Shawn Bolz and the elephant in the room

I’ve mentioned in one previous article the issues around Shawn Bolz and specifically false claims of prophecy when it comes to words of knowledge that were apparently based upon social media data mining.  Now, as it happens, I think that there is a potentially charitable view of how someone could get into such a situation.  I can see how someone might start out having genuine prophetic insights but then the pressure to deliver, to have those big words of knowledge, week in, week out might kick in.  In such a scenario, you can see how someone might be tempted to start to rely on some resources like social media and convince themselves that this is okay.

Yet, this begs the question about where that pressure would come from.  It seems to some extent that the supposedly supernatural insights were the stamp of authentication giving this man permission to go on and speak into people’s lives.  What we are also hearing is that some of the advice he gave, dressed up as prophetic words was outright destructive and wrong.

And this begs a further question.  This is the elephant in the room.  How have we reached the situation where people, in large numbers opt to take the advice of a man on a platform in a large auditorium because that man is able to give them some facts and stats about themselves?  Surely the test of what he had to say was not in whether he knew your postcode but whether the advise was itself wise and in line with God’s Word.  Why were his words prioritised over the words of those who knew the people and were walking the journey of life with them.  That might be good friends and relatives, small group leaders and/or the elders and pastors that were responsible for them.

This is not about the rights and wrongs of a prophetic gift.  I believe in prophecy and have seen it’s value.  Rather, it is first about how we discern and check what people say and secondly about the kinds of people we prioritise.  Do we prioritise the celebrity with the small ‘c’ charismatic flare or do we prefer the solid safety of the local church?