prophetic people practices
- Matt Frizzell
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Last week was my first post about a prophetic people project. I start with a basic premise. I frame the prophetic people project as a constructive theology project that could help bring Community of Christ in the US into the 21st century and its future.
“Constructive theology” is a hoity-toity term. But the words mean something. Constructive theology concerns both theology and practice. Becoming a prophetic people requires attention on what people with prophetic faith do.
This post focuses on prophetic people practices. Prophetic people practices bring prophetic faith and action together. We identify prophetic people not only by what they believe. We know prophetic people by how they act in the world and what they do for the sake of the world and others (cf John 3:17). Becoming a prophetic people concerns how we see, think, hear, act, and feel. Spiritual practices and prophetic actions push our attention beyond what we believe to actions and practices that form prophetic people.
Below, I name seven kinds of practice that make prophetic people. This isn’t a random list. It is very intentional. Nor is my list an exhaustive list. But it is focused on those practices that have deep formative impact. This provides an approach for those who want to become prophetic people because it focuses on practices that change and form us in deep and meaningful ways.
In this post, I share a brief description of each kind of practice. I plan to go into greater detail with the science, sociology, and spirituality behind each in later blog posts.
Prayer Prayer may seem like a “duh” (i.e., obvious) choice for prophetic people. But it’s not. We all know folk who pray to play the religious role, appear righteous, or fit in with religious folk. That’s not prophetic practice. (Matthew 6:5-6)
For prayer to be a prophetic practice, it must be naked, wholehearted, genuine talk with God. I don’t mean “naked” literally, of course, but as a metaphor for not only vulnerability but intimacy. Prophetic people don’t pray to just any god. They pray to a God they can’t hide from.
The God of Israel, the prophets, and Jesus is intimately personal and political at the same time. God always already knows us (see Psalm 139) before we speak. Moreover, the God of Israel and the Hebrew bible defines what is just. Real prayer with God, therefore, is just as vulnerable and intimate.
The intimacy of prayer can be spoken in front of others or in solitude. Both are important prophetic practices when our prayer is intimate, wholehearted, and genuine.
Praying to a God of intimacy and justice requires we are honest with ourselves. My friends in recovery know this best. It takes opening ourselves to real experience and our true feelings as lived and experienced in our bodies. We are creatures praying to a Creator. Such prayer draws us into deep honesty about ourselves and our circumstances.
Such kind of prayer is inherently mindful and emotionally present. The science of mindfulness is extensive. Our presence, focus, and attention are reworked in the intimacy of prayer. When we listen to the God who speaks today, we are present with our whole body, mind, and spirit. Prayer is a prophetic practice when we are fully present to God’s inherent presence.
Gratitude Practicing gratitude changes our brains. I’ll save references and citations for the blogpost on this practice. For now, I want to appreciate how faith and science come together on practicing gratitude.
Like the intimacy and mindfulness of true prayer, practicing gratitude transforms who we are by changing our relationship to the world and our circumstance. Practicing gratitude rewires our focus and experience on gifts and thanksgiving. It does so by recounting what we are grateful for and mining the gifts from the difficulties, injustice, and suffering of life.
Like mindfulness, gratitude helps us regulate emotion, realign the voices in our heads, and strengthen our positive connections with others, events, and different perspectives. Practicing gratitude can turn a dumpster fire into a gift of light and warmth where there’s none. Stick that to your doom-scrolling algorithm.
Gratitude reimagines the world and our lives with God at work in it.
Gather Put simply, prophetic people gather as a people of God. They practice community. In our world, practicing community is prophetic.
In a social media culture that profits on isolation and enmity…and in a free-market economy that profits on individual choices and idolizes the unincumbered self…gathering in community is, itself, a prophetic act.
Gathering is a discipline of living in community. As a practice, gathering isn’t a one-time taste or trial. It’s more than showing up to get something or fulfill an obligation. What makes gathering more than showing up is being and becoming part of the community. I’m not saying that duty to community or getting something out of community aren’t important. They are. But it’s the experience of developing safe-belonging, shared identity, and character formation in a prophetic community with risk-taking faith that makes prophetic people possible.
Soul Music Your soul music may be soul music, meaning the black popular music of the 50s, 60s, and beyond that fused gospel, R&B, and jazz. Soul music is soul music. 😊
But my use of “soul music” as a practice is not a genre or musical movement. It’s losing yourself in the music that speaks to, with, in and through your soul. By soul, I mean the deepest, visceral, spiritual, identity-forming meaning-making part of you. You know your soul music because it gives meaning to life’s struggles and you feel it in your skin. Soul music touches you and moves you in the way only your soul music can.
Soul music speaks, sounds, or moves to your life’s experience. It rings life’s height and depth. We practice soul music when we listen to it, sing it, play it, dance to it, drive to it, scream it out, soak it in, etc. Practicing soul music engages you in the music that enlivens your reason for being. It’s practiced in private, together in community, and in public. Think of the Freedom Singers and the civil rights movement.
The neuroscience around music continues to grow. Music rewires the brain and connects the parts of the brain involved in sound, emotion, and body. Prophetic people find the music that heals, moves, magnifies, and unites them.
Asceticism Asceticism is another hoity-toity word. But it’s an important one to know. In a world that worships more, ascetic practices liberate us and restore what is enough.
Asceticism refers to spiritual practices that stretch us with their discipline and discomfort. Fasting, voluntary silence, voluntary poverty, and solitude (temporary or long-term) are historical examples of asceticism. We can prophetically imagine contemporary ascetic practices, too, like fasting from TikTok, sugar, purchases, or screens.
Ascetic practices are spiritual because they intensify our relationship of mind and body by stretching our sense of self-control. Ascetic practices are prophetic not because suffering is good, pleasure is bad, or practicing mind over matter is inherently prophetic. Quite the opposite. Our bodies are good. The world is good. Joy is good. And, consumer culture exploits all of it.
If you live in a compulsory consumer culture like me, you live in a free-market system that abuses your brain and body for its cravings, compulsions, and insecurities to profit others. Work, click, checkout, repeat. More, more, more.
Consumer culture is full of unconscious practices that already shape our identity, reactions, and values. These cultural practices are powerful. It can feel like an ascetic practice just to give up choosing our food or doom-scrolling. Ascetic practices liberate us from their hold. It’s the first step in returning us to a sense of enough and abundance in simple joys, other people’s presence, and the freedom of having enough.
Word/Story Prophetic people engage God through shared scripture and story. Listening and telling our sacred stories are prophetic acts. Prophetic people sacrifice time and attention to share and listen to God’s story and each other’s stories. Listening and telling are prophetic community-forming practices.
What makes these practices of word/story prophetic is their effect on us, forming us as a people who recognize God’s voice, action, and presence in the world.
Whether engaging in spiritual practices like lectio-divina or sharing testimony or going deep in personal study, prophetic people listen for what God has done so to recognize what God is always already doing in the world. Prophetic people tell and retell stories of a God who is present and alive. Many spiritual practices open our eyes and ears to God by recognizing the mystery and pattern of God in moments of liberation, fullness, new life, or suffering injustice. What makes the practices of word and story prophetic for prophetic people is how they shape our attention and response as persons and a community.
Practical Justice Work The last practice is, perhaps, the most obvious. Prophetic people don’t withdraw from the world. They engage the world pursuing peace through God’s justice. Like the prophets, prophetic people live and speak God’s love in and for the world. In a world of empire, this is God’s judgment and redeeming work revealed on Jesus’ cross.
Like the prophet Jesus, prophetic people turn their face to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). Jerusalem was the heart of Israel’s faith, politics, economics, and identity. Scripture depicts Jerusalem’s leaders and Temple functions as also twisted and corrupted by the influences of the Roman Empire. Jesus turns to Jerusalem to face the forces shaping his world.
Jerusalem is where Jesus’ prophetic role to reveal God’s judgment and promise reaches its summit. Jesus enters Jerusalem, fulfilling prophecy. He cleanses the Temple, declaring it a site of corruption and abuse (Matthew 21:12-13; Mark 12:40; Luke 20:47; John 2:15-16). Rome, Israel, and even his disciples respond by betraying, mocking, and condemning him.
Prophetic people practice God’s justice work because it is the prophetic path to God’s promise of peace. Practical justice work looks like Jesus’ ministry. He liberates, heals, feeds, and includes the poor, excluded, oppressed, and scapegoated first. God’s justice begins with the least of these because the least is who Jesus, the Son of Man, is also. (Matthew 25:40)
These seven kinds of prophetic practice draw us close to God’s presence in the world and Jesus’ prophetic ministry. As practices, they shape people into prophetic people. In future blog posts, I hope to go into a little more detail about how and why these practices are important.
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