The prophet's handbook

personal ministry can afford. The prophet should also tithe from the money raised from the church’s covering. Under these conditions, it is helpful to urge the congregation to pledge to support the local church’s prophetic institution as they would any missions team. The reason I stress prophet compensation so stringently is because of my experience with pastors in the past. On numerous occasions, I have heard them criticize their supposed church prophet’s itinerant ministry. When I ask them if the prophet is paid like any other staff member, most say no. I then ask how they expected their prophets to serve their churches and still provide for their needs. The answer is usually a shrug or a quick change of subject. Prophets, like teachers, deacons, and praise leaders, must be put into the church’s budget. That is a sure way to keep them in the church instead of on the road. When one serves as a church prophet, he or she stands watch in the realm of the spirit over the pastor and the church for their good. Offended or neglected prophets are not to become occupied with the church’s demise or destruction. Should the church be involved in something dangerous, God expects the church prophet to pray and intercede for it to turn its heart and soul back to the Lord. He does not sanction the prophet’s cursing the work to doom it to die because of the prophet’s disappointment or disagreement with its direction or plans. Here is one more reason novice prophets should not be installed as church prophets. I have found that young and untrained prophetic people see only evil and doom in the beginning of their ministries. They discern who will die and what God should judge more than anything else. The fundamental nature of prophetic character inspires it until divine nurturing teaches otherwise. An early predisposition to the flesh can motivate newcomers to the prophetic to confuse their soulish realm with the Spirit of God. Consequently, what they hear from God, although it comes pure, mixes with their immaturity, hurts, and anger, and makes them mistakenly deliver opinions, perspectives, and perceptions as prophecy. A tendency toward this reaction to church conflict threatens to make church prophets more psychic than prophetic. While it does not mean they are serving occultism, it does show that they are more attuned to the intelligence of their soul than the revelations of God’s Spirit. At least initially, that is. We have had new or unrefined prophets in our prayer groups and identified Standard Position of the Church Prophet