There is an undoubted allure about the exercise of prophetic ministry. Though imprisoned and ostracised, though given to self-doubt and despair, it was their unparalleled intimacy with God which gave the prophets of the Old Testament a voice that not even kings could ignore. Ahab’s well-known description of Elijah as ‘you troubler of Israel’ (1 Ki 18:17) stands as a powerful epithet to the group who were later responsible for the survival of Israel’s religious identity through the turmoil of exile precisely because they would not let things lie. Their perspective could never be fully reconciled with the way things stood, with present appearance. The prophets’ penetrating gaze saw further and deeper than their contemporaries to a vision of both how things really were and how they could be with God.
There is then, within our sacred tradition, a clear precedent for speaking the truth. And there is also cause. The chaplain is one of very few in the university who is able to see the institution as a whole, to understand it across the boundaries of departments, functions and campuses. The chaplain is one of the few who has conversations with people at every echelon of the university and who can speak to them as something approaching an equal. Thus, if you keep your eyes open, if you listen with care to what is being said, then assuredly you will come across abuses of power, of infringements of the espoused values of the institution. This is not because one deliberately goes in search of such things, but as the inevitable consequence of being a part of fallible, human institution.
If this much is clear, what often remains obscure is when to speak the truth, how to speak the truth and to whom. As chaplains we usually have access to powerful people, to the Vice-chancellor (or senior manager) and the Chair of the Governing Body. If one has good relationships here, then this can be of considerable advantage. But it is also a matter of timing. To employ a crass analogy, it is about knowing when to play one’s joker when such cards are in limited supply. More perplexing can be navigating the series of confidences one holds in such a way as to meticulously honour the conditions under which information was received. This latter point means that one hardly ever has the freedom to play detective; even when one thinks one has possession of the truth, without an ability to test this openly, one can never be entirely sure. There are also those times when speaking the truth, even when one does have a firm grip on the when, how and to whom, is likely to make matters worse not better.
It is not possible to prescribe, therefore, a set of rules to govern prophetic truth-telling that will work in every circumstance. On occasions one simply has to hold one’s peace, at other times a well-chosen word in the right ear and heard in season is sufficient. At yet other times one finds oneself having to the say the same thing again and again in a variety of contexts over a matter of years. Allure or not, a prophetic ministry is both required and fraught with complexity.
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