due to technical…

Midlife crisis, momentary lapse of sanity, chemical imbalance…You pick the excuse why we missed yesterday’s post. I’m suggesting we’re having Bram withdrawal. Or, we may be lacking a sense of duty. It won’t happen again. Missing the post that is. As for the other excuses? They’re still on the radar.

Vox populi | pathway of duty

No slouching allowed

By the pathway of duty flows the river of God’s grace. Back in the day we used to sing that song, and people used to get to work in the Corps. They were involved because they had a sense of duty. Somehow this has become a bad thing because now we want people who are sold out for Jesus rather than people who are motivated by duty.

With Christmas just around the corner, as a Corps Officer, I would have killed to have a bunch of people who were driven by duty. More work gets done because now that we want to just hang out with Jesus no one wants to do anything. Can you come and stand on kettles for 4 hours? Nope, hangin’ with Jesus. We’re packing hampers on Saturday morning. Can we count on you? Hangin’, sorry, me and Jesus. Sunshine bags? Hangin’. Serenading, visitation, kid’s club? Hangin’ hangin’ hangin’. Everyone is so big into spending time with Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, no one wants to do anything. Whatever happened to God, Queen and the Country? Hangin’ out gives you too much time to think about things and point fingers at the songster who only comes to church out of duty. Look at him. 52 straight weeks of duty. Where’s his relationship with Jesus?

Duty has become a four letter word, and the absence of it has driven some C.O.’s to the brink of using four letter words. It’s Christmas. We’re The Salvation Army. We work, and sacrifice our time, and sometimes even our families suffer a bit from it. Get your duty into gear, and if you’d like to hangout with Jesus? Come and hang out for 4 hours on a kettle. Jesus is waiting.

Deeper shade of grey | cherries

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ecently I came to a surprising conclusion. While ‘evangelical’ is a loaded word, with uncomfortable connections with narrow fundamentalism, there is a central construct of evangelicalism that is essential for me. That is the importance and centrality of the ‘inspired word of God’ as a guide for faith and Christian living.

I am increasing conscious of how disposable and ‘off pat’ phrases like salvation, heaven, gospel, righteousness, holiness, kingdom, evangelism and of course mission have become. Used like glaced cherries on iced cakes, because what is an iced cake without a glaced cherry! The trouble is I’ve never liked glaced cherries, I generally spit them out, now I don’t even consider them!

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a mustard seed faith

abundant possibilities

The sign says “Sanctuary West”. Although the lettering is the same, the sign itself is brighter and bolder than the tired, faded old thing gracing the main building on Charles Street. It sits atop a large ground-level loading bay door in the middle of an innocuous strip of industrial units on a strangely mixed street in Toronto’s west end. (186 St. Helen’s Avenue, if you want to visit.) Peering across the opposite curb and through the bay door, half rolled up on this beautiful June morning, is a row of small, neat family homes. And that’s appropriate, since what goes on inside Sanctuary West has as much to do with growing people, nurturing all those good things we mean when we say “home,” as it does with producing fine wooden products. › Continue reading

Ragamuffin: church and leader 3

The church and its leader (pastor/officer)
or
Keys for a happy “marriage” in the corps
Part Three

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otice Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” We must become peacemakers. We must make every effort to preserve the unity. Confess, repent and forgive. Speak the truth in love. These are vital for a church/corps to move forward and become light and salt. The community of faith (the corps) should often display the essence of grace by confessing, repenting and forgiving. This is holiness. Holiness is not denial of our imperfections but rather, admitting that we need the Perfect One to help us in our imperfections.

Within the relationship of officer/soldiers we must show understanding and courtesy. By this I do not mean peace at any cost. But we can agree to disagree agreeably. The key is our attitude. Our hearts must be clear and not bitter. We must exhibit a spirit of reconciliation in the church.

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Photo essay | Cyclone Sidr

theRubicon’s editor - Bramwell Ryan - has been volunteering for The Salvation Army in Bangladesh for the past three weeks. Ten days ago Cyclone Sidr hit the country and Bram started covering the Army’s relief efforts, supplying content to IHQ. Here, in a special post for theRubicon, he shares some thoughts, a photo essay and a radio documentary.

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his is Jacob’s land, where prayer is almost a contact sport. In Bangladesh, they wrestle with the Almighty. They weep, punch the sky, wave a fist, shake and rock back-and-forth. They all pray at once, voices of old and young rising like a wave, a torrent of sound that beats against the night.

Do they hammer at the doors of heaven because they understand the fragility of life? That with millions living on land where people shouldn’t live, prayer is the thread that weaves their thin fabric of hope.

Could it be that anyone who wrestles that hard with God comes away wounded? And that Bangladesh’s wound is that it is always in the eye of the storm? Could it be that, like Jacob, they will overcome…

Click on the image to see photographs and listen to a documentary (runs: 5:17) by Bramwell Ryan.

Double~take | hitchhiker

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here’s a downside to having a culture as (stereotypically) casual and laid back as Australia. The aborigines had a thing called going “walkabout” - going AWOL to visit ancestral lands, friends or family; or just for a change of scenery. The current equivalent could be “chuckin’ a sickie” – having a “sick” (i.e. not sick) day off, preferably on a Friday or a Monday…

Lucky for us, we have rather a good reputation of courage in warfare, so I’m hoping the Australian church inherits that aspect of our culture, rather than the ambivalence. Douglas Adams says it well:

(In book 3 of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, Ford explains his recent decision to get drunk, and dance with a lot of girls at this particular party, having just found out about an army of fanatical robots intent on destroying the universe.) › Continue reading

Vox populi | neanderthal worship

No kissing allowed

Temptation is only inches from my typing fingers. To boost my ego, and elicit great response I am tempted to write about rank, or uniform, but I’ll stick to music. This Sunday at the training college we’re having an In-Sunday, a day for us to get out of the field, regroup, and come together as a training college community to worship. As a man, I am all excited about the choice of music for this Sunday, music befitting Grey Cup Sunday. We’re singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, with swords, and killing, and grape stomping and fateful lightning from a terrible swift sword. You know, the kind of music we used to sing before “metrosexual” became in vogue. › Continue reading

the simple life

St. Francis of Assisi

Saint Francis is perhaps one of the most influential church leaders to walk the face of the earth since the Apostolic Age. And yet, unlike so many other church leaders, it was neither his prolific writings nor his extensive traveling that made him influential, but his intense desire to live a simple life of poverty—a life modeled in every way after Jesus Christ Himself (Torchia, 1993, p. 13). In order to best understand this influence, both on the contemporary Catholic Church and the modern church, the following major areas of interest will be discussed: first, a historical review of the church as it developed over the first millennium since Jesus Christ; second, a review of the historio-political circumstances surrounding Francis—internationally as well as locally. Once these two tasks have been accomplished, a specific examination of the person of Francis can be undertaken. Through these three initial steps, it will be possible to demonstrate that Francis was a person of massive influence—not simply on his contemporary church, but of continued influence of the church of today. › Continue reading

Deeper shade of grey | the E-word

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t seems the Theological Worldview meme is doing the rounds again, it made me wonder how hard do you have to try to make sure you get the outcome you want? (Incidentally I was more emergent/postmodern; more evangelical holiness/Wesleyan and more neo orthodox than when I did it here. I remember doing a political one at the time of the general election and however hard I tried to be true to my Labour inclination I popped out a Liberal Democrat! It seems that John Buckeridge, editor of Christianity Magazine, would shy from the label evangelical! You can read his article THE ‘E’ WORD here. It seems to have caused some interest in various places here.

“I’m tired of being tarred with the identities of men with megaphones who shout ‘hell’, ‘wrath’ and ‘damnation’ at passers-by and fail to say, ‘love’, ‘grace’ or ‘forgiveness’. I’m tired of being tarred with the identities of the ‘anti-everything’ brigade – who angrily list the things they are against and claim to speak for ‘evangelicals’, but actually have a tiny support base. And I’m tired of being tarred with US right wing foreign policy”.

Deeper shade of grey appears every Wednesday on theRubicon. Find past posts and a bio of Gordon Cotterill here.