The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
Martin Marty is the smartest person I have ever known personally. He knew everything and everybody, and he always remembered everybody’s name whenever he re-encountered them, an ability I wish I had but never did and especially in old age never will.
I first met Marty (he always wanted to be known as “Marty,” not Martin) at a Christmas party hosted by Nina Herrmann. Nina was a member of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago when I was an assistant minister on the staff there from 1968-73. She became an ordained Presbyterian minister via the University of Chicago Divinity school while at Fourth Church.
Elam Davies, the pastor of Fourth Church, was the second-smartest person I ever knew personally, also was at that party with his wife Grace. The party was a glittering gathering. I knew Elam far better than Marty.
Marty is now a centenarian, and has written over sixty books. He was the foremost American church historian of his time, and he was a professor for years at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He also wrote a column called M.E.M.O. (an acronym for Martin E. Marty [O]) in The Christian Century, and a monthly subscription newsletter called Context, to which I subscribed for many years. It was an outstanding resource for preachers, and I often (but not always) attributed things to Marty in my sermons that I found there.
Anyway, somewhere along the line Marty coined the word “pastorpreneur.” It has become part of the Mainline Protestant lexicon ever since. It connotes someone who is not only a pastor but also an ecclesiastical entrepreneur. Usually, but not always, pastorpreneurs establish or are called to a Protestant-usually-evangelical megachurch.
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With all that as an introduction, last night, at about 3:30 AM, after having retired six months ago as a fulltime preacher for sixty years, it occurred to me (à la Martin Marty) that I was a prophetor for sixty years, not really a preacher or pastor-as-preacher. From the first time I preached a sermon as an ordained Presbyterian minister in the Bayfield Presbyterian Church of Bayfield, Wisconsin on January 24, 1965, until I preached my last sermon as a Presbyterian minister in the non-denominational Chapel Without Walls of Hilton Head Island, SC on January 5, 2025, it was always my intention to be first a prophet and only secondly a pastor whenever I preached a sermon.
The prophets of the Bible have always been the biblical writers I most admired, and I wanted to be like them. First among these prophets was Jesus of Nazareth. To me Jesus has always been, primarily, the Messiah, and secondarily, the Prophetes ha-Notzri, the Prophet Jesus, the Nazarene.
The word prophets comes from Greek, not Hebrew. The word means, literally, “to speak bubbling over.” When the biblical prophets, including Jesus, spoke, they spoke with uncommon conviction and determination. They did not beat around the bush. They spoke very pointedly, although sometimes pastorally as well, to the points they wanted to make. They were not necessarily smooth orators; they were rough in-you-face proclaimers. They didn’t mince words; they spoke what they believed to be the word of God with a fervor ordinary biblical personages did not choose to employ.
There are never enough prophets, because too many preachers are too pastoral to be prophetic. Now is the time for all good men and women to step up to the plate and take mighty swings at what is going on with the snake oil salesmen and the speakers of smooth words.
I never liked to beat around the bush when I preached. I wanted listeners to know exactly what I was trying to say and for me to get right to the point, hammering it home. No “How to Win Friends and Influence People”; say it plainly and understandably for educated people to grasp, or don’t say it at all. (I always assumed everyone in every congregation I served was educated, If they were utterly ignorant, how could anyone communicate effectively to them?) I wanted congregants to think, not just passively to listen. I didn’t preach for affirmation; I preached for cogitation. As the prophet Habbakuk wrote (who reads him anymore?): “Write the vision; make it plain upon tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end, it will not lie. If it seem slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay (Hab. 2:2-3).
The common understanding of the word prophet is it someone who predicts the future. Sometimes, but not usually, the prophets clearly did that, and often they were correct in their prognostications, but not always. Their primary purpose was to proclaim the word of God to the masses as they understood that word. They felt particularly called by God to be prophets. Probably in their own time most people thought of them as irritating pests, not winsome prophets. “The people” much prefer to listen to false prophets who speak smooth words, not to roughhewn oddballs with ox yokes around their necks or ordinary human beings who are pruners of sycamore trees or parish parsons or practitioners of other such menial tasks.
Strangely, only after I retired did I realize that all along I had probably been a prophetor, a prophet-pastor, and not essentially a mere minister or practical pastor when I spoke from the pulpit. That was my calling; that was my vocation. But I think I may have figured it out only last night at 3:30 AM when I couldn’t get back to sleep.
Better late than never, I guess. So that is why, courtesy of my admirable age-challenged centenarian mentor Martin Marty, from now on I shall end my essays with the notation that I am a retired prophetor, and not just an out-to-pasture preacher, pastor, or minister.
– July 5, 2025
John Miller is a retired prophetor who lives on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.