Join us in part 2 of this riveting discussion regarding practical prophecy in our churches. Our special guest is Darin Slack, who is the author of Reclaiming Prophecy and his just released second book, Hear! For more information, visit www.heartoftitus.org or our YouTube channel, Heart of Titus.
Kingdom Community TV Podcast
Prophecy: Building Up the Church, Part 2
- Welcome to Let's Go, where you will hear about lives that have been transformed by the power of God. You'll see and hear real stories of real people going to real places far away, whose lives are changed as God uses them to impact the lives of others for His glory. Get ready to see people experience God's love and power. Let's go. - Welcome everyone, my name is Tony Nardella and I am here with my good friend, Darren Slack, who has a lot to do and a lot to say about prophecy. We wanna welcome you here today. This is the second in our series on the prophetic gifts and we're going to unpack a whole lot more today about how you and your church can be thriving and excelling in this particular gift. Welcome again, Darren. - Thank you, Tony, it's great to be here. - So we were here last time, we were talking a lot about some of the good and the bad and the ugly of the prophetic gift. Have you experienced any of that in your life? - I have, mostly good. Just a few moments that I probably don't wanna remember, but for the most part, God has been very good to, as we say, keep it out of the ditch because that's really important when it comes to prophetic. You don't wanna create an environment that anybody gets hurt or that hearts aren't encouraged. - Yeah, I know that there's a lot of that hurt going around and because of that, some pastors get really sheepish with this and we talked a lot about that in the last episode, but make it more personal. I remember you went to a church that I know well overseas. It was a rather large church and they used to have the prophetic flowing there all the time and then something happened, I don't know what happened, but they just shut it down like somebody dropped a concrete rock and then you showed up. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience? - Yeah, I mean, that was one of the great moments. This was in Guaiquil and I was very grateful for the opportunity to share and we had a sit down with the pastor for lunch prior to our first meeting and this happens all the time when I travel, but he sat down with my other traveler, Pat McGuffin and one of our other hosts and he started to just regale Pat with all the nightmares of their experience of prophecy, guys who've come and tried to set up schools, doing all the stuff and I mean, just if you were listening to that, you'd have been horrified by the control, the manipulation, the pride, the lack of submission, the problems that it created. And then he turns to me and he goes, but we're glad to have you here and we hope it works differently with you tonight. - Oh my goodness. - So I had this whole thing set up where, and this is kind of how it goes. It's kind of like this has been our nightmare, but hey, jump in, the water's warm, what are you gonna do differently? And so there is this kind of expectation that they're looking at me with side eye kind of going, we're not sure what you're gonna do. I was at another gathering where the pastor's first question to me that I just met the man. He goes, well, so what do we do with the pastor or the prophet who gets it wrong? I mean, do we stone him or do we kick him out? What do we do? I mean, I hadn't even met the guy for longer than 30 seconds. Everybody else is talking about their meals and getting to know each other. He wants to know about that. This other pastor I was telling you about though, in the evening service, the first night he came. I guess it was to make sure that everything went okay. And during the teaching, I was just sharing about things. I felt the spirit was taking me off my notes. It was really kind of interesting. I was doing something I don't normally talk about. And at the end of the night, there was wonderful time of sharing, good demonstration. Everything went very smoothly. - Good demonstration. What does that mean? - Well, one of the first things we do when we go is we show them that we can actually do it. We're all about activation. I'm not there to demonstrate and show off and all sorts of stuff. We're there to activate the church in the use of the gifts. The Bible says where to equip the saints for works of ministry. And I'm sure we'll get to that point. But for me, it's not about going and saying, "Hey, look, I can prophesy "and tell everybody what's gonna happen next week." I'm there to demonstrate that I'm here to equip you to do what God's called you to do as the saints. So you know that I'm willing to take the risks I'm asking you to take. I'm gonna call a few people out and we're just gonna see what the Lord does. And it was so neat to see how the words were accurate and people were very encouraged. A lot of words of knowledge, a lot of very specific things were shared. And it was great. And we get to the end of the service that I'm kind of taking a deep sigh of relief because everybody on the team that was with me did a wonderful job. And we hand the mic back over to the gentleman running the service and the pastor steps up. Hang on a minute, I'd like to say something. In front of probably a thousand people, he just starts to share from his heart how it affected him that night. He says, I've never been in a setting where I was hearing from the Holy Spirit what he wanted me to do. And then you would say it during your message. It was like, he told me I needed to learn as a child. And you spent 10 minutes talking about child likeness. And I didn't even tend to talk about child likeness in the prophecy. He talked about having to discern between the difference between Old Testament prophecy and New Testament prophecy. And he was wondering about that. And I spent five minutes talking about that which I didn't plan on talking about. So it was really neat how the Holy Spirit was using what I was talking about to deal with his heart of frustration over what the past had been. And ever since then, he's been very receptive and appreciative of what we bring. - Isn't it interesting that this pastor who had probably made a public scene of shutting down prophecy was now standing up and humbly acknowledging that the prophetic may be valuable after all? - Oh, it's amazing. I've been places, I went to Lviv, Ukraine. And on the first night we had dinner with the pastor. He spent 45 minutes talking about prophecy as he saw it in his perspective and making it sound as if they didn't need us. And he was very adamant about the fact that the gift was poorly demonstrated, poorly activated, poorly everything. And here I was, 5,000 miles from home in a restaurant with this man and he is shutting it down before we even start. And the first night it didn't go particularly well in his mind because we didn't regale everybody with our big gifts. We just did a little bit of activation and demonstration showing people how we can share gifts and how we are willing to share our gift and encourage others. The real stuff was gonna be done the next day and we were doing a quipping of the people. And so that morning we had exercises we were doing with the various people and the pastor participated. He went in there and got in the groups with all of his people. - Now, let me stop you right there, Darren. When you say exercises, explain to our audience, what do you mean by exercise? - So my job is to create environments where people can grow much like the pastor did for me. When I started, they create little groups where people can share and they can practice in an environment where they're not gonna be judged or threatened. They can share openly what they feel the Lord's showing them and they get feedback. And so we'll have leaders for each group and have someone in a controlled and mature way try to help shape what's being said. - So you were in Lviv, Ukraine at a church you had not been to before and they invited you to do a conference. So I imagine this sounds like a Saturday morning kind of a thing where you had all the people that showed up, divided up into small groups and then you were encouraging them and instructing them on how to prophesize that, right? - Exactly, yes. And then they would take a few moments to do it and then we would feedback, have people share with one another, give feedback, weigh what was said, tell them what was helpful, what wasn't. So now you've got this kind of back and forth where people are learning, this was good, this wasn't for successful audience say, hold on to what is good, let go of what isn't. So we had that going on and the pastor was in one of the groups. - Now, before you get to the pastor story don't forget that 'cause I wanna hear that. What is this thing that you're doing where everybody in the church gets a chance to prophesy? How does that make sense? - First Corinthians 14 tells us that we should eagerly desire spiritual gifts especially that we may prophesy. So there's actually a biblical command. If you go down to verse 37 to 40, it talks about, I'm speaking to you as if this is a command. So Paul didn't pull any punches when it came to the value of prophecy to edify, encourage, and comfort the church. So we are commanded by scripture to eagerly desire to prophesy, why? Because of how it builds up edifies and comforts the church that we're gonna allow God to work this out. So it isn't a gift that you necessarily have to possess but there is a spirit of prophecy that will fall in a gathering that anybody can participate in and that's what we're demonstrating is that the Holy Spirit, it wants to encourage believers. And if it's always just coming through one person, nobody ever gets the ministry they need. So a believer filled with the Holy Spirit can prophesy to anyone as long as they understand it needs to be biblical, God glorifying and be encouraging edifying and comforting. - So anybody who's got the Holy Spirit of God and under the right circumstances could be able to prophesy? - Well, if you wanna stretch it, it doesn't necessarily need to be somebody who's filled with the Holy Spirit 'cause Saul prophesied and he was in a group of prophets that were doing it. So when the spirit of prophecy falls and Saul prophesied according to scripture in 1 Samuel, you have this kind of weird picture where Saul wasn't walking with the Lord closely but when he was around the spirit of prophecy, spirit of God came on him. Donkey prophesied in Balaam's day because God had something to say to the prophet. When God wants to speak to somebody, he can get a word to him, there's no question. He can use a donkey, he can use Saul. He'll use whatever he wants, but as a general rule, the spirit of God inhabiting a believer will be the one he uses to bring encouragement to others. - Well, that's very encouraging. So that means that we are more than just people who sit in chairs on Sunday morning and tithe and sing and have big ears to listen. - It must be the saints equipped for ministry. This is big oversight I believe in our churches today that we are not equipping the saints for the work of ministry, not the work of Bible knowledge, not the work of Bible study, not the work of knowing the word of God, although many believers are very well known. The purpose of that knowledge is to share the gospel and to with power, with signs and wonders following so that people are compelled by the love of the Father and the ministry of the spirit. - Okay, so now let's bring this back to the context you're sharing. You have a pastor who the night before spent half an hour or more telling you all the bad things about prophecy and then here you are the next morning unleashing all of his people to believe that they can prophesy. How did he respond to that? (laughing) - It was a wonderful experience because I was actually quite discouraged. I told my team before Saturday morning after he had kind of given us this downer after our first meeting, he doesn't really want us here but I want us to continue to be faithful and trust God and do what we can, let's just do what we do. And he stands up after the morning meeting and I'm thinking, oh great, here it comes. He's gonna, he says, I need to repent to you as the church. I want to repent. - A pastor said he needed to repent to you in order to the church. - To me, he was telling I need to repent to you. Starting on Thursday night, I was arrogant and proud in the way that I talk to you about your gift and what you bring and last night I said some things that were totally misinformed about what you're here to do. I just witnessed something that I've never seen in my entire life. I've been around prophetic people before and my primary experience was that they did all the prophesying and everybody else just watched. You know, as I received words from people who I know are not prophets and don't have prophetic gifts today and they read my mail. They told me things about myself, I didn't tell anybody and they did it with the grace of God and your training which opened a door for me to be able to receive from people that I would have never expected and then it dawned on me. That's why you're here is to equip the saints for the work of ministry and that's your stated objective and for Ephesians 4. And I am humbled by the Holy Spirit today to tell you that I need to repent to you publicly in front of the whole church because of my attitude. And he goes, I want to tell you church what we've seen here today is the way this is supposed to be done in the New Testament. And I'm sorry that I did not understand this and I have been negative up to this point but I will not be going forward. - Okay, so let's identify if we can, what are the distinctives that you bring that create this level of trust in not just you but primarily in the Lord and his gift? - Well, the first one I believe is submission. I believe submission is the first most important way for pastors to receive the gift of the prophetic. Where the Bible says to submit one another out of love for Christ, that's a fruit of being filled with the Holy Spirit. I mean, so it's kind of like this should be something, when I come to a fellowship, I should never come in, you know, I should always find the authority of the house and submit to them and say, I'm here just to serve in any way that I can, what would you prefer? What don't you want me to do? What would you like to see happen? You know, he just wasn't available that one time but in most cases I do try to, oh, no, no, no, you do, you're fine but what they're really saying is please don't put me in a bad situation. And I understand that because I've had 36 years of having to work around very conservative leadership and submit words and submit to people who were testing everything. And so this is my world that I live in as it relates to submission and accountability for everything I say. - You know, that is so true, you know, having served as a lead pastor. I've had very strong prophetic people but they come to me sometimes by saying that, well, I've got God's Word and that needs to be given now. And I say, well, I appreciate your desire to give it now but that's not what the Lord's telling me. And there's just kind of this clash of authorities. What do you say to a prophet who says that, you know, I've got God's Word and has to be given now and what do you do with that? - Well, first of all, it's the same love you talk about. You know, you have to have compassion. I know this is important to you. I'm with you. I love your gift. But we're kind of headed in a direction right now that doesn't surrender. So what I'm gonna ask you to do is I'm gonna ask you to write that down because I do believe it's a helpful word. And we're gonna review it and we're gonna look at whether we should do it in a subsequent service, another time. But right now, it seems like this is where the Holy Spirit wants to go. But I love what you shared and it's very helpful. - Well, Darren, that is really good. You know, we are exploring right now the distinctives of what it is that we can do to reclaim prophecy for the churches. So that the gift would be available to be used to build up the church. But right now, we're gonna take a break. So we'll be right back. (upbeat music) Hello, my friends. I wanna let you know about an exciting opportunity we're making available to you. As you know here at Let's Go, we are all about God using ordinary people to do extraordinary things for His glory. We believe so strongly that God has a plan and a purpose for every person who believes in Jesus that we're offering a way that interact with you and help you fulfill your potential in Christ. That's right. The scripture teaches us that the Holy Spirit has been poured out on everyone. And the gifts of the Holy Spirit have been distributed to every believer. Many of you who are watching really want to be used by God. You have His fire burning in you, but many of you have so many questions and a few doubts and fears too. Everything we have done on this show has been to motivate and encourage you to overcome these fears and to find out what are your gifts calling and purpose so that you can be fruitful and effective in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So here's what we're gonna do. We will be starting a series of monthly video conferences where we will encourage you, pray for you and answer your questions. Our goal is to build your confidence that you really are a son or a daughter of God and that you have meaning and purpose in this life. We want to help you on your road to being discipled so that you will be an even greater blessing to others. We may even ask some of you to come with us on one of our mission trips, but the most important thing is that we help you overcome the obstacles to your service to the king wherever he calls you. And we believe these conferences will help get you there. Visit our website on the bottom of the screen for the time, the date and the link for our next conference. We look forward to seeing you there. (upbeat music) - Welcome back. We're talking with Darren Slack, who's a known prophet that travels the world, preaching the gospel and sharing God's word. Darren, you shared some really wonderful stories about how pastors were encouraged to believe that prophecy really can be made available again to their churches. And so we were talking about some of the things, some of the distinctives that help them, we believe that you believe help them to put their trust in that again. First one you mentioned was submission to their authority. That's so excellent. What would be another one? - Humility, humility to others that are present now. This is very important when I say humility. I'm not talking about a self-deprecating, oh, this is all God kind of thing. And then I do what I want when I have my turn to prophesy. No, it's a humility that's evident in my preoccupation with the heart of the Father for the church and not my own preoccupation with my preferences or how I believe things should be done. A lot of times, prophecy is done a certain way. We have a thing amongst the team, a lot of times, and this is something I'll have to explain a little bit. There's someone given the briefcase. And I know that seems funny. It's a little internal thing we talk about, but it does seem that the Lord will give a particular blessing or anointing or grace to an individual on any given night. It may not be me as the lead. - You're talking about a prophetic team. You travel, you have three or four people, you know pretty well that I've trusted gifts and the Lord reveals to you that one of them needs to take the lead. - Yeah, or be used a lot more than maybe I am. But wait a minute, I mean, you're the headliner. You're the guy that everybody's coming to see. How can we do that? - Well, that's the problem. We have created a culture where headliners have replaced what the body shows, what the scripture shows is the way it's done. At no time do you see prophecy ever being focused on a single individual. The individual is identified, but they're always in the midst of a company or a team. Even in the New Testament when Agabus stood up amongst the team that was brought from Jerusalem, it was a team that came. Judas and Silas said many things to the brothers to encourage them. Personal prophecy is used, but it really is always done in the context of a gathering of prophetic people. And I think that's an important distinction to make is it's God uses as a way to keep the lead person humble while at the same time allowing younger gifts to mature. But in that process of quote the briefcase, what happens is that we discern that God's using them and we'll give them up more opportunities to share or they'll get increased opportunities to communicate. Oftentimes they're not even looking for it. The Holy Spirit just does it and we have to be sensitive to that process and allow them more time to maybe share or speak with God's giving them. - Now what you're describing there is something I've seen to be true in other gifts as well. You know, I was mentored by a pastor, had healing gifts, prophetic gifts, had the whole bundle and from time to time, he'd say, "Tony, do you got something Tony?" And then he would kind of let me go or he would put me in environments where I had the freedom to exercise my gifts and learn. How else is somebody going to grow in their giftings if they don't have a chance to practice them? - Right. And the humility necessary to let that happen is part of that process. And that is impacting to a pastor to watch the lead guy, the headliner step back. Now it's got me in trouble in some instances because pastors expect me to be more than what they see me to be sometimes. And it's kind of maybe left them feeling as though that I wasn't unpacking my gift, maybe the way I could have. But I gotta follow the Holy Spirit to tell them, and it isn't always about me in those settings. And it's about what he wants and who he wants to use. - Wow, that's incredible. So what do you say then to the profit that's watching our show and he's out there building his brand. He's trying to get more invitations. The offerings always need to be more because the rent's always there. What do you say? - I say that you do what the Holy Spirit tells you to do. I'm not your judge, but there's two things that are really important to the life of a prophet. And that is they need to have people that know them outside of their gift. So if you don't have people around you that you're connected with, that know you outside of your gift and are helping you grow in your understanding of the love of the Father, discipline accountability and the light, that's not a good practice. You need to have an accountability that isn't just about accountability. You need affirmation as well because I believe a lot of prophets run on or near empty. And they need to be filled with the love of God and be filled with that support. The second thing I believe they need is they need to understand this isn't about them. And they need to find ways to equip more rather than just focus on using their gift. - Wow, that is just so good, Darren. We're going to come back in just a moment after a break to look at more distinctives on how we can reclaim prophecy in the church. Be right back. (upbeat music) Hello, my friends. I wanna talk to you for a moment about a great need the Lord has put on my heart. Recently, I went to Poland to Krakow, which is close to the border with Ukraine. I stayed with my good friend, Pastor Andre Lopkov, who was a Ukrainian that the Lord sent ahead of the war to Poland. He didn't realize that God was sending him there so that when the war started, he and his new church would be a center for help for the refugees fleeing the war. The church has now also become a center for distribution, to send food, clothes and even portable generators to our brothers and sisters in Ukraine. You know that here at Let's Go, we don't normally get involved in ministry like this. Instead, we are focused on sending ordinary people to share the life-giving word of God, but there are times when God moves on our hearts to help in a more tangible way. Truthfully, my heart has been so burdened for the state of the widows and grandmothers in Ukraine since the war started. As winter approaches, I know that many people there will be freezing during the cold nights because of the lack of power in their homes. I wanna do something about it and I'm asking you to help. I have seen firsthand the work of Pastor Andre and Grace of Life Church. They have refugee homes, delivery vans, warehouses, all the tools they need to get warm clothes and power generators into Ukraine. They just need more money. So I'm asking you today to join with us in sending the money that our brothers and sisters there need to get through the winter. Go to our website on the screen and click on donate and it's to specify Ukrainian relief. Or you can send money directly to us with cash app. I'm just so thankful for your participation with us in this ministry. And I promise you that every dollar that you give will go directly to assist with the plight of our Ukrainian brothers and sisters. Thanks again. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome back. We're here with prophet Darren Slack and Darren's been sharing with us some of the keys of his ministry that God has used in him and his life to help individual churches regain their confidence in the validity and the blessing of the prophetic gift. Now Darren, you shared about submission to authority and humility. Give me a third one. - Well, I think it goes to the compassion and love we have for the church. I think that's gotta be evident in the way we approach it. The Bible says that Jesus was moved with compassion and that it was always something wonderful that happened after that. At least five times the scripture talks about the Holy Spirit moving him with compassion. I think that's a very, very important thing is that when I'm about ready to be used the Spirit of God, the first thing he does is not move me with correction. He moves me with compassion. This is critical. I think a lot of times that prophetic people have a tendency to go into a setting expecting God to point out the faults of the place they are. I think they would do well to watch the example of Barnabas, the son of encouragement. The man God chose from the apostles to go to the most difficult church in the history of the world, Antioch, where Jews and Gentiles were trying to do church life together for the first time after thousands of years of separation by God's will, now they're willed to come together. How is this even possible? And the Bible says in chapter 11 verse 23 that when he came, the Bible says, and when he came and he saw the grace of God, he was glad. I'm like, how's that even possible? Because all you would see is infighting, arguments over circumcision, arguments over food, sacrifice to idols, you'd see Gentiles and Jews with legitimate anger towards one another for things that they were opposing one another in. And the Bible says he came and saw the grace of God and he was glad. I believe this is the clarion call to the prophetic, is that we must, no matter how bad the church is, come looking for the grace of God. Because it really takes no gifting to find fault in a setting, it really doesn't. It doesn't take any power at all to walk in and go, there's a problem here. Because the church is imperfect, she's the bride. But if I invited you to my house to talk to my wife to encourage her and all you do is criticize her, I don't think I'd invite you back. I think this is part of the maturity I'm talking about is that we must be filled with compassion and love in order for our gifts to be perfected to the church. - Well, you know, Aaron, it has been just incredible to have you here with us again today. We're going to continue this series and we're going to talk about some more of the mechanics of how to prophesy and what does a church look like that is enjoying the blessing of an active prophetic ministry which is doing the things that you're saying, they're humbling themselves, they're submitting to the church leadership and they're loving on the sheep. But before we go, I just want to encourage all of you that we are here to help you be edified, built up in your walk in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the use of your gifts and callings. We want you to know that God has a purpose for your life and that yes, even you can be used to bring incredible blessing to the lives of others. We have resources on our website which you can see on our screen where you can go watch videos and read blogs and this is a variety of resources that will help you in your walk with the Lord. We also want to make available to you this book that Darren has written called Reclaiming Prophecy and this conveys the heart of God for restoring and reclaiming the gift of prophecy for the local church. It's an incredible book and you'll hear many things you hear that you've heard today and then so much more and we will make this book available to you for any gift that you make to our ministry. You'll see the information on the screen. Make sure that you give us a street address where we can send the book and we will get this to you for any gift to the ministry. And so I just want to thank you for being with us here again today and we look forward to seeing you again on the next episode of Let's Go. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]