I would like to give a clarifying word about where I stand personally
on the question of “the prophets.” Some folks believe that my teaching
on "listening prayer" negates any need or place for prophets in the
church today. Occasionally I hear that I’ve even said, "we don’t need
prophets anymore," and so I’d like to share my heart on this particular
question:

Yes, we need the prophets. We will need the prophets until the
day that we meet Jesus face to face as per 1 Corinthians 13. We have
always needed them and suffered greatly without them, which is why I am
so grateful to those who made tremendous sacrifices to reopen the gate
of the sheepfold for the Good Shepherd’s voice… esp. to the prophets
at New Life who went through years of hell when the modern Christian
Sanhedrin tried to have them crucified. Thanks for not giving up.

Yes, we need the prophets: specifically, we need them to continue
announcing to the church (and beyond) what God is initiating with each
new time and season. We continue to ask them, "What’s happening?" and
"What’s coming?" We will always need this and I don’t recall ever
saying that we wouldn’t.

Yes, we need the prophets: especially to teach the sheep how to hear
for themselves. As Kelly Dueck of Samuel’s Mantle (School of the
Prophets – Langley Vineyard) told me last week, "According to Ephesians
4:11, prophets who do not teach and equip the sheep to hear for
themselves are, by definition, not prophets." I found this to be a very
strong statement, but one for serious reflection. Esp. for those who
feel that if the sheep learn to hear God for themselves, then the
prophets will be redundant and hence discarded. The corollary of such
thinking is subtle, but I have seen it for myself: there exists
prophets who oppose or minimize teachings (such as listening prayer)
that acknowledge the voice of God in the broader church for fear that
they will lost their pedestal or place of dependence. Without apology,
I hope to undermine such an irony where the prophets themselves become
the prime hindrance to the voice of God. My heart is that the prophets
would lead the way in training entire churches–in fact, whole
generations–to be prophetic communities in our world.

Yes, we need prophets: to weigh, test, and confirm what the church as a
body is getting. ALL can prophesy, but NOT all are prophets… we need
the prophets to put what’s being heard through the refiners fire so
that we arrive at a pure corporate now-word for the church. When our
favourite prophets come into town and share what they are hearing, do
we actually WANT the sheep to be surprised and dumbfounded (and perhaps
a little impressed) with the prophet? Or do we yearn for the "regular"
believer to nod their heads enthusiastically, saying, "YES, that’s
exactly what I’ve been hearing! WOW, maybe I really CAN hear the Lord!
Maybe we do have the same Holy Spirit! Oh, but I missed that last
crucial part… I’m so glad they came to fill in the missing pieces of
the puzzle." Sign me up for the latter scenario.

Yes, we need the prophets: I believe we need them to be pushing further
up and further in to the kingdom of God. God forbid that they should
stand pat and get entrenched in the nostalgia of the way things were.
The Lord has been speaking to me of an undiscovered spiritual
continent, something as earth-shaking as Columbus’ discovery of
America. I sense that we’ll need to learn to release what we’ve already
received from increasingly clenched fists if we’re to gain this new
territory. We cannot afford to miss what’s coming over a
false-dichotomy between listening prayer and the prophetic when in fact
the two are best married (as I’ve always taught). We need the prophets
to launch out and find this undiscovered land rather than circling the
wagons again to protect what was ours.

Yes, we need the prophets: We need them to explore far far more deeply
the ancient wells dug by the mystics / contemplatives. I think that
many have dabbled there without realizing how much we’ve been missing.
We’ve dipped our ladles in the well but neglected the pearls that await
us way down deep. The prophets are essential pioneers in re-exploring
the riches of the contemplatives AND then making it accessible to ALL.
As John of the Cross said, "God does not reserve this high calling of
contemplation for particular souls. On the contrary, He is willing that
all should embrace it. But He finds few who permit Him to work such
sublime things in them."

Yes, we need the prophets: We need them to remember their biblical
lineage from the OT prophets to Jesus Himself, who distilled all that
they said into a prophetic call to social justice. Prophecy was never
meant to simply be private or even in-house. These men and women
provided a minority report to kings and governors that was public and
political. They unabashedly spoke for God on behalf of the poor and the
lowly, the marginalized and the oppressed. For a long time, the
prophetic in the West was unconcerned with such issues when in fact, it
was right at the core of Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos and Jesus’ message.
We need the prophets to speak up. What concerns me these days is that
many of the prophets are being co-opted by partisan politics and
blending spiritual warfare with national foreign policies. Rather than
giving a minority report, they are marrying themselves to agendas of
political control. We dare not use our gifts to create sort of a
Christian Taliban. We definitely need the prophets to speak up and
speak out, and this tends to sound more like resistance than pep
rallies.

Yes, we need the prophets… in my own church. You need to know that I
practice what I preach on this: At Fresh Wind, by design, we
acknowledge the gift and office of the prophet and make sure that our
Leadership Team is staffed with seasoned prophets who actively pursue
everything I’ve said above. We work in tandem with Samuel’s Mantle and
send our prophetic people there for training. We have prophetic
ministers at our communion tables every Sunday and have a broader
prophetic listening group that meets with the Leadership Team regularly
to share what God is doing and going to do. Many of these same people
are well trained in Listening Prayer so as to not only remove any hint
of competition between the two, but to make the two virtually
indistinguishable. I.e. The idea of two camps is ridiculous: the
prophets hear God because they are listening (I hope!) and those who
learn to listen are prophesying (or growing in it). In all of this, do
we need the prophets? YES! Absolutely, yes.