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.

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.

The SA Doctrines - Time for change

Iwould like to open these comments by restating, for reference, the doctrines of The Salvation Army as they presently exist …

1. We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice.
2. We believe that there is only one God, who is infinitely perfect, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, and who is the only proper object of religious worship.
3. We believe that there are three persons in the Godhead-the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, undivided in essence and co-equal in power and glory.
4. We believe that in the person of Jesus Christ the Divine and human natures are united, so that He is truly and properly God and truly and properly man.
5. We believe that our first parents were created in a state of innocency, but by their disobedience they lost their purity and happiness, and that in consequence of their fall all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God.
6. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has by His suffering and death made an atonement for the whole world so that whosoever will may be saved.
7. We believe that repentance towards God, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit, are necessary to salvation.
8. We believe that we are justified by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and that he that believeth hath the witness in himself.
9. We believe that continuance in a state of salvation depends upon continued obedient faith in Christ.
10. We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be wholly sanctified, and that their whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
11. We believe in the immortality of the soul; in the resurrection of the body; in the general judgment at the end of the world; in the eternal happiness of the righteous; and in the endless punishment of the wicked.

I think it is necessary to make the point up front that these doctrines are not the truth. Jesus Christ is the Truth (John 14:6). These doctrines are instead pointers to the Truth (capital T). At times I get the impression that the doctrines are immovable, unchangable and anyone who suggests otherwise is considered a heretic. The major problem with this attitude, whether it’s explicitly stated or not, is that it actually forces its adherents to contradict themselves.

What do I mean by this? Well, the first doctrine states that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments “only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice”. To suggest, then, that the doctrines are beyond the need of regular editing actually contradicts this doctrine. Consider, as well, that most Christians now use a different translation of the Scriptures (the most popular being the NIV) than what was in vogue 100 years ago (the KJV the clear favourite then). What does this suggest about the content of doctrine one??? Yet some would suggest that updating the language of the doctrine itself is beyond suggestion. Seems strange to me…

I have suggested above that the doctrines are not the truth, but rather pointers to the Truth (Jesus Christ). I would like to suggest that the doctrines, in their present format, are deficient in the way they do in fact point to the Truth. Let me suggest a few examples of why this is so:

1. The use of exclusive language (e.g. “men”) excludes half of the population unnecessarily. One of my lecturers wisely said to me early in my study career; “If you can use a word that doesn’t exclude people just as easily as one that will then which one should you choose?” In this example replacing words such as “men” with gender neutral words such as “human” or “humanity” is long overdue. Particularly true for a denomination that has always professed equality for women and men within the organisation (at least in its rhetoric).
2. The change from “Holy Ghost” (D3) to “Holy Spirit” (D7) is confusing and even misleading. “Ghost” is a word with two many science fiction, fantasy world connotations and relies significantly upon the KJV translation which most congregations no longer use in corporate worship. Consistency in this regard would be a simple editing process to use the same language across both doctrines.
3. A major issue is the lack of reference to the resurrection of Christ. The resurrection of the body does make an appearance in the final doctrine, but this is not a reference to Jesus’ resurrection but rather the hope of our resurrection. Again, these doctrines are pointers to the Truth (Jesus) and if there is no reference to the resurrection of the Truth, then that is a glaringly obvious omition for me.
4. The separation of Doctrines 2 and 3 is misleading. Whilst I can see that this is an attempt to show that we worship one God who has been revealed in the three persons of Father, Son and Spirit, the importance of stating this mystery together rather than apart is far more necessary in my mind. The Trinity is a central tenet of the Christian faith and the Doctrine of God needs to be, at one and the same time, the Doctrine of the Trinity - together, not apart.
5. Order is also important. Whilst it’s like saying “where do you start on a circle?” or the old “Chicken and the Egg” problem, at the same time it’s necessary to carefully consider this starting point. Is what we believe about the Scriptures foundational to what we believe about God, or is it the other way around? On this particular point my mind is not made up, but I think it’s a discussion point worthy of consideration.
6. The semi-Pelagian nature of Doctrine 9 is a significant problem. There is no mention of grace within this doctrine and so it gives the impression that “continuance” is entirely dependent upon “obedient faith”. Whilst I would automatically qualify this by stating that this “faith” is itself a gift of God’s grace anyway (Ephesians 2:8), still greater clarification of this is needed, lest Salvationists profess to a doctrine that suggests that God has nothing to do with keeping them secure in his love.
7. Doctrine 10 relies heavily upon 1 Thessalonians 5:23, more specifically the KJV of this verse. No modern translation of the Bible uses the word “unto” but rather “at” in reference to the “coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”. This is a significant alteration and, if we are to continue to rely upon this verse for our doctrine of holiness then some strong exegetical work needs to be done regarding this.

These examples above are a few of the obvious examples of the need for the doctrines of The Salvation Army to be updated. They have served us well for over 120 years, however they are at risk of not serving the purpose for which they are there for - namely, point to the Truth. If we are forced to exegete them in order to then be pointed to the Truth, then that is evidence enough for me that work need to be done in order to update them.

I would hope that this would happen sooner rather than later. 

Writer: Captain Adam Couchman is currently the Director for the School for Christian Studies at Booth College, Australia Eastern Territory. He loves reading, talking, discussing, thinking, and re-thinking all things theological. Most of all, he just wants to “be Holy as God is holy”. Adam is married to Megan and together they have two girls - Brielle and Annabelle.

Resurrection: Hope for Life

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Jason Davies-Kildea considers the great Christian hope.

The road to despair is wide and runs downhill for many of those who find themselves on the doorstep of The Salvation Army.  The ‘Our Homeless Children’ report included this short quote that is unfortunately indicative of the thoughts of too many people: “What do I most hope for? That I die pretty quick“.

One might rightly wonder why anyone would want to work against such dire circumstances on a daily basis?  For me, the answer is that, despite so many contrary indications, not only is there real hope, but to be a bearer of hope is a deeply meaningful role.  There is something almost counter-cultural about spreading hope today.  In a review of the Oasis movie, Captain Paul Moulds was described as a ‘delusional optimist’ - the kind of description I would proudly share.  Hope may be unexpected, but it is a crucial component of Salvation Army social ministries.  Liberation theologian, Jon Sobrino, says this:

Those who have a radical hope for the victims of this word, who are not convinced that resignation is the last word…can include in their experience a hope analogous to that with which Jesus’ resurrection was first grasped and can direct their lives to taking the victims down from the cross.  Furthermore, those who, in the midst of this history of crucifixion, celebrate what there is of fullness and have the freedom to give their own lives will, perhaps, not see history as nonsensical… but as the promise of a ‘more’ that touches us and draws us despite ourselves.[1]

If, as the apostle Paul claimed, resurrection is the central affirmation of Christianity, then this deep symbol of hope should still be a vital, life-giving metaphor for us today.  In a similar vein, Jewish people celebrate the story of the Exodus, the liberation of an entire people from slavery and the beginnings of new life, new opportunities in the Promised Land.  Both are powerful stories of hope grounded in the historical memory of people of faith.  Yet to leave them entrapped in history is to rob them of much their power to continue to inspire us today.

If our message is to transcend the barriers of the faith community, we may need to learn to find ways of talking about resurrection beyond the category of history - for this indeed has become a stumbling block to many of our current generations.  In Alice in Wonderland, when Alice tells the Queen that one can’t believe impossible things she gets the reply:  “I daresay you haven’t had much practice.  When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!”  This has become the all-too-common picture of a Christian, someone who is able to twist their brain into a doctrine-conforming pretzel - and who can no longer speak sensibly to a post-modern world.

It is important, then, for us to remember that resurrection is firstly a theological proclamation.  It says something about the nature of God.  God is on the side of life!  God cannot be defeated by death.  When we experience suffering and death, this God is not absent but is actively sowing the seeds of new life.

The real challenge of resurrection is not about belief, but about experience.  It challenges us to place deeds before creeds, to live resurrection before we can begin to preach resurrection.  Here the message of Leonardo Boff resonates powerfully with the mission of The Salvation Army:

Wherever people seek good, justice, humanitarian love, solidarity, communion and understanding between people, wherever they dedicate themselves to overcoming their own egoism, making this world more human and fraternal and opening themselves to the normative Transcendent for their lives, there we can say, with all certainty, that the resurrected one is present, because the cause for which he lived, suffered, was tried and executed is being carried forward.[2]

There is only one appropriate response to the reality of resurrection experience: to seek out and work towards creating resurrection experiences and opportunities for new life in the lives of others.  The Salvation Army is continually finding ways to impart hope into people’s lives.  Surely this is something we want to multiply, so that every corps, every social centre can function as a community of resurrection possibility.

May the source of our hope never fail. May we always impart hope with generosity.  May we know the experience of resurrection, of new life, of new hope, in our own lives and in the lives of those whom we serve.

Writer: Captain Jason Davies-Kildea is currently serving with his wife, Michelle, at the Brunswick Corps and Community Programmes in Australia. He received a Churchill Fellowship in 2006 and travelled last year 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 writes regularly on his own blog, which you can find here.  

[2] Leonardo Boff Jesus Christ Liberator (London: SPCK, 1980), 219

the Rubicon - BY REQUEST - Reaching the digital generation

We could learn a lot from Mr. Gutenberg and by that we don’t mean Steve Guttenberg of Police Academy fame. The year was 1450 and the man was Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith who invented the movable printing press. This man imagined life differently, invented the most significant gadget of his day and transformed the world, almost in an instant.

It was with his truly remarkable movable printing invention that Gutenberg made his name. Until this point in time, every book in existence was the work of a scribe, usually a monk, who had painstakingly etched each and every word by hand onto expensive parchment and bound the copies between wooden boards. The end result: it took years to copy out a book, and that was without the illustrations. Illiteracy was the norm, accuracy was dubious and mistakes were handed down and multiplied throughout the generations. Gutenberg changed all this - with the power of the printed word, he lifted his culture from the dark ages and watched as a world of new possibilities sprang into life.

His predecessor of the photocopier was so revolutionary, its significance mirrored the invention of the alphabet and the development of language. As it sparked a cultural revolution, it radically transformed the way people worked. By 1501, there were more than a thousand printing shops in Europe and more than 20 million books were circulating and in the hands of the masses. All of a sudden, knowledge came closer to the hands of the people as printed books were sold for a fraction of the price. Previously, those dedicated scribes in the Church had held the keys to learning, but now study was accessible, ordinary folk no longer relied on being read to, but learned to read instead. Education was revolutionized; inventors could share discoveries, doctors could circulate their case-histories in books and the scientific revolution was unleashed. The doors of social debate and critical thinking were flung open as books became part of people’s lives. The press marked a paradigm shift in the way that information and news was transferred in Europe. The fields of science, art, religion, politics and literature were all transformed by printing and a new democratic world was born.

Mr. Gutenberg is a role model for us all, particularly when it comes to the power of imagination and the courage to pursue a dream. Perhaps the inklings of such an invention are not resting at the end of our finger-tips. Men and women like Mr. Gutenberg are once-in-a-generation, dare we say once-in-a-century phenomena. However, for the purpose of this article, the real hero of the story is the church… and yes we did say “church”.

The Church and the Printing Press
It was the followers of Jesus that grasped the potent possibilities in Gutenberg’s device. The church did not stand back aghast and denounce the new technology as demonic. Agitated monks did not form threatening bands of flying pickets, or travel throughout Europe to protest outside the continent’s printing presses. Our predecessors were not luddite technophobes helplessly ordering the reversal of this industrious tide. On the contrary, these early adopters waded into the wash and rode the wave of innovation towards a whole new day. And what’s more monks rested their weary hands, recovered from their repetitive strain injuries and invested their spare hours elsewhere, more prayer anyone?

So what does this history lesson have to teach those of us in the digital generation? Well firstly without this invention, you and I would be in a different place today. Prior to Mr. Gutenberg gaining his patent, books were expensive and a scarce resource - it was said that ‘man would give a cartload of hay for a few sheets by St. Paul’, but within 50 years of Gutenberg’s machine going into production, almost 40,000 editions of the Bible had been printed throughout Europe. Indeed, and here’s the crux of the matter, Gutenberg’s press put the word of God in to the hands of the people like never before. Martin Luther, John Calvin and their followers embraced and used Gutenberg’s gadget for all of its worth. The Reformation spread with the same astonishing rapidity as printing itself -it could not have done so without it. As their ideas and works were re-produced at high speed, so their thinking and following could gather momentum, escalating into the single largest revolution of the means by which we know and experience God and His Church. As these theologians seized their own day, they changed the Church and transformed the future.

The digital generation - an opportunity for the church to take hold of God’s future
In the past, some Christians have waved red flags of caution as technologies flash into new corners of being. The emergence of rapid cultural shifts combined with a suspicion of the unfamiliar has left the Church fearful that the innovative threatens a religion rooted in tradition. Or rather, as new trends explode around us, we develop an arrogant indifference and insist that a transcendent message needs no assistance in its delivery, especially from worldly mechanisms or methods which might detract from our message. Of course, the downsides of technology are real - progress and danger often walk hand in hand and we cannot be ignorant to these. Yet, we live in the communications revolution. We can either seize the opportunities ahead of us, or stubbornly protest and call for our quill so we might scribble out another tract. You see, it’s not just that the digital generation calls us to speak to them in a new language. More than this, these first generation millennials are the way in which God will reform the church, reach the world and renew creation.

It sounds simple, but the essence of our job is communication. To see young people won and re-captured by the Church, we need to use the language of today. We hold bridge-building tools to join God’s dynamic truth with the fluctuating, moving landscape ahead of us. As young people take their communities beyond buildings and into the virtual world of internet networks, new Church movements are imagining experimental forms of social activism, neo-monasticism and new types and styles of community and worship. Gutenberg’s spirit lives on in our 24/7 media culture of broadcasts and pod-casts, uploads and downloads. And while people access information, knowledge and community through mediums unimagined 500 years ago, through it all they continue to search for an authentic reality in a virtual world. One question remains: will we take hold of the unimagined possibilities of our time in the same way as those Christians who came after Gutenberg?

Writers:  After 18 years working with TSA, Russell Rook recently started work with Chapel St a change agency working with churches and communities to bring about regeneration through the delivery of community services and social enterprise. He also works as a writer and speaker and is the chair of the Spring Harvest theme group. Russell helps to lead his local corps, Raynes Park Community Church, is married to Charlotte, a professional cellist and has two sons Joe and Toby.

Sarah Doyle is a journalist for Youthwork magazine, a writer for The Church Urban Fund and a volunteer youth worker at St. Andrew’s, Chorleywood.

Theological Puberty

Jonathan Gainey finds a little gem

Review: A Little Exercise for Young Theologians by Helmut Thielicke

Every once in awhile, a book comes along that literally changes a person’s life. Recently that book for me was A Little Exercise for Young Theologians by Helmut Thielicke.

This very small, 41-page book should be read by everyone who goes about the task of theological study. The sins of young students of the Word are brought out so simply and powerfully that one cannot read this book without reflecting on his or her own arrogance as an adventurer of holy writ.

So much of what Theilicke had to say was powerfully accurate. His insights should be considered by everyone who attempts the task of theological education, formally or otherwise. Just about every page of the book has an amount of highlighting, because I could not resist the urge to be able to go back to his thoughts with ease.

The arrogance or “theological puberty” that Thielicke speaks about is deadon with most of us, and few can resist the urge to “wallow in our ownership” of new findings. These are shared with passionate urgency as if all the secrets of the universe have been discovered by the young theologian, and others have been left in the dark.

The temptation to speak down to the congregation rather than speak with them is also a temptation that is sometimes heightened by theological studies.  Pouring out our defense for hymns of old as more theologically stirring and rich as opposed to the simple and shallow words of newer worship music becomes a constant agenda of the learned master of all things God.

As a Salvation Army officer and pastor, I have found myself with the same urges, especially in Sunday school settings, Bible studies and small groups, to correct all those who have not been privy to my level of discovery. I say that with sarcasm. I can go back and almost hear my words sending the message, “Oh ye of simple faith.”

Even the introduction of Thielicke’s book is full of informational wealth. As Martin E. Marty points out, those who study deeply do change their minds about what they believe quite often. This is a healthy sign of a growing Christian, but the one experiencing such a crisis must be patient with those who rarely question anything spiritual. I find myself in this predicament of philosophical transitioning so often that I have wondered if there are any definite truths to be discovered from the biblical text. And then, I realize that I am also guilty of the tendency to read the Scriptures only to discover what can become a sermon.

This book has truly opened my eyes to the dangers of theological adolescence, and I am determined to get this book into more hands, especially those who are called to the task of teaching.

As for my own ministry, I have been made more aware of my task to learn as much from my pastor - the church, as I teach. Although the need for life-long learning is a given, I realize that there will be times when the learning that I am able to glean from the most humble of theologians may very well contain the richest, life-giving instructions of my life.

As Thielicke so wisely states, “Even an orthodox theologian can be spiritually dead, while perhaps a heretic crawls on forbidden bypaths to the sources of life” (Thielicke, 37).

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.

Gone to the beach

Starting July 1, theRubicon is taking a break… we’ve gone to the beach. While we are away we will be transferring the editorial team for the site, which means theRubicon may be periodically unavailable while the database is moved between servers. This downtime should be minor.

While we are in transition, take some time to look through theRubicon’s archives, where you’ll find 865 articles and almost 3,000 comments. While you are at the beach, if you write something that you think would fit theRubicon’s editorial mandate, send it along: rubiconeditor@gmail.com.

And stayed tuned because we won’t be at the beach for long and when we return the new editorial team promise to challenge, contradict, confirm, converse and convey with new energy.

With thanks

from behind the scenes

An enduring memory of my time with theRubicon highlights the internationalism of both this magazine and The Salvation Army,  an organization the site spends a lot of time dissecting. An article had stirred the ire of many and at one point we had furious debate between readers in six countries, on four continents. It was the ability of this journal to engage and connect people all over the world that kept me interested in the periodically dreary task of editing and posting.

And whenever I was tempted to wallow in the self-pitying muck of thankless tasks, I reminded myself of our copy editors - Lesley Carter and Maxwell Ryan. Without their vital but seldom noted work, our editorial standards would have been much harder to maintain. Thank you to them and to you…

Bramwell Ryan

Hold Fast Hope | Album review

reviewed by Jon Bukiewicz

H

old Fast Hope, an up-and-coming band out of Toronto, Canada, brings us a four song EP entitled Acoustic Ep. The songs on this release The Last, The Lost, The Least, A World That Bleeds, Until Love Comes Through and Never Let Go combine to create an engaging debut that is full of acoustic-based arrangements and challenging lyrics.

Listen to all the tracks on MySpace

With influences ranging from pop/rock bands like Coldplay to Dashboard Confessional and the emotional drive of worship teams like Hillsong United, Hold Fast Hope fill these songs with layers of acoustic guitars, upbeat drums and accents of rock-influenced piano.

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In other tongues

Maxwell Ryan reminiscences…

There was a language barrier, not that we meant it to be that way, but just that I didn’t know German and they didn’t know English - apart from a few tourist phrases on either side. But it didn’t matter, for in this gathering there was operating a powerful means to communication that transcended speech patterns.

But let me set the scene. It was in a town in Germany and an international leader was conducting the final session of officers’ councils. There were problems which could have become hindrances but didn’t. For one, there was translation for which the speaker had to remember that the time for every talk had to be doubled, or if there were two languages for translation, tripled. Then there was the natural fatigue that comes from having a group of active Salvation Army officers cooped up in a relatively small room for lengthy meetings.

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