The Quiet Prophet

There is a matter-of-factness about Barry Kissell. He speaks quietly, deliberately; he narrates events in measured tones. He might be talking about the weather or a recent shopping trip. In fact he’s talking about how God woke him to have him pray for someone who was being attacked at that very moment. After 30 years at St Andrew’s, Chorleywood, he’s now on the team at St Mary’s, Bryanston Square, in the heart of London’s media land. But in a quiet way – the church’s website indicates he doesn’t lead or preach that often on a Sunday, he’s listed as Associate Vicar. The matter-of-factness seems to be a genuine humility about his status in church pecking orders. This is all the more remarkable given his role as travelling speaker at mega-conferences – as well as Mainstream’s gathering in January 2006. But that role seems more than unusually earthed in parish life – however extraordinary that life is. As he plans to speak at Swanwick next year, what God is laying on his heart to share with us is rooted in his ministry among St Mary’s’ predominantly young parishioners. ‘I’m speaking about the emerging prophet,’ he says as he emerges from his kitchen with two mugs of tea. ‘I’m looking at the prophet as healer, as seer and as proclaimer.’ Taking Isaiah 61 as his launch pad, Kissell will look at ministry based on the revelation of God’s heart – as Jesus did in Luke 4 – and the whole area of healing. ‘Our church has grown to 1200 in two years,’ he says. ‘And the average age of the congregation is 26. The problem of this generation is broken hearts and addictions to things they think will mend their broken hearts. We often find that healing in this area comes through revelation of what’s going on in people’s lives.’ He admits that his church is in many ways abnormal. There are virtually no older people. A large proportion of the congregation are involved in the media and arts world. And the church has its own resident theologian, Dr Crispin Fletcher-Louis, who runs courses in theology for this highly literate and questing audience. Fletcher-Louis completed a PhD at Oxford in angelology in Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles (published as Luke-Acts: Angels, Christology and Soteriology (Tuebingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2006). He has been a Lecturer in the Departments of Theology at Durham and then Nottingham Universities as well as visiting lecturer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Indeed the crisply designed church website shows a community that’s busy in all kinds of ways reaching and equipping the emerging generation. For example, Power up Mondays is a fortnightly programme looking to develop prophetic gifting in its people. Kissell’s book –The Prophet’s Notebook – is the manual for the course which ‘seeks to teach the various ways in which God speaks.’ Kissell also teaches a ministry course, a four week programme designed to train people for the prayer ministry team. As the website explains, Jesus ministered through revelation and the gifts of healing, miraculous powers, the distinguishing of spirits and faith. He modelled this ministry firstly to twelve disciples, and then to seventy. And once he had shown them how it worked, he sent them out in twos to do it themselves. And after he rose from the dead, he indicated in the great commission to the church that this ministry should continue through all those who came to believe in him. At St Mary’s, ministering in the power of the Spirit is one of our major values.’ ‘People in this area are very isolated,’ says Kissell. ‘Many live alone in bed-sits. They come to us to find others who are like them and a good number – maybe half – come  to faith as a result. Some would find it hard to fit in other churches because they are involved in the arts, media and pop industries.’ Many of those who find faith at St Mary’s join the ministry training courses that Kissell runs teaching people to pray for others in reliance on the Holy Spirit. ‘We find that people who have known no other kind of Christian life learn this very quickly,’ he says. ‘It is normal Christianity to them relying on the Holy Spirit to show you what to pray for someone else.’ Thinking of the prophet as seer – one who sees – Kissell intends to explore the different ways in which God speaks and yet we may not perceive it. ‘I’ll develop this in the context of both the congregation and the culture we live in,’ he says. ‘I want to say something about the Word of God coming to the congregation. Often we talk about needing both Word and Spirit. But the Word comes firstly by being read and then secondly through how we teach it and proclaim it – expecting a response to it. Thirdly, the prophetic word comes as people tell out what they think God is saying to them. And fourthly, the Word comes through personal testimony – as people share how God has acted in the lives of others. ‘Once the word comes,’ he continues, ‘we have to give people the opportunity to respond to it. We’ll often pray for 60 people or more at the close of a service. And often it’s when you’re praying for someone who’s responding to the Word that they receive the Holy Spirit.’ When I met him, Kissell had recently from a trip to Russia where he had seen how powerful such personal testimony combined with prayer can be. ‘There’s a real move of God there,’ he reports. ‘I’d be in meetings where there was an hour of praise, then a personal testimony, followed by an invitation to receive Jesus. The person giving the testimony would pray for anyone responding. They are then introduced to local pastors who sorts them out a mentor who will disciple them. It’s very exciting.’ Thinking about the prophet as proclaimer, Kissell has in mind the Lukan idea that all God’s people would be prophets. ‘It’s based on Joel 2:28, fulfilled on the day of Pentecost which was itself a revelation of the fact that we’d become a people speaking the revelation of God. ‘God speaks to us about something specific,’ he explains. ‘We search the scriptures for something that’s parallel to it and we proclaim it primarily to our congregations, though sometimes to people beyond as well. God intends his people to be prophetic and that should undergird all we do – whether we function in administration in our church or have an apostolic role. ‘What this means,’ he continues, ‘is that the Lord will lead us to what we are to put in place. Administrators need to be prophetic and anointed so that they will make everything flow smoothly. Prophetic treasurers have a specific vision from God and the faith to use resources as God intends to fulfil that vision.’ Kissell has built up a reputation over many years as a teacher and leader in the area of prophetic ministry. He has written books about it and spoken on virtually every continent about the subject. I asked him how he became involved in a such a ministry, what his first experience of being given a word from God was. ‘41/42 years ago, when I was at college and just married,’ he replies. ‘We were in our lounge and suddenly I was weeping, kneeling by my chair and weeping. I said “someone’s trying to murder a prominent church leader’ – the man was one of the leading lights in the early renewal movement in this country. I prayed and wept. Later I phoned and discovered that the man had been visited by someone who had attacked him with a knife on his doorstep. But he had been protected by an invisible hand that knocked the knife away. It happened as I was praying for him and weeping. ‘I had recently been filled with the Holy Spirit,’ he continues. ‘But I didn’t know what to do with this experience at all. I began to see things so I thought this was normal, it was just what one did as a Christian. If we are filled with the Spirit of prophecy, then we will be a prophetic people. This will be the normal Christian life. It’s not an additional experience for the specially-anointed few. ‘This is what I teach. And I find that those who have just become Christians move more naturally into this than those who’ve been around a few years for whom this is a new teaching.’ He has experience of introducing this aspect of normal Christianity to a sometimes willing, sometimes sceptical congregation during his years at St Andrew’s, Chorley Wood. ‘We had all the problems associated with the Holy Spirit coming in a new way. But this is what we taught and how we ministered. And I haven’t changed. It can’t be an optional extra, a bolt-on, third-Sunday-in-the-month sort of thing. ‘Now, of course, some people take to it quickly and others take their time adjusting to it,’ he continues. ‘If people are allowed to come into it at their own pace, they will stick with it; it will become part of their normal Christian life.’ After a brief pause, he adds: ‘of course, you need courage to push on with it.’ Kissell has been ministering this way for more than 30 years and over that time has come to the realisation that if the church is going to grow, this must be part of the package of Christian ministry in churches up and down the land. ‘If you don’t have the ministry of the Holy Spirit,’ he stresses, ‘then people aren’t helped to deal with the real issues of their lives. As an example of this, I was ministering at a meeting in our church and the Lord showed me that someone there had been severely traumatised in a car accident some years before. I announced this to the congregation. Someone said “that’s me”, came forward for prayer and the Lord broke the power of it. This is what God wants to do.’ How matter-of-fact is that? But just in case you’re thinking that Kissell has learned all there is to learn and is handing down tips to us lesser mortals from the mountain top, he adds: ‘this is not a big success thing, you know. We’re all on a journey of discovery.’ How true. When we come to Swanwick in January, let’s be praying that we’ll discover God’s heart for us to be a prophetic people in this land and beyond. Rev Simon Jones for the Baptist Mainstream Magazine