Evolving spiritual concepts?

Have we seen, within the ‘movement’ an evolution of thought regarding the Holy Spirit?

The classic ’second blessing’ of holiness, a process we’ve believed to commence with regeneration by the Holy Spirit, purported that there was to be a big Cecil B de Mille moment . The penitent would be spiritually zapped and come to a fuller, deeper state of holiness when the Holy Spirit ‘fully entered’ a person’s life.

I would suggest that a more recent Salvationist process of thought, perhaps not formally recognised as a theological school, but influenced by more recent theological expressions, has seen the Holy Spirit’s indwelling as a gradual, constant process. That process is not necessarily accompanied by ecstatic, epiphanal visitations, or Hollywood-intense realisations of the Spirit’s presence and power. (Pundits may want to consider Seven Spirits, perhaps pp 30, 95.)

In the 1960s, debatably, Salvationists began their first efforts to recapture the mission and urgency of the Army. At the risk of ‘Founder worship’, writers such as Barnes examined Booth’s writings and recorded his convictions of the Spirit’s empowering: in the assurance of salvation brought by the ‘witness of the Spirit’ in our lives.

The purity of living we pursue can be experienced through the empowerment of the individual by the Holy Spirit. The spiritual training we can give our children and fellow Salvationists through Spirit-led ministry can be effective beyond our subcultural comfort zone and our rite of passage conga lines. We can have a genuine effect and impact on the ‘unchurched’, genuinely befriending them and sharing their lives, while remaining true to God. (Consider The Founder Speaks Again, pp 25, 30, 135 and 71.).

In 1986 John Larsson, feted and fated to become the Chief of the Staff /2IC and then most ‘empowered’ person in the Army as General, wrote a slim volume about Jesus entitled The Man Perfectly Filled With The Spirit. Importantly, Larsson reaffirmed the indwelling of the Spirit as ‘the birthright of every Christian’ (base of p 6). In the Church fathers’ footsteps, Larsson goes so far as to try and quantify the veracity of Christian experience in terms of whether or not they possess God’s Spirit (p 7).

We have always recognised God the Holy Spirit’s mystery (the “old” Handbook of Doctrine, p 130). Perhaps at times we have come close to grieving the Spirit corporately (ibid, pp 65, 74)

What’s the current perspective on the Spirit and our place under the Spirit’s leading and conviction?

The Salvation Army’s Australia Southern Territory, for example, tries to do four things (not necessarily in this order): make disciples, reform society, care for people and transform lives. Big, worthy goals; ideas that need God’s power. The territory used to, in a more longwinded and less ambitious expression, aspire to: ‘[seek] to be a growing, loving community of people dynamically living God’s mission in a broken world’.

The call to its soldiers was ‘to be: wholly devoted to God; obediently responsive to the Holy Spirit; powerfully committed to each other; passionately engaged with people in need; and totally dedicated to reaching people with the good news of Jesus Christ.’

Modern approaches by many Salvationists attempt to look at life, ministry and mission in more holistic terms, balancing (as did pioneer Salvationists) a desire to communicate God’s plan of redemption with a temporal redemption from the miseries that bind us to self-medicating or damaging situations, lifestyles and behavioural patterns - things that hurt ourselves and others. Those harmful things may include unemployment and poverty, spiritual and physical hunger, substance abuse or addiction, loneliness, anomie and apathy.

The books of the New Testament and the experience of committed Christians since Pentecost suggest to us that the Spirit can work in all situations, through his own intervention and through the lives of Spirit-filled believers.

As the early Salvationists taught and believed - and professed to experience - God the Holy Spirit makes us able to live holy lives. The telling aspect to this is what we mean by the word ‘holy’ (we do, after all, identify ourselves as a somewhat activist expression of a holiness movement). Perhaps the best understanding of a state of holiness could be described as ‘loved of God but not yet fully of God; perfectly forgiven but not perfectly empowered’.

Our mortality gives God the Holy Spirit the capacity to indwell, and a fair amount of work to do when He does so!
Some modern Salvationists point out that God’s mission, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is always in play, always at work in the church and in the world beyond the church (indeed, sometimes in spite of the church). One deep thinker in the Australia Southern Territory, Dr Craig Campbell, once suggested that mission, understood as being God’s prerogative and occurring in God’s timing, ‘flows naturally from who we are in God’ (the defunct Pulse magazine, Autumn 2000, p 5).

Thus, if Brengle’s spiritual successors have it right, the Spirit is at work in the lives of all people everywhere, but specifically the Spirit moves and breathes His will and power into willing, obedient Christians. Campbell urged Salvationists at the time - and I believe the call is still valid today - to discern ‘where God is inviting us to be with Him, discern the points of shared value with the cultures that surround us and the “grace experiences” where He is already at work’.

That perspective, pursuing the mission Dei (mission of God) as already present in God’s creation, takes the theological heat and mystical perplexity out of any discussion of the extent and nature of the Spirit’s presence (to what extent does the Holy Spirit visit us at conversion, how does our spirit commune with the divine spark of the Holy Spirit, how can ’self-control’ be a gift of the Spirit, is there a second blessing etc?) and points us to God’s will for us and his purpose for our lives.

We recognise that his omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent sovereignty is far beyond our capacity to fathom. Ultimately, the kinds of introspective theological questions raised above are not the questions we need to address. God’s wisdom from above, his higher ways, are beyond us. But, thank the Lord, He promises to give us His grace through the Spirit. And He expects us to share it with others.

Booth’s grasp of the doctrine of atonement (a doctrine he took quite literally with fulfilled expectations of biblical promises of heaven’s storehouses being opened) relied on the Holy Spirit acting through human agency (The Founder Speaks Again, p 14).

Do we still feel a need to atone? Do we struggle to explain the need for redemption to people outside of the church’s walls? Or do we share as the Spirit leads, pointing to life’s hurts, disappointments and crises as proof of the need for a loving saviour?

Writer: Barry Gittins is a Melbourne-based writer, lifelong Salvationist, husband (to Trudy) and father(to Emily and Benjamin) who seeks God in everyday encounters. A frustrated poet and playwright, he has worked for the Salvos’ Australia Southern Territory in various roles since 1991: as a journalist (for Warcry, The Young Soldier/Kidzone, The Musician),technical writer and CD-ROM author in corps program (mission development), senior review editor (Warcry) and editor (On Fire). He currently works as a social program and policy consultant (writer/researcher) for the social program department.

Power of Prayer

Cymbala puts prayer as the centrepiece

On a recent visit to New York City some salvationist friends invited us to attend a midweek prayer meeting at the famous Brooklyn Tabernacle. Taking the subway down there offers some fascinating sights but they all paled into insignificance when we found what awaited us inside the “Tab”. The place was bursting at the seams - for a MIDWEEK prayer meeting!

To observe thousands of enthusiastic attendees on a Tuesday night whose one desire was to pray for their church, their families, their community, healing, salvation or an in-filling of the Holy Spirit, was stunning.

Senior Pastor Jim Cymbala and his wife Carol started at the Tab in 1971 with 30 people and felt the whole challenge was way beyond them.

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“Carol and I had frankly admitted to each other that unless God broke through, the Brooklyn Tabernacle was doomed. We couldn’t fitness it along. We couldn’t organize and market and program our way out. The embarrassing truth was that sometimes even I didn’t want to show up for a service - that’s how bad it was. We had to have a visitation of the Holy Spirit, or bust. ‘Lord, I have no idea how to be a successful pastor,’ I prayed softly … ‘I haven’t been trained. All I know is that Carol and I are working in the middle of New York City, with people dying on every side, overdosing from heroin, consumed by materialism, and all the rest. If the gospel is so powerful …’ I couldn’t finish the sentence. Tears choked me … Then quietly but forcefully, in words heard not with my ear but deep within my spirit, I sensed God speaking: ‘If you and your wife will lead my people to pray and call upon my name, you will never lack for something fresh to preach. I will supply all the money that’s needed, both for the church and for your family, and you will never have a building large enough to contain the crowds I will send in response’. (Jim Cymbala: Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire)

 So the Cymbalas and their crew made prayer their centrepiece, and the Tuesday Prayer Meeting became the “barometer” of the church.

“What happens on Tuesday night will be the gauge by which we judge success or failure because that will be the measure by which God blesses us.”

If we were to adopt a similar weather vane based on Sunday morning prayer meetings (for those Corps that still bother) what do you think it would indicate? 

If Cymbala is travelling out of town, he always attempts to get back for the Tuesday night meeting. It’s a major priority.

In order to sharpen the focus on prayer, they commenced a Prayer Band who pray around the clock, five nights a week. If a request for prayer is made to the church, the prayer band keep it on the books for thirty days. They are also the first ones up when public or private prayers are requested. Now that’s the sort of band I’d like to see in the SA!

As we left the magnificent auditorium via the staircase we encountered a “Heroes of the Faith” gallery. Amongst the portraits of Rev. Martin Luther King and many others I noticed a striking scene portrayed straight in front of us. It was of the first salvationist lasses who arrived in NY’s Battery Park with Commissioner Railton in 1880. What does the painting show was the first thing they did when they arrived at that unknown place? They knelt in fervent prayer.

I was deeply moved by this scene. Partly proud for our glorious heritage and partly saddened for the way our priorities seem to have changed since those simple, forthright times. It’s not too late to change and it’s people like Jim Cymbala who remind us of what we can be if we remember the power of prayer and get out of the weakness of flesh and into the strength of the Spirit.

the Rubicon - BY REQUEST - The SA as a prophetic movement

What does prophetic ministry really mean? by Geoff Ryan

The terms “prophet” and “prophetic” are loaded terms. They are loaded with meaning often far removed from their original intention and divested of much depth and nuance and occasionally even integrity. They have become blunt instruments in the hands – or mouths – of whoever wants to use them. It is therefore important to clarify terms of reference right from the beginning.

I would like to suggest that there are two main ways by which “prophetic” is used in Christian circles these days. One is favoured by conservative evangelicals, particularly Charismatic/Pentecostal Christians and one favoured by the more mainline, what might be considered “liberal,” branches of the Church.

One conservative, evangelical view on the prophetic is that of the prophet as a future-teller, often reduced to the role of a fortune-teller. In such an understanding, the prophet is much concerned with the future and things to come, the end times and apocalyptic visions. The prophetic ministry is primarily concerned with what is to come to pass, what will be and what has not yet happened. The present is a concern only in so far as it impacts what is to come in the future, distant or close at hand.

Certainly there are aspects of “future telling” in the prophetic role, however, as Walter Brueggemann points out in The Prophetic Imagination: “While one would not want to deny totally those facets of the practice of prophecy, there tends to be a kind of reductionism that is mechanical and therefore untenable. While prophets are in a way future-tellers, they are concerned with the future as it impinges upon the present” (p. 13).

While prophets are in a way future-tellers, they are concerned with the future as it impinges upon the present

In this conservative understanding of the prophetic ministry, value is placed on the impartation of power – the prophet is “gifted” by God with special insight usually termed a “word from the Lord.” As Steve Thompson writes in his book You May All Prophesy!: “When I use the word prophesy in this book, I am describing receiving and giving a specific “word” to a person or group of people”(p. 9).

This understanding of prophetic ministry concentrates power in the hands of the prophet. With such insight from God, the prophet’s direct access to God provides a mandate to speak into anyone’s life and situation with impunity. Validation of authentic insight, or “second sight,” is largely subjective and often not held to the same standards of discernment that the Church has traditionally applied to such gifting.

While such a view of the prophetic does contain aspects of biblical prophetic ministry, there is an inherent danger, which lies in all branches of intense charismatic Christianity. Highly emotionally motivated and often accepting only of experiential validation, the Christian life can be reduced to the realm of feelings (“the worship was anointed today” or “God showed up”) and personal experience (“God told me…”). A high level of subjectivity is tolerated, in which people are loathe to challenge those in authority (those anointed as prophets) lest they are considered un-spiritual. The most troubling result of such an understanding of the prophetic is that issues that traditionally and biblically concerned the prophets, such as social justice, the poor and marginalized, economic inequity, etc. are not deemed priorities. To be “prophetic” takes on a new meaning and purpose that is almost entirely “spiritualized,” the majority of the time concerning itself with issues of personal piety and private sinning.

A high level of subjectivity is tolerated, in which people are loathe to challenge those in authority (those anointed as prophets) lest they are considered un-spiritual

Meanwhile, the liberals “settled for a focus on the present” (Brueggemann: p.13). The concept of the “prophetic” is reduced almost exclusively to righteous indignation at societal injustice and therefore, a response through social action. To be prophetic means to be a critical thinker, pointing out what is “not working” and what is “wrong.”

This understanding of the prophetic also contains aspects of biblical prophetic ministry and concerns itself primarily with criticizing and attacking and tearing down, rather than shifting perceptions. It is about revolution rather than revival. The great danger here lies in replacing a holy God’s concern for justice with human-centred social justice, good works and even social engineering. The destructive ideologies that characterized the twentieth century were all utopianisms that sought to improve the world through means that were justified by end results. This view of the prophetic flies dangerously close to this flame. True prophets also address the internal spiritual condition of people and not only the external social conditions of the society. They are grounded in God and his word and not political thought systems.

So, what does it mean to be a prophet and to have a prophetic ministry? How is this distinct or different in any way from priests and the priestly function? Why should it matter to Salvationists in the 21st century, living in an era long after the advent of Jesus, who resolved within himself this tension, by being both prophet and high priest?

In one very simple definition, a priest is someone who talks to God on behalf of the people; a prophet is one who speaks to the people (society, culture, the church) on behalf of God. In The Prophetic Imagination, Brueggemann defines prophetic ministry in the following manner:

“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us” (p.13).

“It is the task of prophetic ministry to bring the claims of the tradition and the situation of enculturation into an effective interface. That is, the prophet is called to be a child of the tradition, one who has taken it seriously in the shaping of his or her own field of perception and system of language, who is so at home in that memory that the points of contact and incongruity with the situation of the church in culture can be discerned and articulated with proper urgency” (p. 12).

Brueggemann’s definitions will be our basic construct for this discussion of the prophetic and its relevance to us today. I want to state at the outset that I believe The Salvation Army was raised up by God to serve a prophetic role in culture and in the Church. However first we need to look at the prophetic tradition in the Bible, commencing in the Old Testament, in order to give ourselves some background understanding and context.

The Prophetic Tradition in the Bible
As far as anyone can tell from the Scriptures, the first record of God endorsing “religion” is found in the book of Exodus (starting at chapter 19 until the end of the book and continuing on into Leviticus). Not long after Moses has led the people out of Egypt, he is summoned to Mount Sinai by God to receive the Ten Commandments, as well as a host of instructions regulating the separate life of God’s chosen people. While Moses is gone, the people, tiring of waiting and dealing with an abstract God that only their leader had access to, collected all their jewellery and, in imitation of the surrounding peoples, fashioned an idol and declared it their god (Exodus 32).

Up to this point, Israel had no formal religion. What they did have was a man who approached God on their behalf and approached them on God’s behalf. No rituals or traditions, no teaching, no system of observance – no religion, in short. This was in stark contrast to the surrounding cultures among whom they moved, the Egyptians and the other peoples they encountered as they fled Egypt. In these cultures, the gods had “incarnated” themselves in forms and rituals that gave structure and meaning to their adherents’ lives. Dealing with the pure abstract for any sustained period of time is virtually impossible for humans. We serve a God who is Spirit (ergo abstract) yet who defines himself relationally in reference to us as his creations. However, our need to codify things in concrete terms is too strong to deny. God acknowledges this right at the beginning in Exodus by providing a complex and all encompassing religious system in order to satisfy this need in his people and to provide a concrete way through which they can maintain a relationship with him and deal with their sins. God’s ultimate acknowledgement of this need in his creation is Christ’s incarnation several thousand years later. It began however with Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai.

God instituted all this for the benefit of his people. It was about us, not him. God is self-sufficient and self-contained and needs nothing outside of himself – he never lived in that golden box known as the Ark of the Covenant. These were all symbols whose function was to serve our needs until the time when the fulfillment of these symbols arrived.

“Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a new Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ” (Colossians 2:16,17).

The Temple was built in Israel and a system of Temple worship instituted. The Temple became the focal point of the nation, the heart of the people – a permanent symbol of God’s accessibility. However, it was always intended to serve a symbolic function, as Solomon’s dedicatory prayer makes clear: “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).

Over time, however, Temple worship became corrupted. The priesthood, a religious order whom God had called into existence starting with Aaron, was to serve the function of regulating and maintaining the spiritual life of the nation through the faith system that God had ordained. However, what was meant to symbolically represent and concretely contextualize a spiritual (abstract) reality became itself the focal point of people’s devotion and worship. The Temple and the worship centred in it, were idolized and subsequently became corrupted – the “means” became the “end.” This is one of the inevitable outcomes of faith and religion divorcing. One of them, generally religion, is elevated above and beyond the other. The history of religion through human history is a sad litany of this imbalance. Nearly all of the more unsavoury chapters in the history of the Church can be traced to moments when true faith and its helpmate religion, become disconnected. Religion assumes the dominant role in place of faith and a vital relationship with a living God. Once this takes place, anything and everything can be justified in the name of God. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Nazis marching into war with “God with Us” etched on their belt buckles and more modern-day examples such as the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Nearly all of the more unsavoury chapters in the history of the Church can be traced to moments when true faith and its helpmate religion, become disconnected

To counter what had happened with the Temple worship and among the priesthood, God rose up a “second stream” or a second team – the prophets. Some of these men were themselves priests; many were not. To effect a “holy tension” in order to realign his people and refocus them on himself, God required that the prophets concentrate their message on areas neglected by the priests. The priests, perhaps inevitably, given our need for making the abstract tangible and our weakness for power, focused their efforts primarily on ritual and formalism, external observance and ceremonial religion. The prophets were tasked to go to the heart of things.

The prophets pretty much had one message: Get your heart right with God and everything else will follow. If the heart is not right, then everything else is becomes skewed and ultimately pointless in God’s eyes. If your relationship with God is not sorted, then your programs are empty; if your heart if not right (internal) then your worship (external) is unacceptable. They spoke of relationship, with God and with others. God speaks to his people through their relationships with others and their love and devotion to God are to be expressed by serving those whom they are in relationship with. True worship and religious expression are validated by a social imperative, and a person’s relationship to God is integrally linked to their relationship with others, in particular those whom God called “the least.”

“Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moon, Sabbaths and convocations – I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1:13-17).

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood” (Isaiah 58:6,7).

“This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! For when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you” (Jeremiah 7:21-23).

“For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6).

“I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your song! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream” (Amos 5:21-24).

“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:6-8).

The tension created by these two “streams” was intense. The prophets felt compelled to denounce the false sense of security that the people had gained by trusting in the Temple and its service. They were speaking an often unpopular message that made the people uncomfortable and that challenged the religious (ergo State) power system.

The prophets did strange things in order to get the people’s attention and to get God’s message across. They were the original sensationalists (revivalists) and “out-of-the-box” thinkers. Hosea was told to marry the town whore; Ezekiel lay on his side for 390 days and cooked bread using human waste as fuel; Jeremiah invested in real estate in a city on the verge of capture. Saints and sinners alike misunderstood the prophets and, though meeting with some success, most met the same fate: “Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One” (Acts 7:52). Extreme counter-culturalism was met by death, more often than not.

As Israel came under foreign domination and lost control over the life of the nation, the prophets fell silent. Some scholars speak of the 400 years of silence when no prophet was heard in Israel

As we enter into the New Testament period in Israel, the priests had truly triumphed. During and after the exile years, the prophetic voice slowly died out. The prophets, concerned as they were with issues of true faith in a God of justice and equity and the implications of these ethically and morally in society, were linked to the periods when Israel was sovereign and had her own kings. As Israel came under foreign domination and lost control over the life of the nation, the prophets fell silent. Some scholars speak of the 400 years of silence when no prophet was heard in Israel. By the time the Romans arrived, the national power was concentrated with the Sadducees (priests) and the Pharisees (religious legalists). There was no one exercising a prophetic ministry.

Then John the Baptist appears (John 1:19-23), a prophet in the classic Old Testament mode, and speaking much the same message. John was followed by Jesus:

“When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They replied. “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (Matthew 16:13-14).

In their mission, both John and Jesus were firmly in the prophetic line, at odds with the religious establishment, in tension with the priests and seemingly dismissive of ritual convention. Both met the same fate as the other prophets.

Jesus’ most quoted Old Testament verse was Hosea 6:6: “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.” A key passage to the understanding of Jesus as prophet is his encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4:1-38. In this encounter, as with pretty much all his encounters with people, he drew them toward the centre, the essence of the law. He summed up the Ten Commandments, the heart of the Old Testament law, in a succinct way:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second one (commandment) is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no greater commandment than these two” (Mark 12:29).

Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees and teachers of the law in Mark 7:1-23 is paradigmatic, a pivotal encounter between the prophetic focus on the essential heart of things and the priestly obsession with ceremonialism. “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men,” asserted Jesus. “Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean,’ he later states, clearing drawing the lines of perspective.

Jesus, however, was also a priest – the great high priest (Hebrews 4:14-16; 5: 1-10, 7:1-28; 8:1-6; 10:1-18). This tension between the inward and the outward, between relationship and ceremony, symbol and reality, shadow and substance, priest and prophet runs throughout the Bible, from the foot of Mount Sinai until the coming of Jesus who ushered in the new order (Hebrews 9:10) and who combined perfectly these two aspects of true faith and mission.

The Prophetic Tradition and The Salvation Army
God raised The Salvation Army up as a prophetic movement. Theologically and culturally we were positioned prophetically in contradistinction to the dominant culture, both culturally and religiously.

Our early theological convictions ranging from our non-observance of the sacraments (communion and water baptism), empowerment of women for ministry, our bias toward the poor, our use of non-sacred music and even our choice of venues in which to hold meetings (music halls, etc) can all be understood as prophetic in the context that has been defined here.

From early on, The Salvation Army viewed itself as a prophetic movement. The first Officers Training College in London was called “The School of the Prophets.” Booth was known as the “Prophet of the Poor” (the title of a 1905 biography by Thomas Coates). Samuel Logan Brengle’s official biography is titled Portrait of a Prophet. Booth’s favourite Scripture passage was Isaiah 58 – he referred to it as “The Charter of The Salvation Army.”

The Salvation Army viewed itself as a prophetic movement. The first Officers Training College in London was called “The School of the Prophets”

Our relationship to the other, established churches was initially one of great tension which, even though it has eased considerably through the years as The Salvation Army grew and established credibility, was defined by the prophetic stance we adopted in relation to the perceptions and practices of the other churches. We felt that we had something to say to the wider church; something to remind them about (the poor); something about which to bear witness (ritualism and the sacraments); areas needing challenging (female ministry). One could say that we viewed our Christian brothers and sisters as primarily priests, and ourselves as primarily prophets.

In time, though, we settled down. We “came in from the hills” and built Temples of our own. We hankered after the status of priests and the certainty of established ritual. Most denominations still tend to hold the Army at arm’s length, mainly due to our theological understanding of sacraments, and refuse to grant us the ecclesiastical legitimacy that many feel is important. Yet we continue to strive hard to establish ourselves as priests and, in fact, to function as priests. We have worked hard to throw off the “prophetic mantle” of our early years.

I believe that God called The Salvation Army into being for a prophetic purpose and that this is who we are – it is in our DNA. If the Army is to now to emerge into robust adulthood as a movement, 140 years after our birth, having moved from a glorious (and rambunctious) infancy and through an awkward adolescence, then we need to understand, accept and embrace our true identity as a prophetic movement.

But how is this to be expressed today, in the post-modern milieu of the early 21st century? What does God want us to say to his people?

I hold two convictions that shape my thinking theologically and my actions missiologically. One conviction is about the prophetic role of the Church in culture and society, and the other is more particularly about The Salvation Army’s prophetic voice within Church culture. Both, I believe, are convictions that strive to “evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”

Speaking Prophetically in the World
I have a conviction that there is only one credible message left for the church to speak in the world today. That is, there is only one message that might capture the attention of the world, one message that the world might possibly listen to. That message can be encapsulated by combining Galatians 3:26-28 and Colossians 3:11:

“Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Everything that the church has historically done, every good work, in order to make the Gospel attractive and to lend weight and credibility to our faith (which is dead without actions, as James said) can be, and has been, replicated by the world. Hospitals, schools, various expressions of social service and assistance ranging from shelter beds to counselling to addiction programs to youth centres – all such initiatives have their genesis in the Church.

Before governments realized their responsibility in these areas, before private charities and non-profits emerged, it was only the Church that educated children, took care of the sick, and helped the fallen

Before governments realized their responsibility in these areas, before private charities and non-profits emerged, it was only the Church that educated children, took care of the sick, and helped the fallen. While the church continues to do this (in particular The Salvation Army) and should continue to do such things, as expressions of Christ’s love, it’s capacity to enhance the Good News and it’s usefulness in giving credence to our mission, are diminished greatly from the time when we were “the only game in town.” The “competition,” for lack of a better term, is so intense in these areas that that the uniquely Christian aspect of practical, charitable service is all but lost.

Paradoxically, words have become increasingly emptied of meaning as well. The Internet and e-mail, globalized mass media and mass culture are all expressions of a world in which there is simply too much information for people to process. Too many words, in fact. The straightforward and unadorned proclamation of the Good News has never had it so bad. A post-modern, media and technology-savvy generation requires that in any presentation, content has to fight for attention against image and sensation. Experientially based, sensation driven theologies are a better draw than the dry, intellectualism of the rationalistic Christianity of the recent past. In the wider cultural sphere, anyone can say anything these days, with equal credence, given the context of a tolerant, pluralistic culture committed to moral relativism and ethical subjectivity. Words are cheap.

What remains that is uniquely Christian, that the world cannot replicate and that no one else is saying with any degree of validation?

So what we say – even if it is heard – will likely not be listened to. And if what we do –
even if it is noticed – will not be linked with our message, what is left? What remains that is uniquely Christian, that the world cannot replicate and that no one else is saying with any degree of validation? I believe it is that message of reconciliation that Jesus left with the church:

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).

In a world that is fractured along a thousand fault lines of ethnicity, religion, racial and tribal loyalties, nationalism and economics; where in a thousand villages and cities around the globe the juggernaut of Globalism meets the backlash of Tribalism; where skin colour, tribal affiliation, religious practice or geographical happenstance are determining factors in whether or not a person will live to their 21st birthday; where over thirty wars are raging at present globally, each because of seemingly non-reconcilable issues of race, religion or economics – what is the message that needs to be spoken prophetically into such a world?

I like to think that a typical Sunday service at my church, 614 Regent Park, in Toronto, implicitly embodies something of this message of reconciliation. Our neighbourhood, our “parish,” is the rough part of our city – challenged economically, struggling with social problems and crime and containing about 100 nationalities within a 15-minute walking radius. Regent Park itself, the oldest and largest housing project in Canada, covers 69 acres – about one square mile. Running east to west, is Dundas Street, the only through street in the whole neighbourhood. It divides north Regent from south Regent, or “Northside” from “Southside.”

In the spring of last year, a young man was shot and killed on a Friday evening, a half a block north of where we hold our Sunday services. The family had an Army connection through an uncle in another city so I was asked to conduct the funeral. At the uncle’s request this was a private family affair, with no friends or acquaintances from “the Park” invited. However, we were asked to organize a memorial service to which his friends from the neighbourhood could be invited and so we planned one for the following Saturday. The only building we had available to hold the memorial service was the city-owned community centre that we rent each week for our Sunday meetings (we have no building of our own). The community centre is situated half a block south from the site of the shooting.

The boy was shot about three yards north of Dundas Street, just inside north Regent. He was a “Northside” boy, as the tattoo emblazoned on his lower stomach proudly proclaimed. The community centre we use is situated half a block away from where he was gunned down, about 20 yards south of Dundas Street, just inside south Regent. Nobody showed up for the memorial. It seems that we had disrespected the memory of this boy by holding a memorial for him on the Southside. This situation would seem ridiculous if it had not involved the death of a young man.

In such a context, add to the mixing pot of ethnicities in our community, who often continue to grind their tribal and political axes here in their new home, the pressure from the increasingly gentrified adjacent communities, where a trendy, upscale housing market has emerged from the ruins of the old slum community, and the potential for conflict and the need for reconciliation quickly becomes obvious. Our neighbourhood is, in many ways, a microcosm of the larger world.

Yet, each Sunday evening at 4:30 p.m. our mongrel of a church meets and worships and fellowships. One hundred plus people of all ages and different skin colour. It is a veritable polyglot of racial backgrounds, all babbling different languages and dialects and representing all strata of society from wealthy professionals through middle-class and petit bourgeois to working poor, welfare Moms and the homeless. Straight and gay, addicted and abstinent, profane and pious – I am convinced that Sunday church at 614 Regent Park represents the most disparate and eclectic group of people gathering anywhere in our city of Toronto.

And so it should be. Commissioner Phil Needham, explaining of true community, true church, writes in his book Community in Mission:

“The Church is not a grouping of individual Christians; it is a community in which Christians share in one another’s struggles and hopes. In the fellowship of believers, Christians bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), weep together, rejoice together (Romans 12:15), lift one another up in prayer (Romans 1:9; 2 Corinthians 9:14; Ephesians 1:16; Philippians 1:4; Colossians 4:2; etc), and love one another as Christ loved them (John 13:34). There is togetherness in this fellowship that goes far deeper than mere camaraderie. The pledge which the Spirit empowers the Church to carry out is the pledge of members of the community of faith to be with one another in every circumstance” (p. 15).

This was the message of the early church. This, I believe, lay at the heart of what Jesus was getting at during the Last Supper, Passover meal. This is why Paul was compelled to traverse the ancient world planting churches and instituting “Love Feasts” in order to get the message across about the reconciliation that Jesus had effected through his crucifixion.

When relationship with God is ruptured, then we cannot sustain relationship with each other because the two are inexplicably linked

In reconciling man to God and man to man, Jesus reversed the effects of the Fall, the moment when our relationship with God was severed (Genesis 3:1-24) and the subsequent murder of Abel by Cain (Genesis 4:1-16). When relationship with God is ruptured, then we cannot sustain relationship with each other because the two are inexplicably linked. Jesus’ last command to his church was intentionally this: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. All men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another” (John 13:34,35).

If The Salvation Army is called to be a prophetic presence in the world, then this starts with the recognition that our world – both our individual Monday-to-Friday-to Sunday-morning worlds as well as the larger global family – is profoundly conflicted and deeply divided. From this starting point, we must speak and act a biblical reconciliation that transcends the boundaries and barriers that not only plague the world, but those also bind us in the church.

One American preacher remarked that 11 am on Sunday mornings is the most segregated hour in American life. Though we live in apartment buildings with people of different race and ride elevators with people of colour and work in workplaces with people of various ethnicities, every Sunday morning when we go to worship God, people divide into their own particular racial groupings. We build black churches, Hispanic churches, Chinese churches, churches for the wealthy, churches for youth – all sorts of mono-cultural churches, some ethnically based, other based on age or interests or income and status. By so doing, we model ourselves after a world in which people only associate with people “like themselves” and we fail to model the Kingdom of God, an inclusive Kingdom of the whosoever, where differences are cause for celebration, not division. In today’s world, the mission statement of every Christian faith community should be: “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

For example, Kentucky, located on the edge of the American south, is a place where the black-white issue has never been truly resolved, either in society or within the church. In spite of the great strides made by the Civil Rights movement over three decades ago, the tensions run deep and hard. In the words of a friend of mine who is a Salvation Army officer born, raised and presently serving in the Southern Territory, the “spell has never been broken.” Do Kentucky Salvationists racially and economically reflect their cities and towns? Or do they reflect that statistic that says that less than 1% of churches in North America are reaching people “unlike themselves.”

If the church – the church “large C” and the “small c” local congregation – is meant to be an outpost of the Kingdom of God, reflecting what heaven is like, then what vision of heaven are we speaking of? What vision will capture the imagination of a weary and divided world unable to rise above its irreconcilable differences? The book of Revelation gives us a vision worth striving for: “I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9).

The Salvation Army is complicit, both at national and international levels, of not speaking this message clearly or distinctly enough. We need to change and strive to “encircle the world with our arms,” in the words of William Booth, and challenge the Church to do the same. As we have entered the new millennium, the witness of the church is lost in the babble, one voice among a myriad, all speaking much the same thing, as far as Joe Public is concerned – one great choir of cacophony.

Can we sing a different song, though? Can we sing a new song in this strange land of the 21st century even though we are a church in exile? Apart from the Roman Catholic Church, the Salvation Army is virtually the only truly international church that benefits from a centralized authority. Can our voice sound in the halls of ecclesiastical authority? Can the witness of our internationalism be used of God to speak prophetically to the Church and the world beyond our church walls? We are, after all, an Army that numerically (statistically) is overwhelmingly brown and yellow and not white, based on soldier and officer strength. We have a hope to offer and it is a realistic hope to counter the Bosnias and Rwandas and Middle East of the world. It is the hope that in Christ we can truly be reconciled with our Creator and his other creations. It is a message that the world should be able to come and see how this works every Sunday.

The last time I was at Asbury I heard the venerable John M. Perkins speak. He told a story of an Indian friend of his who is a Christian and a philosopher. Speaking of the church and its present fascination with power and experience, the friend told Dr. Perkins that anything that a Benny Hinn or an Oral Roberts or any other Christian miracle-worker can do, he can find a “Fakir” (a local Indian holy man) who can do the same thing. Pretty much everything – except one thing, that is. There is one thing the holy men cannot do. They cannot make a high-caste Indian love a low-caste Indian. That takes the power of the Gospel!

Speaking Prophetically in the Church
I have a conviction that the other main reason God had in raising up The Salvation Army was as a prophetic voice within the church – to live and speak as constant reminders to the Church of Jesus Christ not to forget the poor. I believe that the only true theological distinctive of The Salvation Army is our calling to the poor. From the outset of our history, this was the motivation for our mission and today it is the only raison d’etre for our continued existence. William Booth’s personal convictions on this matter are quite clear.

“God shall have all there is of me. There have been men with greater brains than I, even with greater opportunities, but from that day when I got the poor of London on my heart and caught a vision of what Jesus Christ could do to change them and me, on that day, I made up my mind that God should have all of William Booth that there was.”

“To help the poor, to minister to them in their slums, to sympathize with them in their poverty, afflictions, and irreligion, was the natural outcome that came to my soul through believing in Jesus Christ.”

Why was God moved to rise up The Salvation Army? There were two main determining factors. The state of society (the world) and the positioning of the churches relative to society. Booth was shown a London where a full one-tenth of the population was “submerged” in poverty, vice and sin. His subsequent efforts through mission stations and corps and social endeavours ranging from the “Cab Horse Charter” to his treatise In Darkest England and the Way Out, focused on this submerged tenth. The churches of the day had no interest in reaching them and left to themselves, they would never darken the door of any place of worship. This was Booth’s world. The question for us is that 140 years later what, if anything, has changed?

Dr. Jonathan Raymond, writes in Word & Deed that:

“Throughout the twentieth century…War, civil strife, genocide seemed ubiquitous and normative simultaneously…Today, the asset of 358 people (billionaires) in the world is greater than the combined income of 45% (2.6 billion) of the world’s people. The share of the global income of the poorest 20% of the world’s population has dropped from 2.3% to 1.4% since the late 1960’s. Booth’s “submerged tenth” is now nearer a third” (“Creating Christian Community in a Fragmented World,” Word & Deed, 2002).

Submerged tenth to a submerged third – hardly an improvement! If the needs of the poor and marginalized, locally and globally, are greater now than they were in Booth times, what about the “positioning” of the churches? By this I mean, the Church’s capacity and willingness to engage with the poor?

A quick perusal of any Christian (evangelical) bookstore will reveal that the vast majority of resources on offer in the areas of evangelism, mission, church planting, church models, children’s ministry etc are not dedicated toward ministry with the poor and marginalized, urban or otherwise. Browse the web and research the major conferences to be held this coming year in “evangelicaldom” and note their subject matter and the demographic they appeal to. Who are our “heroes” in the realm of Christian leaders? Which churches do we read up on and seek to imitate as models of ministry? What do you think the percentage split is among Salvation Army officers who, in the past five years have visited either Saddleback or Willow Creek Community Churches versus those who have checked out the Sojourners Community in Washington or JPUSA in Chicago? Apart from a few Catholic orders and independent missions, I cannot name one evangelical, protestant church that is focused on and committed to reaching the poor.

If the needs of the poor and marginalized, locally and globally, are greater now than they were in Booth times, what about the “positioning” of the churches? By this I mean, the Church’s capacity and willingness to engage with the poor?

I have two quotes on the wall of my office at 614, and they serve as constant reminders to me of the mission of the church as I understand it:

“Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves on the town garbage-heap; at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew, Latin and Greek; at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died and that is what He died about that is where the church should be and what the church should be about” (George MacLeod).

“Meanwhile our churches, like secular associations, are concerned with fund-raising, beautiful buildings, large numbers, comforting sermons from highly qualified preachers, while they display indifference to the poor, and to the pariahs of society – drunks, whores, homosexuals, the poor, the insane, and the lonely. Jesus himself would find no place in our all-too-respectable churches, for he did not come to help the righteous but to bring sinners to repentance. Our churches are not equipped to do that sort of thing” (John White).

The “dominant culture” of the protestant church in North America is one inextricably linked to wealth and power. The gospel of prosperity, preached so explicitly on TV screens, is ubiquitously present throughout modern-day North American evangelicalism. For years evangelicals have lauded Paul (David) Yongi Cho for having the largest church in the world (Full Gospel Central Church in Seoul, Korea). We read his books and invite him to speak at mainstream, evangelical conferences. Yet Yongi Cho is a proponent of this theology. We all sing songs from the Hill Song conglomerate out of Australia and read books by Darlene Zschech, the high profile worship leader of Hill Song. The Hill Song organizations are proponents of the prosperity gospel. Even Bruce Wilkenson’s Prayer of Jabez that swept through the evangelical world like wild fire a few years ago, is essentially implicit prosperity teaching – asking for God’s blessing, something most easily quantified in material terms.

This has always been an underlying dynamic in North American Protestantism, woven into the fabric of the stories of our culture – the “great American dream,” driven by the Protestant work ethic, singing as we worked: “I’ve got a mansion just over the hilltop / In that bright land where we’ll never grow old /And some day yonder we will never more wander / But walk on streets that are purest gold” (Ira Stamphill).

Implicit in the assumptions of our model churches (such as Bill Hybel’s Willow Creek Community Church or Rick Warren’s Saddleback Community Church) are a corporate ethos that views the pastor as CEO (there is a book on the market by a Laurie Beth Jones entitled Jesus CEO) and that elevates success indicators such as rapid growth and size, quantifying “success” in the same way, and using the same terms, as any corporate structure. The Church Growth Movement and more lately, the Natural Church Development method, are examples of business tools, backed by sociological methods, applied to the Church. The meta-narrative, told countless times, is of a small group of friends who gathered together to start a new kind of church, usually in someone’s living room and within eight years it has grown to several thousand members and… The narrative is interchangeable with Apple or Microsoft or any number of the dot.com enterprises that sprung up starting in the 1990s.

According the Brueggemann: “The contemporary (American) church is so largely acculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or act…our consciousness has been claimed by false fields of perception and idolatrous systems of language and rhetoric” (p.11).

Not long after returning from almost a decade of service in Russia, while holidaying at a Salvation Army facility, I overheard some friends talking about a corps sergeant-major in a local corps who drove a new Mercedes-Benz. I joined in the conversation by asking why would a Christian be driving a Mercedes? Further, I wondered why would a Salvationist Christian be driving a Mercedes? My question was met with a combination of annoyance, anger and eye-rolling sufferance at the recently returned, self-righteous missionary. You see this local officer was seen as an example of success. He held a relatively powerful position in a relatively powerful corps in the city. He came from a well-known Army family. His possession of a luxury car such as a Mercedes-Benz was somehow seen as a validation of The Army and a kudo for the corps that he attended. I viewed the situation as incongruous with my understanding of the Gospel and more particularly, the calling of The Salvation Army, but I was alone in holding this opinion.

Wealth and power go hand in hand. Attending a Christian conference in the southern United States last year, I was struck by how many of the songs used in the contemporary worship had the motif of Jesus as King. Along with this, the lyrics were rife with allusions to war, battle and conquering. They seemed full of imperialistic imagery. Many of the prayers offered up were those in which we were “taking back what is ours” and “claiming places that we could put our foot on.” As an aside at the end of one fervent prayer, a friend leaned over and remarked that in the course of the weekend he had heard more references to Satan than he had over the past year. Intentional and deliberate? I do not believe it was. If anything is to be read into it, it possibly represents an unconscious reaction to the ethos of projected power, connected with the war that the United States is presently engaged in – a war that has been couched in theological language and rooted in deeply religious worldviews.

If nothing else, 9/11 has put religion firmly back on the map in the increasingly secular West. An act of terrorism that was profoundly religiously motivated was met and matched with a theological rhetoric (examine President Bush’s speeches immediately before and after 9/11) and two action-orientated responses: a military action and an urging for us all to “go shopping” to help stimulate the economy.

In their attacks, Al Quaeda targeted political (military) and financial symbols. The White House, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Centre. The effects of what happened on that day continue to reverberate in The Salvation Army. A financial crisis was precipitated in all the American Territories and in my home Territory of Canada and Bermuda. In the few short years since 9/11, we have been plunged into a financial crises that has so far seen the amalgamation of six Divisions, the closing of one of our Training Colleges, the selling of three Divisional camps, budget cuts across all Divisional and Territorial Headquarters Departments by up to 30%, the closing of numerous corps, and it is not finished yet.

In a church that is strives for success, hungers after power and can never get enough money, what happens to the poor, to the “last, the lost, the least”? There is an adage that that “terrorism is the war of the poor and war is the terrorism of the rich.” The “wretched of the earth” (Franz Fanon) seem to be aligned with Al Quaeda, the PLO, and the popular people’s movements. The church seems to be aligned with the globalism, capitalism, consumerism, materialism and military might. Something is very wrong.

God did not come into the world in general – which would itself have been an ‘emptying’ – but into the world of outcasts. He chose that social level: on the margins, among the oppressed, with the poor

In their book Political Holiness: A Spirituality of Liberation, Pedro Casaldaliga and Jose-Maria Vigil, make the following case for an alternative view of the mission of the church:

“In Jesus, God emptied himself in kenosis. God did not become generically human, but specifically poor, ‘taking the form of a slave’ (Philippians 2:7). He ‘lived among us’ (John 1:14), among the poor. He did not come into the world in general – which would itself have been an ‘emptying’ – but into the world of outcasts. He chose that social level: on the margins, among the oppressed, with the poor. The kenosis of the ‘in-carnation’ did not consist simply in taking on ‘flesh’… but also in taking on ‘poverty’, the poverty of humankind.

The church, as a whole, if it wished to be increasingly evangelical and more effectively evangelizing, will have to go through this exodus and into this emptying process. It will have to insert itself - with its human and material resources and all its institutional weight - into the social situation of the poor majorities, among the greatest needs of the poor, on the periphery of this human world divided into rich and poor. The mystical body of Christ has to be where the historical body of Christ was.”

Conclusion
Brueggemann concludes that the church’s loss of identity through the abandonment of the faith tradition is the internal cause for our enculturation and acquiescence in the face of opposing values of the world. Consumer culture is “organized against history… there is a depreciation of memory and a ridicule of hope, which means everything must be held in the now, either an urgent now or an eternal now.” Any community that is “rooted in energizing memories and summoned by radical hopes is a curiosity and a threat in such a culture.” The Salvation Army is definitely a curiosity, but are we a threat? “When we suffer from amnesia, every form of serious authority for faith is in question, and we live unauthorized lives of faith and practice unauthorized ministries,” concludes Brueggemann.

The question is are we as a people of God living “unauthorized lives of faith” with reference to the life of faith and the journey of mission that God planned for us? Are we practicing “unauthorized ministries,” away from the poor, in ghettos of our own sociological and cultural comfort zones – playing at being priests, when we should be shouting as prophets?

Do we, within our ranks of missionaries, “nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us,” or do we acquiesce and sing the songs scripted for others in the church and not our own songs, even in exile?

Do we truly understand who we are as a people, and whom we are called to as a church? Are we truly children of the tradition in the Army who have taken seriously the prophetic calling of our movement in the shaping of our own fields of perception and system of language? Can we, with proper urgency, discern and articulate the points of incongruity of our church in the culture of society and the culture of the wider church, regardless of the cost?

I believe that if the Salvation Army is not willing to re-engage the world prophetically and speak prophetically within the Church, then there is no practical use for us as a distinct people of God and no compelling reason for our continued existence.

May we heed the words of the Spirit to the Churches in Ephesus and Sardis: “You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first…I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God” (Revelation 2:4,5; 3:2).

May God challenge The Salvation Army to live up to our founding vision as prophets!

Writer: Major Geoff Ryan is co-founder of theRubicon and was publisher for three years. He is co-ordinator of the 614 Network and organizes the bi-annual Urban Forum. His interests include writing, politics, coffee and his children. Geoff and his wife Sandra minister in Regent Park, a social housing project in downtown Toronto, Canada.

End Notes
Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination, Fortress Press, 1978.

Casaldaliga, Pedro and Vigil, Jose-Maria. Political Holiness: A Spirituality of Liberation, Orbis Books, 1995.

Jenkins, Philip. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, 2002.

Needham, Phil. Community in Mission: A Salvationist Ecclesiology, The Salvation Army, 1987.

Ortberg, John. “Why Jesus’ Disciples Wouldn’t Wash Their Hands,” Christianity Today, August 15, 1994.

Ryan, Geoff. “The Mission of The Salvation Army,” The Officer, January/February 2003.

Thompson, Steve. You May All Prophesy! MorningStar Publications, Wilkesboro, NC. 2000.

Earthen Vessels

 Part one of a look at the Handbook of Doctrine’s teaching on the sacraments by James Pedlar 

When the new Handbook of Doctrine came out, I was interested to see what had been done with Salvation Story’s appendix on the sacraments.  While neither book spends much time on the topic, the 2010 Handbook offers an expanded and revised discussion of the Army’s sacramental theology.  Since both texts are available as pdfs, I was able to easily construct the following chart, which places the two texts side by side, and shows where material has been removed, changed, or added comparison-of-salvation-story-and-handbook-of-doctrine-on-sacraments. I put the chart up on my blog , and got back some interesting comments.   

I’m not going to make note of every way in which Salvation Story’s text was changed (you can see that for yourself if you look at the chart), but I’d like to highlight two very significant overall changes.   I’m going to look at questions of divine and human agency in this post, and then move on to discuss the question whether or not TSA can claim a divine calling for its non-sacramental worship in my next post. 

A SHIFT FROM DIVINE AGENCY TO HUMAN AGENCY 

The new Handbook definitely shifts the emphasis from divine agency to human agency in its discussion of sacraments.  Salvation Story is almost enthusiastic in its discussion of the potential sacramentality of all of life.  When reading Salvation Story’s brief appendix, you get the impression that God’s grace is just “out there” in the world - and not in a passive sense. You get the sense that God is searching for us via his creation in ways that we don’t expect.  A sacrament, Salvation Story says, can “overwhelm us with the surprising grace of God;” it “brings the Incarnation to our doorstep”, it “invites us” to encounter the living God in “the ordinary, the common stuff of human existence.”   

As you can see from the attached chart, these phrases were removed from the text of the 2010 Handbook. In place of this dynamic emphasis on God’s agency, the 2010 Handbook emphasizes believers as bearers of sacramental grace to the world.  While Salvation Story says a sacrament “brings the incarnation to our doorstep,” the new Handbook  says a sacrament “enables the believer” to set aside their caution and allow themselves to be transformed.  Instead of stating that Christ “invites us to the sacrament of his life,” the 2010 Handbook says that Christ invites us to “apprehend the ordinary events of his life…in the light of eternal and invisible grace.”   

Maybe the most telling indication of a switch from divine to human agency comes in the sentence where Salvation Story speaks of how our everyday lives “keep stumbling onto unexpected grace.” In the new Handbook this was changed to “our everyday lives reveal and offer unexpected grace” (my emphasis).  Although only three words were switched, the new words completely alter the meaning of the sentence. Salvation Story emphasizes how God finds us in the midst of our lives, and the Handbook emphasizes how we, in our living, display and bring grace to others. 

This shift is capped off by the addition of an entire paragraph which brings home the emphasis on our role as bearers of sacramental grace to others:

“We also recognise that God uses human beings to bring grace to each other. In a similar way to the prophets and apostles, all believers are called to speak on behalf of God by their words and through their lifestyle. The call to holiness of life is a call to sacramental living - demonstrating the grace of God in the ordinary.” 

The new Handbook’s affirmations are certainly true.  God uses his people to bring grace to one another, though acts of service, generosity, and hospitality, through words spoken to one another, through creative arts - in all sorts of ways.  

However, I liked the way that Salvation Story placed the primary emphasis on God as the one who is acting to bring his grace into the midst of human life.  Sacramentality is not primarily about grace’s “demonstration” and “offer” by Christian believers, but about the mysterious way in which God condescends to work through fragile created instruments - not necessarily human beings. When he does demonstrate his grace in our human lives, it may happen in spite of our “lifestyle,” rather than because of it!   

People may think I’m splitting hairs, but I believe we always ought to place a heavier emphasis on God’s giving to us, rather than the ways in which believers embody and bring grace to others.  Our holy living is nothing other than our (grace-enabled!) responsiveness to God’s prior gracious action. God’s grace is made manifest in midst of our world because God is at work, continually intruding upon our daily lives, in spite of the fact that our response to his grace often leaves much to be desired. When our lives do demonstrate his grace, we need to be sure to give him all the glory.

James Pedlar is a doctoral student at Wycliffe College, in the Toronto School of Theology.  He specializes in the study of the Church - especially questions involving reform movements, Christian unity, authority structures, and ecumenical dialogue.  He is also interested in Wesleyan theology, Salvation Army theology, and the theology and practice of worship. James works part-time as Assistant Coordinator of Faith & Witness at the Canadian Council of Churches.   He recently completed a two year research project on young adult attrition for The Salvation Army in Canada and Bermuda, which you can read about here.   Before that he was Community Ministries Director for The Salvation Army in the Quinte Region of Ontario, Canada.  James is married to Samantha and they live in East York.  You can read his blog here

Plug Officership!

 Morale matters most! says Joe Noland

James Pedlar, A Salvationist and Doctoral student in Canada has posted an excellent piece herein (http://therubicon.org/2010/09/officer-morale-whats-wrong/) on officer morale. It’s based on a two-year research project focusing on young adult attrition within TSA. Although originating in Canada, the issues he describes are not peculiar to that territory, nor are they to the Army alone; they are widespread within the Western world. And it has nothing to do with one person, be he/she the territorial commander or whomever. It has everything to do with structure and a kind of institutional cancer slowly and insidiously eating away at the system. And it’s been a long time in the making. They don’t come any better than Commissioners Bill and Marty Francis.

This is a must read for all present and future Army leaders because it has to do with this whole matter of institutional, hierarchical leadership. The thread that accompanies the post is equally important because it has obviously struck a nerve with many. The comments also tell me something important as to the authenticity of its content. The responses are very balanced, no ranting and raving, maturely expressed, well worth a listen. One commenter, I think, gets to the heart of this morale matter when he writes, “How have you been, and are you being, valued by your leaders?” Just a suggestion, but I would pass the link on to TEC members within your respective commands. Tell them that I recommended it, so as to get you off the hook.

I was TYS/Candidates Secretary during prehistoric times in the USA Western Territory (When the two positions were conjoined). Regarding candidate recruitment, our mantra was always, “The image of officership matters!” or “Morale Matters Most!” A positive image of officership is our best recruitment tool. Image and morale are intricately linked together. Has nothing to do with who the Candidates Secretary is or isn’t; it has everything to do with morale, which will translate into either a negative or positive view of officership.

I’ve witnessed it time and again. The number of candidates recruited is directly proportionate to the morale (high or low) in the territory (The only exception being maybe during economic downturns, but that’s a discussion for another day). It will ebb and flow depending upon the quality of leadership at all levels, how they value those under their command. Is it hierarchical or relational? Is it legalistic or compassionate? Is it maintenance minded or mission driven? By the way this is going to be covered thoroughly in a book we’re working on: “High Counsel: Jesus and John on Leadership,” the “John” referring to John Gowans. Stay tuned.

I was Candidates Secretary for 5 years and we averaged 60+ cadets per session during that time. I can’t take the credit; we just capitalized on savvy leadership, high morale and a positive image throughout the territory at all levels, which we exploited to the hilt (in the best sense of the term).

In fact, I had the attached poster created cartoon like (from a real photo taken on the Glenn Erie Christian Conference Center grounds). As you can see we artistically plopped a cap and bonnet on the top of each fireplug (no Photoshop in those days). “PLUG OFFICERSHIP!” was our inspired caption. The Scripture portion (unreadable here) is taken from John 14:4, “But whoever drinketh of the water that I shall give…”

Man, did we take some heat on this one, a particular corps council taking up a petition to ban the poster and sending it to the Chief Secretary. But the kids loved it. During Youth Councils, the TC being good-natured and forgiving autographed them with the suggestion that they hang the poster on their bedroom walls - all in good fun attempting to get the message across contemporaneously. Talk about feeling valued. Mine may be the only one left in captivity, want to start a bidding war?

To cap it off we decided that 80 was a poetic number representing the number of cadets to be commissioned in 1980, the Centennial year of TSA is the Western Territory. Doris wrote a chorus, “Lord, we want 80 for 1980″ (can’t remember the other words, just as well). General Arnold Brown was our Special for the Commissioning Weekend, the chorus to be introduced with my comments during the Cadets Farewell Banquet. Long story short, we had the words printed on cards and placed at each table setting. Alas the color of the cards didn’t fit in with the Training Principal’s decorative scheme and they were pulled forcing us to find another solution (No projection in those days). The chorus was introduced and sung, accompanied by a faint and scattered gaggle of giggles throughout the room. A few of the SFOT staff started singing, “Lord, we want twenty, we think that’s plenty,” their version of “Saturday Night Live!”

Suffice to say, they got rid of us soon thereafter, followed by an obligatory sojourn into proverbial Siberia. Not feeling so valued then. Souls saved were just as precious there by the way. Nor did they even come close to 80 in 1980. To this day, occasionally some old retired codger will sing a line of that chorus when passing me by, followed by a faint giggle! There can be no creativity without risk taking, win some, lose some. Ah, but the rewards are so much greater when you win. Not this time, though.

The point being, “Morale matters most!” not a song or poster or program or Candidate’s Secretary. If morale is high, the image of officership will be high and candidate recruitment numbers will increase exponentially. Attrition in our teen, young adult ranks will subside. In a chain of command structure, good morale and a positive image is a top down phenomenon, with every level of leadership being in sync together.

Or is it the other way around? As they say before offering a toast, in this case, to the future, “Bottom’s up!” Translated, “Revolution!” Whichever, I’ll let you make the call.

Writer: Commissioner Joe Noland’s ministry can be summed up in three words: chaos, creativity and controversy - three elements implicit in any successful innovative endeavor. Cecil B. DeMille, renowned producer of Biblical epics, once wrote, “Creativity is a drug I cannot live without.” Joe’s mantra reads, “Creativity is my drug of choice.”  Access Joe Noland’s complete bio, among other things, by clicking into his website.

HOD Chap 7

… by Jason Davies-Kildea

One of my first tasks in academic theological study was to mark up the Synoptic Gospels, underlining in different colours the corresponding words and phrases in Matthew, Mark and Luke.  I got a Synopsis, a book with the gospel passages reordered and placed side by side to aid comparison, and enthusiastically set to work in order to decode the secrets of the ancient texts.  After time and with practice, patterns began to emerge as shared content, adaptations and additions came to light.  I could see how Matthew had copied and extended Mark’s work and how Luke had edited the material known as ‘Q’ that he shared only with Matthew.  The distinctive ‘voices’ of the individual writers came alive in a new way and revealed new understanding of their own historical contexts.

These days, we might just ask the Gospel writers to use the ‘Track Changes’ feature in Microsoft Word so that their editing processes would be easier for us all to follow.

So, it was with similar enthusiasm that I took to investigating the differences between the new Handbook of Doctrine and its immediate predecessors Salvation Story and the associated Study Guide.  In order to complete my personal historic and hermeneutic circle, I chose the chapter relating to the seventh doctrine and the subject of my Master of Theology thesis, Salvation.

At a structural level, Chapter 7 of the new Handbook of Doctrine extracts and combines material from Chapters 5, 7 and 8 of Salvation Story and then in a separate section under the heading ‘For Further Exploration’, does the same thing with the study guide.  There’s a new introduction and conclusion, as well as a number of changes which generally reflect updates and improvements in the language used.  Have a look at the following paragraphs for example:

Now, clearly we need to be careful not to read too much into the changes.  For example, I don’t think that the removal of the phrase ‘The Holy Spirit gives wise counsel’ symbolises a repudiation of that truth.  I suspect it was just seen as redundant in the immediate context and perhaps old fashioned in its phrasing.  Similarly, the removal of the word ‘precious’ is unlikely to be intended to diminish the example of Jesus.  The substitution of the word ‘bestows’ with ‘gives’ is a helpful move.

So let’s focus on some things that might represent more substantial and meaningful changes.  I approached the passage on Liberation Theology that used to be in the Salvation Story Study Guide with a little trepidation.  Liberation Theology has had more than its fair share of critics but I’ve found much spiritual nourishment and missional inspiration in this theology rooted in the experience of the poor and grounded in hope for their liberation from poverty and oppression.  There seem to be some obvious correlations with the mission of The Salvation Army and I would have been disappointed to see the previous references disappear (minimal though they were).  So, I was pleased to find that not only does this passage still exist in the new Handbook of Doctrine but it contains some helpful clarifications and generally shows clearer phrasing.  An illustrative quote from Leonardo Boff has been substituted with one from Gustavo Gutierrez, but nothing is really lost here.  In fact, Gutierrez’ words about “liberation from sin and from all its consequences: despoliation, injustice, hatred” reminded me of a list penned at the inception of The Salvation Army proclaiming “the salvation of others from unbelief, drunkenness, vice and crime”.  It’s the wide scope of this salvation ‘matching the breadth and depth of human need’ that continues to be rightly emphasised in the updated Handbook.  “Salvation is an individual reality but also has a social context.  It relates to wholeness of life and well-being.  It has to do with material freedoms as well as spiritual ones.  It relates to the healing of communities as well as of individuals.  Jesus came to set us free from all that binds us.” (p.159)

I was also pleasantly surprised to find what seems to be a wholly new paragraph on ‘feminist theological concerns’.  It’s probably too short and therefore overly simplistic, but it’s a start and hopefully we’ll see more on this next time around.

My only real concern is the preponderance of proof-texting.  Almost every sentence in the first section of the chapter has an accompanying Scripture verse to back it up.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for looking to the Scriptures for inspiration and understanding and I do it often.  But pulling individual verses out of context from all over the Bible to illustrate diverse points that have nothing to do with their original meaning doesn’t seem helpful to me.  If there’s one thing I learned from that first colour underlining exercise in the Synoptics it was that context matters.  When we take a verse from one place and put it somewhere else, it can end up looking like it means something quite different indeed.  I understand that the motive behind this is one that deeply respects the words contained in our Scriptures, but the methodology doesn’t reflect anything we’ve learned from critical Biblical studies in the past century or more.

The biggest question about the new Handbook of Doctrine is perhaps the meaning behind the change in structure.  There’s no doubt that the re-ordering of chapters and the combination of materials from previously separate volumes does simplify the task of studying the doctrines.  It may be that some people were confused by Salvation Story as a tool for this kind of study because in some sense it started with Christian theology and then showed how our doctrines fitted in.  It’s because of this that material relating to doctrine seven, for example, appears in three separate chapters in Salvation Story.  I know a number of people that appreciated this approach, which at the time seemed to herald a more progressive way of exploring what Salvationist believe and why.  The new Handbook of Doctrine clearly places our doctrines first and foremost at centre stage.  This very act will open up discussions, like this one, about what this means and the nature of Christian belief today.  As far as I’m concerned, that’s not a bad thing at all.

Writer: Captain Jason Davies-Kildea is currently serving as Social Programme Secretary of the Melbourne Central Division in Australia. He received a Churchill Fellowship in 2006 and travelled to the US, UK and Kenya to look at “models of holistic service, for highly disadvantaged people, which have been established in faith-based communities”. He recently graduated with a Masters in Theology and is now pursuing a Masters in Social Science (Policy and Human Services).  Jason writes periodically on his own blog, which you can find here.

An open & shut issue?

… asks Terry Camsey 

The front cover of a Christian magazine stunned me recently. It referred to a new outreach initiative called “Back To Church Sunday.”  It wasn’t the focus that caught my attention so much as the illustration behind it. It showed closed (and probably barred from the inside) ancient, shabby, and substantial church doors surrounded by worn and crumbling masonry. A very uninviting and forbidding entrance that suggested “Keep Out!” 

In the early days of the Army, doors of citadels and fortresses served, indeed, to protect Salvationists within, before they set out for open-air meetings through hostile crowds. If you have never read it, try to get a copy of “The Old Corps” (used by John Gowans as a template for his musical “Glory.”) The Salvationists of those days were lucky if they got out and back again without being injured, or having the flag or other trappings stolen. 

No wonder that we had so many citadels and fortresses. They were as much a defensive structure - to which the early day Salvationists could retreat after bravely going forth to share the Gospel - as a point of entry to the un-churched masses. 

The illustration got me thinking about doors…doors that can be open to let people in, or closed to keep people out.  

There are so many kinds of doors.  Revolving doors, for example where, if you are not careful, you can find yourself going around in circles - especially if pushed hard by other people trying to get in. In fact, if you are not careful, you might find yourself back out on the sidewalk again! 

There are swing doors which can be very dangerous if you don’t have your wits about you and the person entering before you lets it swing back in your face. Then, too, there are sliding doors that can trap your fingers if you are not careful… and screen doors to keep unwelcome bugs out. 

There are front doors that can let you in, and back doors that can, just as easily let you out…and side doors where you can sneak in surreptitiously. Doors can be entrances,  they can also be a portal where people can be rejected as well as ejected. By words, action or attitude,” shown the door!” 

For new people coming to a church, or corps for that matter, there can be many doors - barriers or entrances - which gradually lead them into the congregational family or not. There is a door into the building…a door into the congregation…a door into fellowship groups…a door into cliques within the congregation…a door into personal ministry…a door into leadership participation. 

Each door can be an entrance or an exit, openable only by those inside. 

Are those doors warm, open and welcoming in your corps? Or are they, like the picture on the magazine I mentioned, cold, shut and forbidding. 

I was very impressed, some years ago, when visiting a large church in Fresno with a friend. Everything about it said, “Welcome.” The parking lot was in front of the church and greeters were stationed there. The front doors were attractive, well lighted (I went to an evening service) and wide open, with other greeters outside to receive and welcome visitors. Inside were yet other volunteers to show us to our seats in the sanctuary. Everything about it said, “We’re glad to see you.” 

I have also been to corps where the parking lot was behind the building so that hardly any of the “regulars” used the front door, but entered by the back door…giving the appearance of a secret society! 

The most critical “doors” are those represented by the regular members of the congregation who can, by action or attitude, accept or reject visitors. 

Christmas will be here soon and we shall again relive the events immediately preceding the birth of Christ. We shall hear once again that there was no room at the inn for Mary and Joseph. 

It’s my prayer that such rejection will not be felt by visitors who choose to come to the Army. 

Do I hear an “Amen” to that?

Writer: For thirty years Terry Camsey has been immersed in Church Growth and Health issues at local, middle and upper administrative levels. He is author of the book “Slightly Off-Center” (Crest Books) and is working on “Beyond the Cusp of The Curve..exploring the single most critical influence on the life, health, growth, vitality and decline of Christian denominations and the churches within them.”

He is founder of the new ChurchCatalystsInternational focusing on the role of interventionists as catalysts: shedding light, creating heat, inspiring energy and accomplishing transformation. More details are on his new website http://churchcatalystsinternational.org./ 

God’s not Fit to Lead His Own Church?

Sometimes people say really stupid things in an effort to give a compliment. “Your hair looks really good today,” can actually be heard as, “Your hair did not look good yesterday!”

In other not-so-brilliant moments, in an effort to be helpful, a person will stick his foot into his mouth. For example, I once read of a woman who said to a child at the funeral of the child’s mother, “Don’t worry, Honey, your dad is still young and he’ll find you a new Mommy.” Wow!!!

I do not claim to have never said anything stupid. In fact, I say a lot of stupid things. None of us is immune to momentary lapses of common sense. Consider Paul the apostle’s advice to Timothy concerning those who seek leadership roles in the Church.

“He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)” (1Ti 3:4-5 NIV).

If “managing” means that any would-be leader’s children must be “controlled,” then Paul’s advice would make God ill-equipped to lead His own Church. Even God cannot say that he has a perfect family, or that he is able to control His children. Most of His children are dysfunctional, and all of them are sinners.

As one of my own sons so brilliantly added, “I guess the children of pastors don’t have free will.”

Did Paul put his foot in his mouth? Did Paul implicate God as unable to lead the Church?

He did, if “manage” means “to have control over.”

It’s hard for us to say, hear, or even read the word “manage,” without imposing the idea of having control or preventing mishap. When an employer hires a manager, he or she is employing someone who will have the ability to minimize problems and maximize efficiency.

In an effort to better understand exactly what Paul was telling Timothy, we will have to hear the word “manage” from Paul’s perspective and language.

προΐστημι is the Greek word that is translated “manage” in many of the English translations used by most Christians. It is a word that has two meanings, according to BDAG: 1) “to exercise a position of leadership, rule, direct, be at the head (of).” This definition leads one to assume that to lead the Church a person must be “in control” of his family, house, and children. By this definition, even God has failed.

The second BDAG definition gives clarity to Paul’s words. I’ll give you that in just a minute. But first, Paul’s words have to be understood in their original context, based on his own culture and understanding of the words that are recorded in the original language of which Paul wrote. I would argue that the supervisory definition (BDAG’s first), often adopted by those who wish to criticize pastors of unruly children, is far from the intent of Paul’s instructions to Timothy.

It is the second meaning of the word that is most helpful in understanding Paul’s less-than-offensive criterion. That definition from BDAG is 2) “to have an interest in, show concern for, care for, give aid.”

This second definition is used in many Old Testament passages of the LXX, including the books of 2 Samuel, Proverbs, Amos, and Isaiah, along with other uses of Paul in Romans, 1st Thessalonians, 1st Timothy, and his letter to Titus.

The second definition, “to care for, take care of,” is also that of another Greek word, ἐπιμελέομαι, which is used in the story of the Good Samaritan. “The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him (ἐπιμελήθητι),‘ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have’”(Luke 10:35 NIV). In this story, the Samaritan is the care-giver of the one who was beaten, and he is asking the innkeeper to continue a service of “managing the needs” of the injured man.

It is true that the Church to which an individual is called and desires to lead includes the property and administrative duties, but the Church itself is the people or the children of God.

Paul’s instructions to Timothy concerning who should be allowed to lead God’s children is not to be heard as, “Anyone who has problems in his household can’t lead the Church.” What Paul is saying is “Anyone who doesn’t care about his or her own property, family, business, and children, will surely not care about God’s children.” There are many hurting, troublesome, and sick people who call themselves Christians, and if a person wants to lead God’s children, but cannot care for his own children in good times and bad, he is not fit to care for God’s children who will surely be far from perfect.

In His dust,
Johnny

BDAG: W. Bauer, et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3d ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

Philip H. Towner The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Letters to Timothy and Titus (Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), p. 256.

Writer: Capt. Jonathan Gainey was born in Jacksonville, FL in June, 1969. He has been married to Staci, the daughter of retired Salvation Army officers, for twenty years and they have four children ages 18, 16, 12, and 4. Jonathan was commissioned as an officer in June of 2002, and is currently serving in his third appointment in New Bern, NC, USA. He is working on a Masters of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and is the creator and manager of the Flocks Diner website, where his passion for learning and teaching is expressed and shared through writing and a weekly podcast.

© 2010 Jonathan P. Gainey and Flock’s Diner.  All Rights Reserved

Stuff Salvationists Like - Vol 2: POTLUCKS

… by Mark Braye 

Salvationists like potlucks. We have them after Sunday morning worship. We have them to say “welcome” or “farewell” to officers. We have them for Home League and Women’s Ministries. We have them for “Special” Sundays and guests. We have them for Super Bowl parties and other events. If we need food at something - POTLUCK!

WHY???!!!

I do not like potlucks. When I read or hear that one word and those two syllables at church a shiver runs up and down my spine and an awful taste appears in my mouth. You know what that awful taste is? The taste of potlucks.

In the book Why You Say It: The Fascinating Stories Behind Over 600 Everyday Words and Phrases, Webb Garrison wrote:

“In order to stretch her food, the wife of a commoner would keep an iron pot on an open fire. She threw all her leftovers into it each day, and kept it simmering much of the time.”

Gross! I’ve felt like that’s exactly what was on my plate at a potluck. The entry for “Potluck” continues:

“If a relative arrived unexpectedly, he was likely to have to eat from the pot without having any idea of what odds and ends had gone into it.”

This is cruel. This is sick and twisted. This is like culinary Russian roulette.

Where’s does the syllable “luck” come from? It’s lucky if you don’t get sick? It’s lucky if you don’t choke on an unexpected meatball in your macaroni and cheese? This is eating/living on the edge.

Sharing a meal is an awesome way to get to know people, hear their stories, and have Holy fellowship. The value of sharing meals is affirmed throughout Scripture and in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. However, let’s eliminate potlucks and support our local caterers.

There’s nothing lucky about potlucks.

Just some thoughts; for better or worse.

Writer: Mark and Nancy Braye are the pastors/officers of The Salvation Army Tri-Town Community Church in Temiskaming Shores, Ontario, Canada. They have two children, pictured above, Hannah and Micah. The four of them love to play and watch Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer, and The Wiggles.

Pastors as “wannabe executives”

by James Pedlar 

One of my favourite contemporary pastor/theologians is Dave Fitch  http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/ who teaches at Northern Seminary and pastors a church plant in Chicago called “Life on the Vine.”  He’s a theologian who’s got his feet firmly planted in the day-to-day realities of church life, and he often provides insightful critiques of contemporary evangelical culture and practice.  

In his book The Great Giveaway, he includes a chapter on “Leadership.” The thesis in this chapter is that the contemporary pastorate has capitulated to models of leadership found in the business world, which are fundamentally oriented toward “effectiveness” in getting results, rather than on faithfulness to Jesus Christ.  This leads to conflict resolution strategies that are high handed and autocratic.  The pastor needs to decide on a solution in order for the ministry to maintain its effectiveness (which usually means numerical growth).   If people don’t get on board, they are standing in the way of the “success” of the ministry. 

I’m really connecting with what Fitch has to say, as it sums up and connects some ideas that have been rolling around in my head for some time.   Most books on Christian leadership are simply parroting the latest trendy ideas from the world of management.   What’s worse is that they throw in the odd scripture verse and “spiritualize” the ideas they’re selling, which means that the pastors who buy this stuff are taking that back to their churches believing that they’ve got divine authority on their side as they try to implement these so-called “biblical” strategies.    

This is an evangelical issue, not just an Army issue, but it seems to me that the Army is as vulnerable as anyone else to being swept away by the latest business trends. Army officers have, on average, a greater responsibility for financial administration than your average evangelical pastor, so they are justified in drawing on business trends in some aspects of their work. 

In fact, I wouldn’t want to say that insights from the business world have absolutely no value.  They might be helpful as tools to aid in Church leadership, if used selectively within a larger biblical and theological framework.  But they should not have the defining role that they have in the contemporary evangelical world.  So whether it’s “mission statements,” “visioning,” “strategic planning,” or more recently, “branding,” churches are embracing contemporary management techniques wholeheartedly as if they were gospel truth.   People who don’t get on board then are “problems” to be managed (at best), or (at worst) hinderances to the Spirit.   If it seems like I’m exaggerating here, I’m not.  I know a person who was told that their practical questions about church finance were “of the devil.”  

For all the diversity of contemporary Western societies, it seems like we’re getting worse at handling conflict in our churches.  Everywhere you look there is a local congregation that is being torn apart by some scandal or another.   Perhaps it is (as Fitch suggests in his book) connected to the individualistic outlook  of modernity, which encourages each one of us to think that we are completely autonomous centres of decision-making power, and that each one of us must arbitrate for ourselves between competing truth claims.   The locus of authority, for modernity, is the reasoning self, and the presumption is that “reason” will lead us to the truth through the exercise of our intellectual faculties.  Of course this is a bit of a caricature, but it pretty much sums up the way things work on a practical level.  And perhaps that has something to do with the interminable splintering of denominations and congregations in modern protestantism.   If we all believe that we ourselves are the final arbiters of truth in matters of dispute, then why would we back down when faced with an opposing view? 

The question is whether postmodern understandings of self, truth, and knowledge move us any closer to a more healthy resolution of these problems.   It would seem that postmodern sensibilities are helpful in de-bunking the conflict-ridden assumptions of modernist epistemology, but not as helpful in offering constructive solutions.    

From most postmodern perspectives, no one person can claim a certain enough hold on truth to impose it upon an entire community.  This means that people of my generation are less likely to get hot under the collar about a dispute within our local church, thinking that we’re the ones who’ve got the “true” answer.  But then again, we might just stop caring at all, and become apathetic in the face of conflict, as it would seem as if no final resolution is possible.  What is needed is a normative standard to replace the reasoning autonomous self.  The standard may not be “universal” in the way that some moderns claimed “reason” was universal, but it can nevertheless be authoritative within the community for whom it is adopted.   

What I like about Fitch’s approach is that he always finds his way back to biblical depictions of church life as the normative standard.   So in this post:  http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/stuck-between-mohler-and-mclaren-the-incarnational-approach-to-leading-in-our-disagreements/ which covers some of the same ground as the chapter on leadership in The Great Giveaway, the answer to conflict in the Church is based on Matthew 18.    

What is shocking about this biblical model is that so few churches actually try to live this out.  We turn instead to the world of management theory and dress it up in spiritual language as if that were the “biblical” way of being Church.  Why is this?  Has the model that Fitch upholds been tried and found wanting?  Not in my experience.  More likely it is the fact that is just plain messy and “inefficient,” and therefore doesn’t fit with the corporate approach to leadership that we’ve embraced.

James Pedlar is a doctoral student at Wycliffe College, in the Toronto School of Theology.  He specializes in the study of the Church - especially questions involving reform movements, Christian unity, authority structures, and ecumenical dialogue.  He is also interested in Wesleyan theology, Salvation Army theology, and the theology and practice of worship. James works part-time as Assistant Coordinator of Faith & Witness at the Canadian Council of Churches.   He recently completed a two year research project on young adult attrition for The Salvation Army in Canada and Bermuda, which you can read about here.   Before that he was Community Ministries Director for The Salvation Army in the Quinte Region of Ontario, Canada.  James is married to Samantha and they live in East York.  You can read his blog here