Alex Clattenburg: The Prophetic Voice of the Church Must Lead by STEPHEN STRANG for Charisma News
Pastor Alex Clattenburg believes 2020 marks a critical time for the church. In this era of the COVID-19 pandemic, he says the church must lead out of the prophetic voice God has given and respond in true faith, not fear.
I interviewed Alex, who pastors Church in the Son here in our area of Central Florida, on a recent episode of The Strang Report podcast. Like every other church, Church in the Son has gone through the process of closure and waiting on the Lord to reopen, he said. But a word the Lord gave him recently moved him to respond in faith and action. “I was waiting on the Lord the other day … and the Lord said, ‘This is an alert. The enemy is going to try to use this situation to literally take the church out.’ And it was like something prophetic. And I shared this with our church,” he told me.
Right at this time, Alex said, he was trying to figure out what to do when so many churches were closed and the mayor of Orlando had placed restrictions on gatherings, limiting them to 10 or fewer. He spoke with attorney and religious freedom advocate Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel to get his advice. “And we opened our church on Pentecost Sunday,” Alex said.
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Alex told me it’s time that churches have “a prophetic voice. And we do not allow everything around us to somehow cause us to be cowering to what is taking place. But this is a time for us to lead and to say, ‘No, we have a right to meet.’ And we are meeting, and so people are looking for confidence and strength, not natural strength, but the strength that comes from the Lord, the confidence of the Lord.”
Alex’s words reminded me of other situations where we have seen civil authorities do their best to come against churches. In some states, people are allowed to gather in large groups for riots, for shopping or almost any purpose except worshipping the Lord. Alex believes this current situation brings a great responsibility and a great opportunity. “If the church rises up and begins to pray and allows the Holy Spirit to move, we’re going to see signs and wonders. We’re going to go from defense to offense, from retreat to attack, from passivity to a filled congregation with the Holy Spirit, and nothing stops us,” he said.
