Early church Christians believed that the resurrection of Jesus inaugurated a new age. they were in fact - but against appearances - living in God's kingdom, a kingdom of healing and truth and grace. This was all actually present but hidden from unbelieving eyes and inaudible to unbelieving ears.
Pastors are persons in the church communities who repeat and insist on these kingdom realities against the world appearances, and who therefore must be apocalyptic. In its dictionary meaning "apocalypse" is simply "revelation", the uncovering of what was covered up so that we can see what is there. But the context in which the word arrives adds colour to the black-and-white dictionary meaning, colours bright and dark - crimson urgency and purple crisis. Under the crisis of persecution and under the urgency of an imminent end, reality is revealed suddenly for what it is. We had supposed our lives were so utterly ordinary. Sin-habits dull our free faith into stodgy moralism and respectable boredom; then crisis rips the veneer of cliche off everyday routines and reveals the side-by-side splendours and terrors of heaven and hell. Apocalypse is arson - it secretly sets a fire in the imagination that boils the fat out of an obese culture-religion and renders a clear gospel love, a pure gospel hope, a purged gospel faith.
The Contemplative Pastor, p40-41
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