Facebook Prophets: 5 Reasons Pastors Won’t Let You Prophesy in Church
Disqualified people are rushing to social media to establish illegitimate ministries. Are pastors to blame?
There’s a level of toxicity regarding the prophetic in today’s churches that must be addressed if we hope to hear God’s voice and advance with clarity and power in these end times.
People who have had their ministries rejected in the church are taking their services to Facebook and other social communities in hopes of developing influence. The problem? Influence without authority is birthed out of deep dysfunction and it can lead people into that same dysfunctional, unauthorized spirituality.
They would argue they receive their authority and their authorization from God directly. This tired argument is evidence of resistance to being rightfully responsive to flesh and bone people who God has called us to serve and honor. We don’t have the option to reject human authority while, in the same breath, attempting to establish ourselves as an authority. It’s silliness.
Listen to the podcast on this topic:
Prophecy Is Critical in the Church Today
We cannot go on without pure, potent and mature prophecy filling our churches every single week. The lack of God’s rhema voice is telling as churches are resorting more and more to sociological mind tricks instead of advancing according to supernatural revelation.
It has become quite rare to see a body that’s healthy and strong in the prophetic as people are rightly equipped and released to communicate oracles from heaven. Faith is epidemically low as millions of Christians have no idea what God’s voice sounds like.
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17).
The word “word” in the above verse is translated as rhema. This is the “now” word of God, the revelation whether it’s a prophetic word or the words of Scripture leaping off the pages. When this active, precise and timely message from God pierces a people, faith skyrockets.
Not only does a strong prophetic culture give a local church body the ability to move ahead in the direction God has determined, but everybody involved is wildly invested as a result of hearing God speak. True prophetic messages don’t stop at the ears or the mind, but they sear our spirits and impact our emotions like no other message can. When this happens, faith goes up and we respond in unity, power and joy.
Sadly, most churches could not be described as prophetic churches. There are reasons for this. Blame rests both on the pastor and on the people. Let’s deal with the people first.
10 Reasons Why Pastors Don’t Let You Prophesy in Church Services
1. A lack of humility. I’ll begin by communicating loud and clear something many prophetic people won’t want to hear: never, ever start attending a church with the intention of mentoring, teaching or refining the pastor via prophecy or otherwise. What arrogance it must take for you to presume such an uninvited role in your church. If your wealth of wisdom, knowledge and experience is needed, be sure the pastor will request your counsel. Otherwise, keep quiet.
Whether in this scenario or another, pastors have no use for people who want to minster to those they have been commissioned to protect if they aren’t truly humble. Meekness is a prerequisite for prophetic ministry, as any measure of arrogance or selfish ambition will taint the messages being delivered.
This following passage of Scripture speaks to this issue perfectly:
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show his works by his good life in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, do not boast and do not lie against the truth. This wisdom descends not from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, and devilish. For where there is envying and strife, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy (James 3:13-17).
Wisdom is demonic if self-seeking, and envy is what drives it. Follow the advice in verse 17 and be willing to yield.
2. Disorder. Speaking of being willing to yield, undisciplined prophetic people tend to enjoy rebelling against the order of the house. Influencing the service with the spiritualized sound of their voice is what drives them.
Many years ago, as I was planting my first church, a visitor asked me about our prophetic protocol. I explained that we value prophecy and that she could deliver a prophetic word to me or leadership for review during the worship service. She didn’t like that answer. She went on to say that she would have to interrupt the service, even if I were preaching, if God gave her a prophetic word for the body.
She presumed her supposed prophetic insight was important enough to violate order. We were interested in investing in her and in her prophetic gift and in developing a very active, life-giving prophetic culture, but she didn’t want to function within those boundaries. She ended up leaving the church, and we were the better for it.
3. Immaturity. There’s a difference between someone who is actively and willingly growing in their gift and someone who refuses to grow up. Those who are intentionally undisciplined and who are not giving themselves to everything that needs to be done to grow and develop their gifting should not be set free to prophesy in the church. A lot of damage can be done.
These people love to prophesy, but you don’t see them in the prayer rooms. They are unresponsive to leadership. They aren’t in the Word.
For though by now you should be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God and have come to need milk rather than solid food. Everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a baby. But solid food belongs to those who are mature, for those who through practice have powers of discernment that are trained to distinguish good from evil (Heb. 5:12-14).
Those who are prophesying are most definitely functioning in the arena of spiritual discernment. If they cannot discern spiritually due to a lack of maturity, there’s no way they can be trusted to deliver prophetic words. Does this mean their prophecy is always wrong? No. But it means they are reckless in their devotion to stewarding their gift, and if they are driven by the wrong spirit, they can do damage.
4. Adverse to correction. There’s no pastor alive who should allow someone to influence the body who won’t take correction. This is not only an indicator of immaturity, but also of a dangerous, unsubmitted person. It reveals their heart, and that’s a heart that should never be trusted to minister. “Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is brutish” (Prov. 12:1).
Enough said.
5. You won’t take no for an answer. The pastor has the right and responsibility to refuse to allow someone to deliver a prophetic word (or to minister in any fashion) if he chooses. If someone reacts wrongly to this, that’s evidence enough that they shouldn’t have been allowed to share the message.
Understand, much of the time a leader will disallow a prophetic word simply because he doesn’t feel it fits. It may have nothing to do with the character of the person who desires to share the word. It may just be a timing issue. We need to yield to our leaders and not get uptight or feel rejected if they don’t believe our ministry is appropriate at that time.
If you are a prophetic person, you need to understand that what you wish to share in a public setting isn’t always what others feel should be shared. Since you are a person under authority, you need to be OK with the reality that your leaders may not want you to share your revelation at times. If not, you’ll grow bitter very quickly, and then we should run far and fast from any prophetic word you try to impose on us. {eoa}
Stay tuned for part 2!
