The Married Man’s Rant

Counterpoint to the married women’s ghetto rant

In the most recent list of appointment changes in the Australia Eastern Territory, we broke new ground. For the first time ever, a married woman officer was appointed as Divisional Commander. Hallelujah! At last we are appointing people to these leadership positions based on their abilities, giftedness and appropriateness.

I welcome this change.

I am filled with a great sense of hope for other married women of great potential who would also be suitable for similar leadership roles in the future. The door has been opened on some great possibilities. I am particularly looking forward to the day when my own wife, who is a capable officer in her own right, may be given the opportunity to be appointed as Divisional Commander, Territorial Commander or, dare I say it, even General. May I go on record now as stating that if such a scenario were to occur then I would do my best in the role of International President of Women’s Ministries… (now let me remove my tongue from my cheek before I continue).
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Dazed and confused

Geoff Ryan on the demise of political parties

So, the U.S. Presidential election is finally over and America has its first black President. History has been made and remade (and reinvented) and the future has again become strange and uncharted territory.

One could choose any number of angles that can be considered “different” about this particular election:  the shattering of gender and racial “glass  ceilings”;  the unusually acrimonious tone of much of the partisan warfare;  the sheer public exhaustion generated by the attention-numbing length of the campaign;  the unconscionable amount of money spent by campaigners (collectively several billion dollars according to some estimates);  the fact that as a Senator, the new President had the most liberal voting record of any current U.S. senator and is well to the left of many Americans, yet people voted for him in droves - seemingly against their consciences and in contradiction of their principles;  the inordinate role played by celebrities (someone please tell me who elected Oprah to such a position of power and prominence?) and the media in helping Obama to become President; the pall cast over everything by the war in Iraq; the skittish fear generated by the market meltdown.

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Friendly Fire

Let’s avoid shooting SA employees

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f a person asked me whether he should become an adherent in The Salvation Army, I would say go for it; God is still using the Army to draw people unto himself.  If an adherent asked me whether she should become a soldier I would say by all means; I believe anyone ‘called’ to serve in the Army is called into a life of soldiership – a unique (though not exclusive) covenant with Jesus Christ.

If a soldier asked me whether he should become an officer I would give them the nod of approval; though we are all called to minister, both the Old and New Testament affirm the truth that God calls some to be set aside for fulltime ministry (vocational ministry, if you will).  If anyone (Christian or non-Christian) asked me if it would be worthwhile becoming a volunteer for the Army I would give an enthusiastic ‘yes’; we need these people to keep our Army on the march.  But if someone asked me whether they should work for the Army as an employee, a paid worker (not including officers), I would say with conviction, “ummm….maybe.”

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Election season: one

Let the games begin - the first in our series

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ith just over eight weeks to go in the interminable U.S. presidential campaign, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched the country into one of the shortest election campaigns possible.

On Sunday, September 7, 2008, Harper moved to dissolve Parliament and send the country to the polls. By law, Canadian federal elections must be no shorter than 36 days and election day must normally fall on a Monday.  This year, because Canadian Thanksgiving Day falls on a Monday, election day will be Tuesday, October 14th, and the election campaign will be exactly 38 days long.

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The welcome table

Heeding the call for social justice

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ono, the lead singer of U2, tells this story: “Before I had kids, I visited an Ethiopian camp/feeding station. A man came up to me with his little boy, a beautiful boy, and proud of his son, the man begged me to take his son home and through the translator he just repeated over and over, ‘You take him with you.  If he stays here, he will surely die.’ The rules of the camp are that you can’t take children home with you, you can’t adopt them. But in some strange way that day, I did take that little boy home with me. That interface with extreme poverty that day has driven me to call people of influence, power and wealth to account for what they are doing or not doing for their poor brothers and sisters around the world.”
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War in Georgia

John Norton with a backgrounder on new troubles

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ews headlines today are reporting of war between Russia and Georgia. My fear is that no one will pay attention as all eyes are on the opening days of the Olympics. I know something of Russia and Georgia. I lived from 1995 - 1998 in Georgia. I then lived from 1998 - 2001 in Russia.

The war is not surprising. It has been simmering to a slow boil since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Most everyone knows the story of the breakup of the Soviet Union but few know much about Georgia and its socio-political situation.

Comparing Russia to Georgia is to compare the elephant to the mouse, at least in size and strength. Russia has approximately 185 million people and is millions of square kilometres in size. Russia is an energy superpower and is currently going through something of a renaissance because of its oil and oil’s current prices. On the other hand, Georgia has just 4 to 5 million people and is about the size of the Canadian province of New Brunswick or the U.S. state of Maine. For another comparison, Austria is just a bit bigger than Georgia. In terms of economics, Georgia is poorer than Russia and still continues to struggle to produce enough electricity to keep the lights on each night.

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Officership: One Size Fits All?

Is it possible: choice & mission integrity?

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e spent some time with a man in our community who is retiring from the city school system after thirty years.  I’ve got to tell you, I was envious.  As he sat with us and articulated his convictions about how he needs to live as he goes forward through the next leg of his journey, I was overwhelmed by his passion and his honesty.  He outlined five vital areas where he has the opportunity to make changes and spoke specifically about how he plans to make those happen - including where he lives, how he will spend his time, and the amount and type of work he is going to do.

Envy aside, I’m fully aware that at least some of the changes that I would like to make in my life are in my control.  I can decide how much time to spend writing, and how much time to spend talking to Jesus.  I can decide to put the work aside and go for a walk, but there are other areas where I cannot decide, because certain options are forbidden to officers, (such as getting a part-time job to help my son with college), or are prescribed in a way to eliminate choice (where I am appointed, the requirement to live in the quarters).

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Lublink on leadership

… a responsibility for the entire church

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hristian leadership is always something of a hot-button topic.  It has become almost expected, for example, that every successful leader publish a book on leadership - as though he or she had single-handedly stumbled across the secret formula for success.  From church planters to mega-church leadership gurus to Christian social justice advocates, everyone has to list the five simple keys to success.  Buy the book, take the course and you’ll see your ministry as a leader blossom.  Right?  Unfortunately, life is never that easy.  Nor is any one leadership methodology so universal that it can function precisely the same way in every situation, regardless of context.

Biblically speaking, as well as experientially, it should be said that leadership is not about some secret codex of principles to be keenly followed in order for success to be achieved.  Nor is it about select individuals in the church using a series of secret scripted words, as though leading others were about casting a spell, getting all the secret steps just right.

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An Army led

… or an organization managed?

If you always do what you always did,
You always get what you always got.

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onald Reagan, while President of the United States, said that “status quo is Latin for the mess we’re in”. We cannot afford to be satisfied with the status quo. We must be open to deep change.

Over the past twenty-five years The Salvation Army internationally has made numerous changes organizationally, but without the hoped for and needed results. Take my home territory, Canada & Bermuda Territory, as an example. In 1980 when the Canadian population was 24,350,000 the Army had a membership of 99,127, an average of 4.1 per 100,000. Just over twenty years later, membership stood at 85,500, an average of only 2.8 per 100,000 given the rise in Canada’s population to approximately 30,750,000. This translates into a 32.5% per capita membership decline over the last twenty-five or so years. A similar tale can be told in virtually every Salvation Army territory in the west. What is at the root of this decline?

The problem goes deep into the fundamentals of our leadership base, steadily eroding our influence as a Movement, preventing us from accomplishing the mission to which we have been called, reiterated by General Gowans as “…to save souls, to grow saints and to serve suffering humanity”.

I believe that at the centre of our leadership crisis in The Salvation Army is the system of organizational leadership we deploy, namely an antiquated command and control model based on position and maintained at a distance. More and more organizational entities have moved to a networking model built around relationships, where power and authority are derived from being accessible.

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Holiness and politics

Political theology in The Salvation Army | Geoff Ryan

“When Christians seek to exclude politics from their thinking they are bound to distort their theologies, for politics is an inescapable aspect of human existence, with direct relevance to the divine/human encounter.” Philip Wogaman

“… I have often been told that The Salvation Army is ‘apolitical.’ At best, this means that we do not engage in partisan politics. At worst, it means that we are unwilling to engage prophetically with the world around us or to challenge the unequal distribution of wealth and power in our society. Unless we see the implications of our faith for society at large, we risk becoming, as one author described Wesleyan Methodists, “a religious order of political eunuchs” that teaches obedience to governing authorities, offers no political interference and would never countenance revolution.” Dani Shaw

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s I watched the documentary on the screen, a vague uneasiness crept over me. At first it was hard to define, but the more I thought about it in subsequent days, the more I gradually understood what it was that niggled at me, causing me such unease.

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