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Join Christina (CC) and Denise (DeDe) on Emissaries of Renewal, a podcast that explores ethical evangelism through radical hospitality and education. Embrace God’s transformative love through Jesus Christ with us as we share inspiring stories, meaningful conversations, and valuable insights.
Music.
Welcome back to Emissaries of Renewal. I'm Deedee here with Cece,
and before we get going, let's do some housekeeping.
As always, this episode is brought to you by the Episcopal Evangelism Society, EES,
a community committed to spreading the good news in fresh and inspiring ways
within the Episcopal Church, and we're proud to be associated with them in this journey.
Okay let's move
on to today's topic i want
to challenge or maybe just introduce a different lens for evangelism and so
cece what do you think about prophetic evangelism and for today's episode prophets
of the old testament specifically.
I love this topic.
As you may recall, when we first started shaping and forming our relationship,
it was in our Old Testament class, and we were studying a bit of the prophets,
and I just absolutely fell in love with the unpacking and unfolding of the Old Testament,
especially some of my favorite prophets,
Amos and a couple of others.
I feel like sometimes they're overseen, overlooked, right?
I feel like also one of the many, many reasons why I received this calling is
I also encountered so many individuals that said, oh, well, the Old Testament, that's old.
You know, let's just focus on the New Testament.
I was like, surely that can't be right. And as I started unfolding my own journey
of understanding and knowing and getting closer to the Word of God.
You know, I just, it's very much overlooked.
And so I'm so glad that we're able to talk with everyone about this today and
how these prophets taught us about evangelism and what it looks like and how
we could maybe make some of their teachings applicable to modern day times,
right? Like, what does this mean to us in 2025?
They were just like praying for sinners.
They were just praying for people. They were just calling on people to gain
wisdom, to learn and to grow and to be deep in the word of God and the relationship with God, right?
Well, yeah, I think what you said is so important, is so many times we run into,
at least I did, especially in more fundamental faith, is the Old Testament isn't our book,
you know, except when it needs to be.
And, you know, everybody just focuses on the New Testament, but there's so much
to learn from the Old Testament still.
Um and so i i just really
thought that maybe this
would challenge some assumptions that people carry around about
you know the old testament not only that but about the prophets and what we
can still learn about them um this you know this is the episode is gonna you
know it's airing in july this is the july episode and in june we actually did our friday reflections,
about prophetic evangelism.
I was hoping to test the waters to see what people thought about it.
And so I love this topic.
Well, before we actually jump into the topic, I think that we should maybe back
up and take maybe a bird's eye view about this conversation.
And we can clear up maybe something on what exactly is prophecy.
I know that those two, the different words of prophetic evangelism and prophecy
and the prophets, right?
Maybe we should, you know, unpack that for our listeners and maybe see about,
and we could talk a little bit about maybe, are they, you know,
so-called folks that talk about the future?
Or is their message, right, applicable to us today?
And how with having that lens, maybe how might that change how we read some of the Old Testament?
I, you know what, I not only do I think that's a good idea, I can tell you that
as of this morning, What a fabulous idea that is,
because I actually got
a message on our Instagram this morning about somebody that was upset that I
had made a comment about how women prophesy in Corinthians,
in Paul.
And how that is part and how being prophetic is part of teaching and is part of preaching.
And they were telling me how that can't be true because women aren't allowed to do that.
So, um, obviously the prophets that they were speaking of, or that Paul was
speaking of in the Corinthians, um, were only, you know, they were,
you know, they were just doing what prophets do.
And I'm like, do you understand what prophecy is? So I think that it's still
such a common misconception to think of prophets as fortune tellers.
You know does that make sense so what you know what is the difference i think
we need to understand that there's foretelling which i guess you can say is
kind of like a fortune teller,
um and forth telling and i don't think that's a word people use enough what is forth telling.
Um foretelling is what most people think prophecy is
it's predicting future events you know
telling what's going to happen next week or next year but
foretelling that's speaking forth god's truth into a current situation and well
here's the thing if you actually read the old testament prophets they spent
way more time foretelling um than foretelling,
they were calling people back to covenant faithfulness they were speaking god's
heart for justice revealing god's character in the midst of their current circumstances.
And today,
what comes to mind is is one of my favorite science fiction authors octavia butler,
you know when you think of her she wasn't a prophet but she did prophetic work,
i mean some people might actually call her a prophet so i might get some pushback
on that some people might fight me on that but she saw current patterns of power race and inequality,
and projected to where that might lead so her parable series showed what happens
if we ignore these systems.
That's forth telling through fiction. So she helped people see present realities
more clearly by imagining what's possible.
Yeah, imagining what is possible. That's key.
Exactly. So, you know, and I think that's what, you know, a lot of the biblical
prophets were doing in the Old Testament.
They were helping people see their current situation with more clarity.
You know, so is that what prophecy is? Is that what prophecy is actually doing?
I think there are three main functions that we see it in in Scripture.
It's calling people to repentance. It does do that, but it's not in judgment.
It's not that finger wagging way. It's more revealing what keeps people from God.
So we saw that a lot in the New Testament. I mean, the Old Testament.
Oh, Denise, get the right testament.
Like, so when somebody has a prophetic word about generosity for a person who's
been hoarding money, it's not condemnation.
It's God sees how much joy you're missing by holding tightly to that.
And then they would offer hope, you know, and hope is something we all need.
I would say today is definitely a time in our life that we need hope more than ever.
Prophetic words that remind people God isn't done with us yet.
That was something that did happen a lot in the Old Testament.
And then you would see them talk about God's character.
Sometimes prophecy is just showing people who God really is.
So if you've been told your whole life that God is angry with them,
and then a prophetic word comes, you know, and reveals God's delight in them, God's joy over them.
Or if people think that, you know, God is actually distant and cold.
And then that prophecy comes along and reveals God's tenderness,
God's passion for justice and mercy.
All three of those functions, you know, that repentance, that hope,
that revealing a God's character,
those are all things to draw you closer to God that's doing that work of speaking truth to power.
So, you know, from there you take those lessons and then you figure out how to apply them today.
You know, that's what we need to do with the prophetic words of what we can
do, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Prophetic words today have to connect to some sort of action.
So it's good to know that those are what we can find in the Old Testament.
But it's not enough to say, you know, God loves you. You know,
what does that love look like lived out?
You know is god's heart is it for justice then the prophetic word needs to include
so what are we doing about that you know we can't just say it's,
it's for justice and and um so um.
So I guess I want to connect it to what prophetic evangelism can really be and to kind of take that.
So instead of evangelism, when you hear the word evangelism,
people kind of, you know, ew, evangelism.
So what have we been doing this whole season trying to take back that word,
you know, to speak correctly into that word?
So instead of evangelism being about having the right argument or memorizing
the right techniques, you know, we can learn to see people the way God sees
them and speaking God's heart for them.
So when you meet somebody and you sense God's love for them,
their potential, their calling, you can find a way to communicate that.
That can be both prophetic and evangelistic.
And it takes that pressure off evangelism because then you're not trying to
manipulate or convince anybody.
You're just trying to faithfully communicate what you sense God is saying.
And so it's less and less about having all the answers and more about being
attentive to that prophetic voice to god's voice and god's heart for the people around us,
so even without the gift of prophecy because maybe that isn't your gift it doesn't
mean you can't hear the prophecy within the scripture or from something you've
seen or heard around you.
So it's going to be something that is easy for anybody to develop and to know,
because it's innately in you as a Christian.
You know, you don't need to prophesy over nations.
You know, you start with your family and your friends and your own church communities.
You pay attention to what moves you even emotionally.
When you feel grief or joy or even anger or hope about a situation,
ask yourself, is this connected to God's heart?
What might God be saying here?
And practice seeing people the way God sees them.
And when you meet someone, ask, what does God love about this person?
What is God's desire for their life? And that will lead you to write,
be exactly where you need to be.
And to connect everything that I'm saying about this, you know,
to finally wrap this up is this isn't something that you have to be super spiritual about.
And I'm going to go to the New Testament for this. Paul says we should earnestly
desire our spiritual gifts.
So maybe the question isn't, am I a prophet, but how can I learn to see with
God's eyes and speak with God's heart in the situations where God has placed me?
Because that's how God's kingdom advances, through ordinary people who learn
to see the extraordinary in everything.
Yeah, you mentioned see, seeing, seers, to see quite a bit.
And as I was discerning on this recording, the prophets are sometimes described as seers.
And this was a huge jump for me when we started going to seminary is all of
the different explanations,
parables, stories of seeing.
And when we talk about being able to see, it's not necessarily with your vision,
with being able to see with your eyes.
It's also being able to see people for who they are, to see Christ in other
people, to be able to, and so forth.
So it's being seers, and so the prophets are described as seers,
to be able to go beyond and to see what is to be,
what should be, what can be, as well as to help us understand and see and learn
and grow within that realm as well.
And it's one of the biggest paradigm shifts that I had when we first started
going to school was being able to see.
And being able to see with my heart, my soul, being able to have the lens of
God and Jesus Christ within me and fully embodying and being able to see the world from that lens,
as well as we're taught to have different lenses and to be able to have and
to be able to see different lenses as we're reading the word.
And so I think that the prophets help us to understand how to see,
how to learn, how to grow, how to gain this wisdom through them.
And that really struck a chord with me as being that they are seers.
And they're teaching us how to do this, right?
And then also how to be seers within the world around us, how to help others to see as well, right?
As we unfold and unpack the Word of God and unpack the lessons,
the parables, the stories.
And we say that God has spoken through the prophets.
God has helped those prophets to see and then to be able to show us how to see.
So it takes this way beyond being teachers or students, right?
It is soul, embodying on our soul level with the Holy Spirit moving within us
to be able to see on a deeper level.
Yeah. And I like how you put that.
It is being able to find what peace within you is what I'm hearing that allows
you to, you know, see that.
And, you know, for those that maybe aren't Christian, you know,
they have their third eye, you know, they talk about how they see.
We all see these extraordinary moments of power within one another,
within ourselves, within our communities,
you know, within, you know, how we need, how we would like to shape or speak truth to power. Mm-hmm.
Somehow, however we want to do that. you know, work with our systems,
you know, or work within those systems of injustice.
And then when God started, you know, the Old Testament is filled with the prophetic
messages and the different prophets, and they come from a very variety of different
backgrounds, different,
different places, but then also they, some have different experiences.
And so it wasn't just a cookie cutter type of individual, right?
And so it's also able for us to see through different lenses through them and
their experiences and different storylines that were shared with us.
Do you want to talk about your favorite profit?
I have a lot of them. However, I very much appreciate Amos.
I appreciate Amos and Job.
Um, but, um, but Amos, he, he very much showed and helped me to see, uh, about, about, uh,
the hypocrisy that goes on when we're talking about, uh,
fighting for one another and injustices.
And the hypocrisy of going against what God has been able to try to show us
throughout the Old Testament and to be able to,
and it's obviously Amos is quoted quite a bit with some modern day theologians and faith leaders.
But he's, yeah. It's a tale as old as time is what it seems is A lot of,
you know, it is, I think it's Mark Twain that says, you know,
history doesn't repeat, but it sure as hell rhymes.
And so, yeah, these are these aren't new things, you know, and the prophets
were dangerous to the powers that be. Right.
Amos was one of them. So tell what made him so dangerous. What do you think?
Oh, I think it was more so about speaking the truth.
And we can sometimes see a lot of gray in the world.
But Amos straight up was like, no, that's not the case. And that's very hypocritical
for you to be able to say that that's not the case, right?
Thank you.
Well, yeah, I think he, I mean, let's talk, you know, he flat out says, what is it in 524?
He says, let's justice roll down like waters and righteous like a mighty stream.
And am I getting that right?
Mm hmm. Am I getting that right? Okay. um but is he preaching to like a personal
morality there i i don't i don't think so i think he was,
going after you know courts and religious establishments and you know because
he also you know called out like the wealthy women you know um isn't that what the cows of a sham was,
you know he's calling out like the wealthy you know who oppressed the poor and
crushed the needy and um and i think that's what i mean when i talk about and
not just what i mean but one of the things that i mean when you when i talk
about speaking truth to power isn't separate from evangelism.
You know, because that, why wouldn't that be part of being evangelistic?
You know, so do you want to talk about what maybe, you know,
what would be the application of that today?
You know, like, how can we apply what Amos was saying today?
Yeah, he also, I mean, the hypocrisy, right?
So he also talks about how we could practice our religious acts. However.
Faith without action is dead, right? Faith without doing, we could pray all we want.
However, if we then go out and live out our life against the Ten Commandments,
if we live out our life against, you know, Jesus's rule of the two new directives
of loving God and loving our neighbor,
then that is for God to judge, right?
But praying is no assurance against the judgment of God.
And, you know, you mentioned 524 in that we will not be fully...
We will not see God's glory fully until all are served with justice and righteousness.
And so how is that applicable today to these times is I'm constantly,
you know, we're baby seminarians in this practice.
So how can I be a better person practicing God's word when I leave my house,
when I leave the classroom?
How can I care for my neighbor? How can I try to make sure that there are services
being able to be provided to our community members?
How can my thoughts and my words and my deeds be applicable to all the practices in the Bible?
No one is perfect, right? But how can we bring this into our workplace?
How can we bring this into the grocery store line? And how can we not be living
out God's word, even though we're praying God's word?
And I think that sometimes it's harder said than done sometimes, right?
But then it also means that we get the opportunity to renew every day and to
be able to make sure that we are looking out for our neighbor,
making sure that we are embedded with our ministries that are near and dear
to our hearts, and making sure that all are welcome to our table,
all are welcome whether or not they want to join us on Sunday or they want to
join us helping out with some of our other ministries.
How is that applicable to you and your community? well
um first of all i'm i'm gonna
call you on something you're not a baby seminarian anymore girl
i know you
want to hide behind that but you're a senior uh getting
ready to graduate and get ordained so uh any day now so don't you be hiding
behind that anymore lady um i think how it applies today is that we can't,
I don't want to sound mean,
you know, I don't, I don't, but we do need to not be afraid to say it.
You know, we need, you know, we need pastors to call it out.
You know, we need people to be willing to say the hard things,
you know, pastors calling out the racism in their congregation.
We need Christians who will advocate for the right things, the things that are Christ-like.
I am tired of a Christianity that just wants a Savior but doesn't want to be like Christ.
And so what does that look like? And I think through prophetic evangelism is
one of the ways that we can do this is to remember those roots.
I think we're going to need all the tools in our toolbox in the coming days.
And these are absolutely some of the tools that we can use.
Is this going to make evangelism uncomfortable yeah but we can't stay in this
visual bubble yeah I like how you mentioned that is this uncomfortable,
Amos the name of his the name Amos literally means burden to carry to have a
burden oh I didn't know that yes yes so I think that you know as we're talking about that is sometimes,
I don't want to necessarily think that us being Christians, us being called
to live out, not necessarily those that are not Christians that are listening
to this, that yes, sometimes it is a burden to love our neighbor.
Yes, sometimes it is a burden to love God.
Yes, sometimes it is a burden.
But also more so than that, it's to carry.
It is our duty is to carry the message of love.
And it is to carry the message of unbridled
love to our brothers and sisters and to
be able to make sure that everyone is loved and welcome right it is our duty
to carry that so instead of looking at it as a burden it's more so is our job
to carry the message of love yes yeah true.
Oh all right well we love amos is there anybody else we want to talk about.
Well who's your favorite prophet oh i
i really i go back and forth i i'm
not gonna lie in the new testament i am in a loving i'm in i'm kind of having
a love story with habakkuk right
now but when we um but if i was to say i would i would go with ezekiel.
Yeah I would go with Ezekiel,
because it's not just pretty poetry you know I do love a good poetic word anybody
that follows us on our social media knows that I love to write I write original
psalms and those types of things,
if you look at Ezekiel and Ezekiel's Valley,
when he talks about the valley, you're looking at the.
Some really gorgeous words, you know, those allegories and the metaphors that
you're looking at there.
Isaiah, who in the world doesn't love a good Isaiah 43?
Who can't, you know, we carry it on our necks.
Cece and I have matching necklaces that, you know, talk about that,
you know, have those words etched in that.
Um so you know
so some of the more popular major prophets you
know definitely um but and when you put isaiah and ezekiel together you get
this isaiah's cosmic vision of renewal you know you've got that going on but
then you get ezekiel's valley of dry bones and coming to life you get this incredible picture.
So I've got this whole artistic view going on there for me.
And I see that it's not just like this individual transformation.
When you put those two together, it's everything being made new,
dead things living, broken things restored, enemies becoming friends,
cats and dogs living together, you know, complete chaos.
I just completely aged myself with the Caddyshack reference and.
But I, you know, cause Isaiah, you know, when he's talking about, you know, the,
the plowshares in chapter two or the wolf lying down with the lamb in chapter
11, this is what God's kingdom looks like.
Don't you want to be a part of all of that?
Right. So again, you're getting these beautiful stories.
Um yeah i love isaiah 2 4 they
shall beat the swords into plowshares yeah you
use that one a lot i've heard that i yeah isaiah 11 12 he will raise a banner
for the nations and gather the exiles yep and that's one of my another big aha
moments was god will be a savior of all nations,
you've heard me talk about that it's right there and you know and you know living
in a place that thinks that the only place god is is in america that's something
that we have to remember um.
This prophetic okay prophetic imagination i was i was looking to try to grab
that word and i was not finding it.
That can be very powerful for evangelism, I think. I think...
Instead of arguing people into the kingdom, which is something that I think is done.
It's fear-based. You kind of argue to the point that you confuse them into the
kingdom. You're inviting them into a vision that's so compelling.
They can't help but want it.
You know, you're not saying you need to get saved. You're saying,
look at the beautiful reality that God has created.
And you get to be a part of that. And it's not always going to be easy.
But we've, you know, and there is work to do. But, you know,
we are building the kingdom of God here.
And maybe that's what's missing from evangelism today.
And no, not maybe. It is what's missing from evangelism today.
I'm just going to go out on that.
I'm not going to beat around the bush on that. We've lost the imagination.
We give people theological statements when we should be giving them visions.
We tell them that they need to believe instead of showing them what it could become.
You know, what the world could become. The kingdom of God is breaking through now.
The kingdom of God is here, but not yet. You know, I say this all the time.
To everybody around me, I say it all the time on our social media.
So it's, but it's true.
We're working on showing people how the kingdom of God is breaking through as we speak. So.
Yeah, Isaiah 40, verse 8, the grass is, just to make it applicable to us today,
is the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.
And that can give us all hope, right? But Isaiah is full of hope.
And when we combine maybe looking at hope i'm reflecting back on you know amos
again and when we look at the words of amos and he talks about,
the different ways that we can speak out against the hypocrisy of society is that.
He said, you worship the noise of the crushing poor, right?
You worship the things that separate you from God. You worship the things that
separate you from community. You worship the things that are not of God.
And I think that's also really important to be prophetic, to learn from the
prophets and be prophetic in our own lives and how we can be seers in our lives,
to be able to see and to learn and to grow in the message of the prophets,
that we sometimes can get clouded by the noise, get clouded by the constant,
beratement of noise, but we can find the deep connection that the prophets have
taught us to build that relationship with God,
to be able to see and to know and to grow with one another, as well as with
ourselves through one another.
Yeah they didn't just preach they lived
what was happening and they
spent their lives with that message so if we're going to do prophetic evangelism
i think it can't just be words it has to be a way of life i think it has to
be second nature this is where that radical hospitality becomes crucial.
You can't preach God's love for the marginalized and then exclude people from your church.
You can't talk about God's justice and then ignore poverty in your own community. Right.
Um, the medium is in the message. It is the message.
How do we, how do we do evangelism actually communicate something about who God is? Mm-hmm.
Yes, absolutely. We just did, for the month of June, at my field at parish,
we just did a conversation on creation care and earth stewardship,
and we were reading the encyclical by Pope Francis.
And embedded in the conversation of this letter were just beautiful remarks about.
How to take care of this gift that God had given us to look after, to oversee,
to be with our two and four-legged friends and it is our duty as humans,
it is our duty to take care of these resources,
and to not, and we mentioned, and I love this.
The time when Jesus was talking about the farmer who had a very big harvest
and the farmer was going to build another shed to store the harvest.
And Jesus said, you fool, this is not for you to keep. This is for you to share, right?
And when we're talking about the prophetic wisdom, Um.
Uh, we, the prophets are talking about our spiritual health and our social justice
and the kingdom of God breaking down the systems that downtrodden our brothers and sisters.
And we're really, we're able to talk about and to support and to be engaged
in conversations to raise awareness on this, on these topics, right?
And we're willing to have these hard conversations with love,
from a place of love, not from a place of fear, not from a place of hatred or
not from a place of anger.
And I think that's what we're being called to do and to be seers, right?
And to help others to see that vision of fighting for the things that God has
told us since the beginning of time with the prophets,
that God is a savior of all nations and it is our duty to take care of where
we live, take care of our neighbor.
And to be able to speak out and share on how we can change the systems if need be.
Exactly. Prophetic evangelism is incarnational.
It gets involved in the mess of real life, you know, whether it be,
you know, creation care, politics, you know, our economics, you know, systemic problems.
The prophets didn't have the luxury of avoiding their community or those types
of controversies, and neither did Jesus, like you were saying.
And I think the key for today is prophetic words and actions should align with Scripture,
build up the body, and ultimately point people to God's love and justice.
And we need community discernment. Prophetic gifting works best when it's in
accountability. That's the word I'm looking for.
Accountability with other believers who can help us distinguish between God's
voice and our own opinions.
Uh so i think that's where,
uh that's where we're getting kind of messed up with where does this fit in
and maybe where how we understand the differences that we're we're having a lot of today is,
is we're having a hard time distinguishing between God's voice and our own opinions and,
So prophetic voice isn't being used as it should be.
You know, we're not able to speak that truth to power.
So I think this is probably a good place to wrap us up today.
What do you think, Cece? Yeah, absolutely. I think I just love talking about
the prophets, and I think it's important that we don't oversee,
we don't overlook what they have, what's in store for us, right?
And they're continuing always ongoing teaching us.
They didn't just preach to us. They lived it.
And their whole lives were about this message. And they are encouraging us to
see and to be seers and to help others to see in their actions as they proclaimed.
Yeah, and I want to, I think this will be a topic that we keep coming back to,
prophetic evangelism, because it is something that works.
I think it is something that is important. And we will see it in the second
season, because we're going to bring in our Old Testament professor to have
a chat with us about it as well.
So I'm going to take two of the prophets that or
one of the prophets that we spoke about one that I mentioned is
for our reflection today I think we're
going to bring in Isaiah and Habakkuk first Isaiah 6 1 and 3 which gives us
a vision of what God's renewal looks like the spirit of the Lord God is on me
because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,
to comfort all who mourn, to give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
festive oil instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
Now, this is the hope we proclaim, that God's good news brings beauty for ashes and joy for mourning.
But sometimes, before the beauty, we have to sit in the ashes.
And that's where Habakkuk 1 and 2 comes in.
He looked at the brokenness and injustice of his world and cried out,
How long, Lord, must I call for help and you do not listen?
And he didn't turn away from hard questions. He brought them to God.
And yet, even as he waited for answers, Habakkuk, he made a choice,
and he said, Through the fig tree does not bud, and there is no fruit on the
vines, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
That's chapter 3, verse 17 and 18.
Prophetic evangelism means holding both the honest lament of Habakkuk and the bold hope of Isaiah.
It's naming what's broken, longing for justice, and still proclaiming that renewal is possible.
So, friends, as we go out, may we be people who don't hide from the world's
pain, but we're encouraged to see.
We also never lose sight of God's promise and to bring beauty from ashes.
May we listen, lament, hope, and act until renewal breaks through.
Music.