Yet our study shows that many are tripping over the church before they hear the message of the cross.”

The natural reaction, one I’ve had more than once, is to give the church a verbal spanking. Aaah, that will show them! This reaction (never found on blogs) could be motivated by just a tiny bit of arrogance, or hopefully a sincere love for the church, or both, but I want to take this from a different angle.

Israel had this pattern of blowing it, being in a wilderness, then repenting and coming back to both God and their mission. Then renewing and rebuilding. Back to their roots. And the prophets foreshadowed each epoch.

Prophets. Not some whack job. Any discernment tells you the church is in a period of crisis, hope, stagnation, irrelevance, liminality, synergy, ummm…whatever you call our situation, we are in dire need of prophets, but discernment is not prophecy.

Many of us view prophets as really good psychics. Guys like Nostradamus, ripe with vague wordage or esoteric metaphors, except they happen to follow Jesus. I have been talking about Heschel a lot lately, but undoubtedly the next book I read from him will be The Prophets. He says that, “A prophet can give man a new word, but not a new heart.”

The heart?

Prophecy is not just recognizing contextually relevant ecclesiology, and then making correctives. Catalysts for change, from so many diverse sources today, are not the same thing as prophecy either. The Jewish prophets called for repentance, made warnings, and they told them to give up their idols. Heschel says, ‘To be a prophet is both a distinction and an affliction.” I’m guessing it takes a rare breed to tell the people of God with seemingly good intentions, there are idols in their lives.

So where are the prophets today? We desperately need them, do we not?

And shouldn’t there be a genuine measure of repentance that precedes renewal and rebuilding? I guess if I’m really surveying the milieu of churches around America, I see a lot of changes, gobs of re-marketing, and many re-thinking the way we do and be the church. It is encouraging to see us sort out how we do church in post-Christendom. However, these changes seem to be due to pressures from the outside in, rather than the inside out. If we lose young people, then we adjust to keep them coming. If we seem arrogant and are celebrity-like iconic leaders, than we say we are ‘servant leaders,” but keep the same hierarchical top-down ideology. You get my drift…but this is not repentance, just a desire to prolong pending extinction.

If Heschel is right, then it is the voice of God through our prophets that humbles us, and transforms our hearts, not just our image or public persona.

The proper response to this assessment is not perpetuating a critical eye towards the deaf ears, or integrity, of the church. Rather, we should pray for prophets. God will speak. Jesus said something about rocks crying out, so it’s not as though God won’t go to extreme lengths if he has to. We listen. We pray. And we put on our proverbial seat belts.

Cheers.