Crucified Lord or Conquering Saviour?

What story of salvation?

Images have undeniable power to evoke new ideas and emotions in people’s minds and hearts, both good and bad. Images work at a non-conscious level and so we need to remind ourselves that images can overpower words. And yet we seem to be inclined to underestimate the power of images in religion. In today’s society, does military language and imagery conjure thoughts of pride and heroism, or, with all the violence, and suffering in our world, does it accomplish the opposite?

If the purpose of The Salvation Army was the eternal spiritual salvation of the world, do we have the legitimate authority to pursue salvation by evangelistic violence. There is a need for a missionary action that puts aside the aggressiveness of our militaristic imagery and rhetoric in favour of being a movement of a non-violent evangelism.  What image is more readily brought to mind when we look at this poster?  I don’t think it portrays an image of a powerless suffering Christ who is brings peace and reconciliation. Rather it portrays a theology of militarism with “Christ as warlord”, forcefully leading powerful forces (eg bombers in the background and The Salvation Army below). It speaks more of a reversal of love in favour of a violent zeal and an  imperial salvation that will be attained and maintained by violence or the threat of violence. Where does that idea come from? And why is the language of evangelism so routinely linked to images of violence. Unfortunately, such words and images  long employed by the church and The Salvation Army in regards to mission and evangelism are increasingly causing offence to the very people with whom we are seeking to share the Gospel of peace and non-violence.

Mission images drawn from warfare, include such tiles as “Aggressive Christianity” (Catherine Booth), “Christ, the Aggressor” (Commissioner J. Hay) and “aggressive evangelism”, and statements like “We only desire to form and to keep up outside every denominational circle a body as large as we can of free-shooters, for the express purpose of assaulting with spiritual weapons those who, like ourselves, are without a church, but who, unlike us, are still in rebellion against God”. [1] Or the names that have been given to the War College Vancouver training sessions, “Death and Glory, Martyrs, Revolution, Holy_, Incendiary, War Cry”.[2] Some of these words and images are biblical; some are motivational tools from the secular arena that we use to inspire involvement and action. None are value free nor is violence ever redemptive.

Mission that proceeds out of a position of power or force is very different from mission that proceeds from a posture of humility. It inevitably affects the message of the gospel and distorts ministry. Therefore one must ask, how effective is this particular image? We need to accept the need to be sensitive in our language and to show some consideration for others and how they may perceive our words. We must have the courage to ask if, in our day and age, the military metaphor hinders or helps Christian mission?

It’s time we took a hard look at our somewhat ambivalent relationship between mission, evangelism, and violence, because we can no longer hold to any forms of “sacred violence” by merely spiritualize the terminology. Such an approach inevitably communicates imperial values that are at odds with Gospel. On this point especially, many of our efforts at evangelism do violence to the gospel and to the integrity of what we are attempting to do in the name of Christ. What is needed is an “evangelism from a non-violence perspective” which is centered in Jesus Christ whose gospel is counter-violent.

As mentioned above, the poster presents an imperial narrative of salvation that is a counter-narrative and saviour to that presented in the New Testament. Warfare language was not the motivational language of the New Testament for mission rather it was the language of peace and reconciliation. They shared Christ because they had experienced the love and grace of God, which led to worship and proclamation.  Moreover, the Jesus that was proclaimed is a saviour whose “Lordship over all creation is gained in a totally implausible way. It is not achieved through military victory and the resultant status and rank due to a conqueror. Rather, his Lordship is the result of subversively abandoning such status and rank in humble obedience (Philippians 2:5-11)”.[3] If we know Jesus Christ in the cross, then we should also know that his majesty is one that is only known through power-in-weakness. This saviour is part of a very different story than that which portrays Christ Jesus as warlord. In the light of Philippians 2 any representation of God and/or of Jesus Christ as an imperial god of violent, aggressive power has “nothing to do with the majesty or holiness of the triune God known in the weakness of the cross”.[4] If we fail to see this then we collapse into idolatry.

The consistent story of the New Testament is one of a God who loves even his enemies and of a Lord “who died for us” all (1 Thessalonians 5:10). As Richard Hayes rightly notes “there is not a syllable in the Pauline letters that can be cited in support of Christians employing violence”.[5] The inevitable corollary of this love is non-retaliation and non-violence on the one hand and a pro-active response of peacemaking on the other.

Although he called for “non-aggressive” evangelism, World Council of Churches General Secretary Rev. Samuel Kobia notes that there needs to be “a better theory and practice of non-aggressive or non-violent form of evangelism or proclamation.”[6] The task of evangelism is not simply saving individuals from hell for heaven, or of calling individuals to repentance and an individualistic struggle to be faithful to their confession of Jesus as Lord. Rather, it is calling individuals to repentance and entrance into the Kingdom community of God’s people here and now as a living foretaste of the coming and consummated Kingdom of God.

In other words, the primary concern of “evangelism from the non-violent” is the formation of disciple communities.  Christian evangelism, or so I want to argue, is no-violent in every way. The good news is, as Isaiah said, the good news of “peace.” But this peace is not only the content and substance of evangelism; it is its very form. Christian evangelism refuses every violent means of converting others to that peace, whether that violence is cultural, military, political, spiritual, or intellectual. Evangelism instead requires only the peaceable simplicity of an offer and an invitation to “come and see” (John 1:46). Thus in it evangelism the goal of the Christian community is to allow the life and Spirit of the God of peace, rather than the imperial spirit to flow through it.

Writer: Major Wayne Ennis has been an officer for 43 years. He has served as a Corps Officer and in  Education and Training.  In Singapore he was Training Principal and Executive Director of the Nursing Home and was also Training Principal in Papua New Guinea. He is currently Senior Lecturer at the Australian Southern Territory Training College. He is  married with three adult children and four grandchildren.

REFERENCES:

[1] George Scott Railton, HEATHEN ENGLAND, 1887,  p145. Quoted on http://www.armybarmy.com/blog.html

[2] http://www.thewarcollege.com/?page_id=249

[3] S. Keesmaat, Crucified Lord or Conquering Saviour: Whose Story of Salvation” in Horizons in Biblical Theology Vol.26 No 2 (December 2005)  76

[4] M. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009)  35

[5] R. Hayes, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996) 331

[6] S. Kobia, http://www.ucc.org/news/kobia-church-must-promote.html

A call to worship

Adam Couchman says we’ve got it all so wrong. 

B

y virtue of my present appointment I have had the opportunity to visit a few different corps throughout the territory I am in (Australia Eastern) to participate in and, at times, provide leadership for worship.  In the course of my travels I am seeing some disturbing trends and some of these are very concerning indeed. Firstly, a little history…

Many would be well aware of the so-called “Worship Wars” in which “contemporary” battled “traditional” and no one ended up winning; not even the compromiser of “blended” worship (the neutral Swiss in this battle). Following on the revival of the charismatic movement and the emphasis upon Church growth, the war cry of “Contemporary” was “New is good, Old is bad”. As a result, anything that was older than tomorrow, or beared even a striking resemblance to anything that had been used in the past, was thrown out because it no longer “worked” or was “relevant” (apparently) and the replacement of the “brand spanking new” was employed, often times with little or no more “effect” (insert “bums on seats”) than before…

You know the time I’m referring to… you don’t need me to explain it…

The big problem is that when we inserted the “new” often it was done uncritically. Churches looked at the big players like Willow Creek, or Saddleback, or Hillsong and simply tried to do what the latest technology in computers was capable of… “Plug and Play”. We bought into the latest software (new worship and programs) - unaware or uninformed that there was an incredible amount of training and skill required to operate it (e.g. contemporary worship) - inserted this wonder-working device into our own church and…

The Blue Screen of Death!

You know the one. When your halfway through some really important, difficult and time-consuming work and then it happens; your computer freezes and instead of displaying what was moments ago your (inevitably) unsaved work, you are now trying to decipher some completely foreign terminology spewed up from the innards of your PC in the form of white text on a blue screen… Computer failure!… the blue screen of death!

I have to be completely honest… I have been seeing this screen a lot lately. Not on my work computer, but on the faces and lives of people around the territory. As I travel around and participate in the “worship” that is being offered around the various corps, by and large (of course there are exceptions) people have forgotten how worship is meant to be. It’s become meaningless, unimportant, and ineffective. You can see it written all over people’s faces. A desperate nothingness mixed with complete boredom. In many cases people just turn up out of routine, compulsion, or because their child was not involved in their sport that particular day. 

This is incredibly sad for me…

This is an immensely complex problem that requires serious theological, Biblical and most of all pastoral thought and concern. The pastoral aspect was the one we forget the most on the battlefields of “brass” vs “guitar”. One of the main contributing factors, in my opinion, has been the rhetoric of “worship evangelism”.  What I mean by this is the desire to focus our weekly worship gathering on being primarily about presenting the gospel to those who have not heard it before. This saw the gathering change from “reverence” to “relevance”; from “exaltation” to “entertainment”; and from “holiness” to “helpfulness”. 

The huge problem here is that in conflating worship and evangelism into one event, we actually stopped doing both. The move towards more “entertaining” worship gave us some short-lived motivation to “bring people to church”. Why? So that they could be “evangelised”?Slowly but surely, we stopped evangelising in any other setting. We stopped sharing the gospel anywhere but in the gathering. At the same time, because our Sunday gathering became about the “seeker”, all we got fed was the “milk” of the gospel message over and over again. We stopped serving the “main meals” that Christians need, and just kept serving up the basic rations. People stopped evangelising, people stopped worshipping, programs stopped working… computer failure… Blue screen of death!

We have two important changes to make:

1. Firstly, our worship needs to be worship. I know worship is more than “an hour on Sunday” but I am deliberately referring here to our corporate and weekly gathering. This event is about joining with the Spirit of God as he draws us, through the Son, into fellowship with the Father and with one another. Funnily enough, I suspect that if we get this right we might just become attractive to those who are not a part of that gathering. Note I am not referring to getting the “music” right, or the “PowerPoint” or even the “message”. I’m talking about getting the “worshipping together to and in the Triune God” right. “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32)… It may also become evangelistic, but as a secondary outcome of our primary purpose here - worship.

2. Secondly, our evangelism needs to be evangelism. We need to get well and truly past this concept that “bringing people to church on Sunday” is the be all and end all of evangelism. The results of that approach are obvious - it becomes just about those “bums on seats”, and evangelism becomes the sole responsibility then of the preacher. This can lead to the preacher becoming incredibly guilt ridden when “results” (again, “bums on seats”) don’t occur. How much more effective could we be if all Christians were engaged in evangelism for every one of the 168 hours available to them in any one week?

While I’m at it, we also need to get over the obsession with “friendship evangelism”. If I’m to be perfectly honest, I find it much easier to share “resurrected life in Christ” with a stranger than my closest friends and family. That may just be an excuse, but subconsciously I guess there’s more “on the line” if the relationship goes sour as a result. So, please, you evangelise my friends, and I’ll evangelise yours. Together, we might just evangelise the world. While we’re at it, let’s “befriend those who have no friends”… Now where have I heard that phrase before. Oh, that’s right … My Officer’s covenant.

I recognise the enormity of this challenge. What I am talking about is a complete “reboot” of our worship. Perhaps even a “rebuild” (if I may be permitted to stretch that computer metaphor just a little bit further). The starting point in this task, I suggest, is to join with the disciples in Luke 11:1 and plead with the Lord to “teach us how to pray”. This may mean learning once again to pattern our worship around the Lord’s Prayer; allowing the worship words of Christ to become our own once again. This kind of worship can only occur in Spirit and in truth (John 4:23). The Spirit, who intercedes on our behalf (Romans 8:26) even when we don’t even know how to pray (all the symptoms seem to suggest that we don’t), brings us by our resurrected and ascended mediator Jesus Christ (1 Tim 2:5) into the very throne room of God the Father, who is actively seeking worshippers of this kind (John 4:23).

“Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16).

My heartfelt desire is that our worship will truly be worship and our evangelism truly will be evangelism. God help us in this task. “Lord, teach us how to pray”.

For the glory of the Triune God and for the purpose of his kingdom, may it be so.

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.

Enlightenment Heritage

D

uring the Age of Enlightenment (mid-18th to early 20th century) a process known as higher criticism was becoming very popular in Europe. The major emphasis of this age was to state that reason is the primary basis of authority in the world. In keeping with the theme of the Age of Enlightenment, higher criticism asserts that the Bible is a collection of writings which were put together with human motives. 

The Age of Reason or Age of Enlightenment brought with it the primordial question: Did God really say that? It is no surprise that this question should be asked. After all, it is the very question that was used to instill doubt upon God’s Word on the very first people, Adam and Eve. “Did God really say?” (Genesis 3:1b).

The basic root of higher criticism is antisupernaturalism. Those who doubt that God’s Word is true have great difficulty with accepting the existence of supernatural activity, and therefore work diligently to explain away the miracles and spiritual aspects of the biblical text. The intent of higher critics is to state that the supernatural events of the Bible are nothing more than natural phenomena which were not understood by the less informed people of the ancient world.

This chronological arrogance has allowed many modern scholars to spread their misunderstandings of Ancient Near Eastern Texts with confidence, claiming that miracles and spiritual realms are accepted only by those of lower intellect.

Our world is filled with many mysteries. To believe that what we see is all that exists would be the equivalent of thinking that the world is flat. I find it interesting that the more we learn the less in tune with the spiritual realm we become. It would seem that ancient people were more sensitive to the spiritual realms of the cosmos than most of us in this current age of higher learning.

I have no doubt that the first higher critic is still using its ancient strategy to cast doubt upon the Word of God. And enlightenment fundamentalism makes us every bit as vulnerable as Adam and Eve.

Be a blessing,
Johnny

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.

A word to the cadets (and everyone else!) #2

Major Harold Hill(R) was asked to address the graduating cadets in New Zealand last December. 

This is the second part of his sagely advice.

P

 rime Minister Keith Holyoake used to tell first-term MP’s, “For the first three years, breathe through your nose.” Or as James put it, “Be slow to speak”.  

We need to sort out our own stuff first. Jesus said something similar about specks and planks in the eye. You’ve been fortunate in being exposed to the 12-Step process in College, and if you’ve understood it you will know that this is a life-long journey. Holiness is not just a oncer.

Get a supervisor, and be honest with him or her. If they’re not keeping you accountable, get someone else who will. For example, when you’ve got an issue with someone, they should help you look at it through that other person’s eyes rather than join you in bagging them. They need to be able to hold a mirror up to  your blind spots.

Supervision is also to help you survive and thrive in ministry. Obedience to God does not mean that everything will go well and smoothly. It won’t. When it doesn’t, we need to examine our own responsibility and resist blaming others. But don’t wear what isn’t your stuff.

A word from Lt. Colonel Lawrence Weggery: “Be nice to people on your way up; you may meet them again on your way back down.”

A word from my father : “At the end of the day, the only part of our work that may endure is what we have built into the lives of others.”

Now that may have seemed an incredibly random rag-bag of advice. I hope it all falls into the category of how what you have learned might be transferred into your ministry. If I were to offer one heading under which it might all fall, that would be “Servant Leadership”. Unfortunately the term has become a cliché; the sharp edges have worn off clichés, so they cease to cause us the delight or discomfort they should. All I can say is that it is a great privilege to wear the red on our shoulder; we need to keep it on our shoulders and don’t let it go to our heads. It doesn’t wear so well there.

One of the heroes of my youth was Commissioner A.J. Gilliard. Before coming to New Zealand he’d been Principal of the International College for Officers, in London. One day a Very Important Officer arrived for a session and rang the door bell, which was opened by a little man in a waistcoat. “Welcome to the Cedars, Major. May I show you to your room?” “Yes” - indicated very large suitcase - “My bag.” So the little man picked up the suitcase and humped it up the stairs and settled the Major in his room. That evening when the session first gathered together, the Very Important Officer met the little man again - this time wearing his Commissioner’s uniform. I guess the Major never forgot the lesson in servanthood.

And lastly, I am to encourage you to keep on studying and developing your skills in the years ahead.

For some of you that will mean the pursuit of further formal qualifications. If you take that opportunity, some of the structure and discipline required is built in to the course. Even if you don’t commit to formal courses, you still need to go on deepening your knowledge and upgrading your skills and you will need to establish your own structures and keep your own disciplines to do that. And, as in College, you will have the challenge and opportunity of combining learning with its practical application from week to week.

General Larsson used to quote a leader who said he could tell what year an officer’s mind had died by looking at his bookshelf. Let’s not go there; I suppose now we have to look at his computer…. I read of a famous long-distance runner being asked whether runners should breathe through the nose or the mouth. He replied, “Through the nose, through the mouth, through the ears if you can!” Likewise, go on studying and developing your skills, any way you can!

Put these things into practice, devote yourself to them, so that all may see your progress. Pay close attention to yourself and your teaching; continue in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.            1 Tim. 4:15-16

 Writer: Harold Hill is a happily retired Salvation Army officer in New Zealand, happily married to Pat, blessed with two grown-up, married daughters and a fairly recent grand-daughter, happily occupied with research into the relationship between the Salvation Army and the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements, irregular writing, speaking and teaching engagements, and the garden. 

A word to the cadets (and everyone else!) #1

Major Harold Hill(R) was asked to address the graduating cadets in New Zealand last December. 

This is the first part of his sagely advice.

A

bout ten years ago I was involved in a seminar in Zimbabwe for extension training officers from the various African territories. One of the speakers was the then Financial Secretary for Zimbabwe, Amos Makina, now IS for Africa. He said he always recommended three rules to officers: (1) preach the Word; (2) visit the people; (3) always get a receipt. I propose to hang at least some of my remarks on these three points.

(1) Preach the Word

Our one reason for standing up in front of people, and all we have to offer them, is the Word of God. If the Bible doesn’t excite us, we need to ask God for that to happen.

There is a line from Milton which says that “the hungry sheep look up and are not fed.”

Last year I heard one of my contemporaries, a long-time and hugely respected local officer, expressing sadness that for much of his soldiership he had had to check his brain in at the door of the Citadel. He wasn’t being arrogant - he’s not like that. Just sad. One of the reasons why your course at Booth College may have seemed at times overly academic for people who only wanted to get on with saving and serving the world is that the faithfulness of such Salvationists deserves better.

The College has done what it could to ensure that you have the resources and habits of study by which you might firstly feed your own spirit and secondly feed your people.

This isn’t a homiletics lecture, but personally I recommend six guiding principles:

(1) KISS. Keep it simple. (That doesn’t mean dumbed down; we don’t want pap!).

(2) As a basic exegetical principle, ask, what did this text mean then, and how does it apply to us today.

(3) Remember you might be wrong. It’s OK to say “I don’t know.”

(4) Don’t say, “You”. Say, “We”.

(5) Aim to uplift people; don’t weigh them down with guilt. They have enough.

(6) Know when to stop. The rule of General Coutts was that if you can’t say it in 10 minutes, you probably can’t say it at all!           

(2) Visit the People

One of the heresies we’ve picked up from the Church Growth movement is the notion that the successful officer is no longer a shepherd but has become a rancher, a chief executive, who can leave the care of individuals to his or her paid staff or volunteer pastoral assistants.  There is a perfectly respectable Salvation Army tradition of delegated pastoral care, going back to the Ward System and visitation sergeants of the early days, but it was never envisaged that officers might sit at their computer and do the paperwork all week while others got on with the people. Actually, that applies to all fields of work and all the way up the chain of command.

Major X, long gone to heaven, was by all accounts a pretty disastrous preacher, but his Corps people loved him. Why? Because he’d had his feet under their kitchen table and they knew he cared about them. (That isn’t to contradict the need for good preaching - sixty-five years ago Major X didn’t have the opportunities or resources that cadets have today.)

People soon discover whether we genuinely care about them or simply regard them as a means to our end, as cannon-fodder. The Corps (or Centre) exists for the people; not the people for the Corps or Centre. And certainly not for the greater glory of the officer. The fact is that people do not have jobs and lives in the world in order to support themselves  for Corps activities; they have the corps to help support them for life at the sharp edge in the world. One of the dangers of clericalisation, of an officer-centred Army, is that this order of priorities is overlooked. We need to get that right.

I know it’s not easy to organise - I struggled with this one too - but listening to people during the week helps earn the credibility needed to speak to them on Sunday. Or whenever…  

(3) Always get a Receipt

That financial secretary, the then Lt. Colonel Makina, said that on his way to that meeting he had stopped for petrol. When he’d asked the service station attendant for a receipt, he’d been asked, “How much do you want the receipt made out for?”

In New Zealand thank God corruption is less endemic (maybe?) and perhaps the Army has an accounting system sufficiently robust to keep us honest anyway. But the fact remains that there are still three areas of weakness chiefly capable of bringing a ministry down in flames, commonly summarised as “money, sex and power”.  

All three can be infinitely more subtle than we might expect. Leaving aside sex and power for the moment, I suspect that for people in ministry these days the temptation of money often comes in the guise of what I might call a “culture of entitlement”, since that is a weakness in our society. Officers these days are amazingly well provided for; our housing, allowances and benefits make us better off than a large number of our people. But we can perversely feel that all this and more is simply what we are owed. It’s not. The very assumption sours ministry. We need to get real about this. Long-time New Zealand missionary to Africa, Brigadier Lavinia Benson, once told me, “Never expect gratitude.” I was shocked - I thought she meant that people were ungrateful. But it was the expectation that was the problem. As you’ve learned in the 12 Steps, an expectation is a resentment under construction.  George Macdonald said, “If it be things that get you, it doesn’t matter whether they are things you have or things you don’t have!”

So much for Colonel Makina’s three point talk. (1) Preach the Word; (2) visit the people; (3) always get a receipt. I don’t claim I’ve always lived up to the things I’ve just suggested. I have not. They’re the distillation of years of trial and error. Some things I’ve learned through not doing them and then paying for my mistake. You don’t need to learn from your mistakes if you can learn from those of us who have already made them.

Writer: Harold Hill is a happily retired Salvation Army officer in New Zealand, happily married to Pat, blessed with two grown-up, married daughters and a fairly recent grand-daughter, happily occupied with research into the relationship between the Salvation Army and the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements, irregular writing, speaking and teaching engagements, and the garden.

Which Flavour?

 Mmmm … Love tastes great says Wayne Rumsby

Who knew that there were so many flavours of Christianity? Growing up I was taught that there were really two, us and them. Then as a teen I became aware that the others could be divided into a few groups like Pagan Catholic, Lost Protestant, Flaming Baptist (different than the LP’s, hell bent), and so on. It wasn’t until I was in my mid thirties when someone asked me if I was a Calvinist or an Aminianist. I was busy trying to develop my career and raise my kids, I had no idea and was pretty sure I didn’t care. Then it occurred to me, there are a lot of different groups all vying for that spot at the center of the truth stage. If it was confusing to me who grew up with my own collection of Bibles (gifts from grandparents), imagine the rest of the world. 

Since that time I have traded in my career as a graphic artist for that of an inner city missionary. Today I walk with people who dropped out of school in grade three to become runners for their drug dealing uncles. I often wonder how they know who their uncles are because in many cases they have no idea who their fathers are. Mother’s brother I suppose, because they all know who their mama is. Now in their mid-life, with a criminal record that fills a filing cabinet, and a trail of sadness, they’re searching for a better way. Some turn to the church, but rarely through the front door. Most come through the side door, the soup kitchen, or the drop-in. They often connect worship services with early childhood memories, before the trauma. Some connect it to other bits and pieces of religious experiences and fashion their own theology. For many, church is like the ice cream store that boasts so many flavours. Like a child, they gaze wide-eyed through the frosty glass at the tubs of promises: health, wealth, and a new identity. For many who are illiterate, the colourful label is more helpful than the words. They watch the preachers on TV who can make cripples walk, just like Jesus did. They hear about denominations that offer opportunities to make right the many wrongs they have committed. Like the kid in the ice cream shop who can’t make up his mind, they order a mix by embracing a little of everything.

Today I still wrestle with who’s got it right and whose got it wrong. The difference I suppose is that for some of us with a little more training, our choices are being made based on the little label on the back side of the tub. This is the label that is in tiny black print that is so condensed that you can hardly read it. There, the twelve letter words tell us exactly what the promises are made of. However, unless you are a theologian you probably don’t know what it really means, so you rely on other peoples explanations. But who to listen to. Often the people who are explaining the pros and cons of the various choices, have a little fine print label on their backsides too. More twelve letter words that stand for obscure theological constructs that you’ve never heard of. You turn to someone else for a further explanation. This leads to more tiny labels and so on and so on. 

Recently I had coffee with a friend who leans to the right.  He warned me about the dangers of the emergent church movement. I wasn’t very familiar with the movement, but when he started naming names I realized that I had read books by most of them. These are the people who I’ve turned to for help me with the label reading and now I’m told that they contain nasty ingredients with negative side effects, like polyethylene glycol. My friend went on to tell me all kinds of terrible things about what these guys have added or taken away from the recipe. I went back to the books and reread some of this stuff and it still didn’t set off alarm bells for me. Then I wondered if my friend had ever read any of these authors himself.

Another friend, this one left leaning, gave me some podcasts from a Word/Faith preacher. Now I didn’t need the small print to know that this was a radically different flavour. I listened anyway. He went on and on about raising people from the dead and praying with authority and talking to your headache instead of talking about it. After a taste I knew there were some extra ingredients in his recipe. 

What still troubles me is that some of the contents on the small print label are the same for all the flavours. All or most of the tubs in the freezer marked Christian have common ingredients. They all say, “Jesus”, even the Mormons. Most say there is “no other name by which we are saved” (maybe not the Mormons). Some add, and some take away. It’s all important to pay attention to, but what about my street friends? I guarantee that they don’t even read what’s in the can of beans that they’re dumping on their hot dogs. And, let’s face it, nobody wants to know what the hot dogs are made of. 

I’m offering more questions than answers, because in the end this blog is not about who has it right and who doesn’t. It’s about the girl who is having trouble accepting the Gospel of Grace because she murdered her unborn baby with a coat hanger (having been raped be her own father). She has trouble with the idea of God as Father, who so loved her that He gave His only Son… She has trouble with big words like ‘forgiveness” and ‘propitiation’. She can’t imagine a sacrifice that is adequate to cover her sins. She can’t read the fine print, while we’re all too busy arguing about it whether Hell is a place or a condition.  

How do we get back to that single flavour of ice cream that my Grampa churned on the front porch on Sunday afternoons? I was very young but I remember asking what was in it. He would just wink and say, “Love”. There were no labels required, and once we’d tasted the love, not very many questions either.

Writer: Wayne Rumsby is at least a fourth generation follower of Jesus Christ. In his late 30’s Wayne responded to an invitation to visit an inner city mission in the heart of Toronto. At the time he was working as a graphic designer. It wasn’t long before he left his job in the fast paced ad business, in the glass towers, to become a full time missionary on the streets and in the alleys. The focus of his mission was to help the marginalized discover God through meaningful work. For most of the past decade Wayne was helping people discover who God had created them to be, by teaching them to make beautiful furniture in a woodworking shop. Today Wayne and his wife Linda are working with the team at 614 Regent Park with the very same vision, helping people discover who God has created them to be, and more.  

ORDINATION #7 - Just ordain everyone!

Grant Sandercock-Brown on belief, the role of officers and ordination

Ihave a question for fellow Rubiconers: How can it be that people I know and respect as Salvation Army officers see themselves as ordained clergy, somehow different to lay soldiers, when I do not?

The view that an officer’s commissioning produces some ontological change in them is not one I share. And to me, this is not merely an academic question. Speaking with one voice on this issue is vital to our effective mission, maybe even our future. There is something rotten in the state of ministry (a Shakespearian paraphrase, but you knew that) - ordained and lay ministry is the symptom, and we need to fix it.

Harold Hill has literally written the book on leadership in the Salvation Army. It is called, unsurprisingly, Leadership in the Salvation Army. The sting, however, is in the subtitle: A case study in clericalisation. Essentially, it is the story of how a movement full of signed-up, full-on missioners became a church, and its officers, originally the ministers to the ministers, became clergy.

Near the end of his book, Harold has posited three possible views on clergy and laity:
1) There are priests/clerics/people in orders in the church, with a status distinct from that of the laity, but we do not have them in the Salvation Army.
2) There are priests/clerics/people in orders in the church and we do have them as officers in the Salvation Army.
3) There are no priests/clerics/orders in the church, and the Salvation Army does not aspire to any.

I suspect that many of my officer friends hold to the second position. I hold to the third.

We need to remember that the Church, throughout its history, has built extraordinary structures on a very small amount of biblical material. The two New Testament examples of people being prayed for and having hands laid on them in some sort of ordination for a particular job are found in Acts 6:6 and Acts 13:3. It’s a pretty simple event, and one would think that it would be impossible to build elaborate ideas of ordained ministry and apostolic succession on it, but build them the church has.

As to the word “ordained”, it appears rarely in Scripture and is a translation for a number of Greek words, none of which carry the meaning of initiation into a new caste or ontological change (”I am different now that I am an officer”). And of course, the very term “lay Salvationist” has no basis in Scripture. “Laos,” the word from which laity is derived, simply means “the people.” I reject any notion that there are “lay” Salvationists and “clergy” Salvationists.

Based on the New Testament record, it would appear that the Salvation Army commissioning ceremony in vogue until 1978 was a pretty biblical concept. In the very first commissioning ceremony in the church, recorded in Acts 6, the brothers choose seven men and appointed them to a particular ministry, and the apostles put their hands on them and prayed. That is all. There is no promise of a new status in the church, no hint that they are now priests and different to the people they are appointed to serve.

I am not trying to bring officership down. I am not saying that officers are not the equal of ministers in the other churches. In fact, quite the opposite. Remember, I hold to Hill’s third position. All believers are equal in status; all are called to mission and ministry. The whole concept of clergy and laity as it exists in many churches today owes far more to church tradition than to the New Testament record. I can, with biblical warrant, defend our view of the ministry of all believers. The ground is level at the foot of the cross.

Milton said: “New presbyter is just old priest writ large.” The Reformation had supposedly done away with the power of the priests, had recovered the practice of the “priesthood of all believers.” But before long, even though shorn of popish practices, the new pastor was often indistinguishable from the old priest. My fear is that our longing to see ourselves as ordained ministers of the Church of the Salvation Army has a great deal to do with settling back down to security, status, power and prestige and very little to do with mission and practice as we find it in the New Testament. Perhaps I am wrong.

But even if I am wrong, the disastrous effect on mission is a burning issue for me. I honestly think that unless we can recover in some significant way our founding practice of the ministry of all believers; if our officers go on desiring to be ordained clergy (and acting like ordained clergy), the current rapid decline in our congregational life, at least in the West, will only pick up speed.  Without an underpinning concept of all Salvationists engaged in mission and engaging the world, our missional structures become mere bureaucracy; uniform becomes dress-up clothes for worship, and - the killer - all ministry is done by officers.

Many soldiers already see corps officers as Captain-Priests. Pastoral care only counts if it is done by the officers; officers must officiate at all ceremonies; if (God forbid) a drunk wanders into the hall, you need to summon the officer; soldiers no longer pray in worship - they leave it to the professional; evangelism is the Captain’s job. We were a movement that was once egalitarian in mission and service, hierarchical in organisation. We are now elitist in mission and service and bureaucratic in organisation. That is not a change for the better.

Phil Needham wrote on the theology of officership some time ago and concluded that officership was best understood as a function, that any difference between a soldier and an officer was one of role and responsibility, not status. I believe he is correct. And while that might sound a little mundane, the truth is that while officership may mean a great deal to an individual personally and spiritually, its great virtue is its convenience to the Army’s mission. That is, it is necessary and useful to have a pool of Salvationists who have given up secular employment to commit themselves to ministry in the movement full-time, Salvationists who are able to go wherever they are sent. It is a glorious, sacrificial and a God-honouring convenience, but a convenience nonetheless.

I am not against ordination. I think it’s nice. And in fact, the way we can reclaim the concept is to ordain more. By which I mean ordaining everybody who is involved in ministry. Ordain your singers; ordain your local officers, youth workers, guitarists, Junior Soldier sergeants, receptionists. Define their roles, get them up in front of their community, commission them and pray for them.  If we ordained everybody possible for their ministry, we would get the point.

I love being an officer. It is not my intention to in any way belittle officership. Signing my covenant was a sacred moment for me. The officer’s covenant is a sacrificial and meaningful one. But I have honestly never thought it conferred any special spiritual status on me, brought about ontological change, made me one of a priestly caste. We must reject such a view and we must reclaim the practice of the ministry of all believers. Our cause is too urgent to do otherwise.

I say “we,” but of course all of this is merely my story. I believe we need to get this right, to rediscover mission as the responsibility of all Salvationists. But, as I have discovered, I cannot presume to speak with any certainty on what “we believe.” The tragedy is, at least in seeking resolution on vital issues such as these, that I’m pretty sure no one else does either.

Writer: Captain Grant Sandercock-Brown is a corps officer at Chatswood Corps in Sydney, Australia. He was a secondary school music teacher for 10 years and loves theology, rugby and golf. His first book From a Middle Aged Dad to a Teen Aged daughter has just been published. His claim to fame is that as a singing telegram man he once sang to Elton John. He and his wife, Sharon, have three children.

ORDINATION #3 - Ordained to / for what? (John Harrison)

  What much of the wider church believes about ORDINATION by John Harrison

My father, an evangelical Presbyterian, ordained in 1954, brought me up to believe in the priesthood of all believers. Ironically. And while there are some aspects of faith and order I don’t fully understand, the priesthood of all believers is one thing I do get.

My extensive reading of the history of the church across the centuries leads me to the conclusion that things went downhill for the Church every time the priesthood of all believers was betrayed by the establishment of a separate priestly class. That does not mean things went pear-shaped when individuals and groups were set aside or commissioned for special tasks, such as the deacons in Acts 6.1, or the disciples in Mark 6.1, but when a group of people, invariably men, decided the rest of us needed a mediator between ourselves and God, and self select to perform that function while telling us it was “the call of God” and that Ordination was a pre-requisite to heeding that call.

The monopoly position of the priestly caste was one fatal flaws of pre-Messianic Judaism, and since then history has repeated itself. However, many of the great revivals of Christianity were sparked by the unordained and unannointed. Or were they?

The tradition from which I come has only two sacraments: Baptism and Holy Communion. No sacrament of ordination to the ministry, though some traditions do have ordination as a sacrament.

I have also been brought up to believe that it is that authentic celebration of the two sacraments instituted by Jesus himself that define a church - an ecclesia. So where does ordination come in? The view I take is that Baptism - which orthodoxy and the Creeds declare to be a singular event - is also the sacrament of ordination. The place where God through His grace, draws us into a relationship with him, and at the same time commissions, and marks, us for ministry. For infants, the realization of this commission takes place as we mature, “and grow in the love and admonition of the Lord” and is signified in our Confirmation. (Again, not a sacrament in my tradition).

 … where does Ordination fit in? It doesn’t.

Which brings us back to the priesthood of all believers. If Baptism is the Sacrament of Ordination, the calling to ministry empowered by the Holy Spirit, where does Ordination fit in? It doesn’t. Unless, of course, there is a need to create and distinguish a priestly caste, separate from all other believers, who have special functions which are to ….”proclaim the good news, heal the sick and cast out demons”? Hang on, is that not the responsibility of all believers? Because if it is not, what is?  Oh yes, all believers are to ….”proclaim the good news, heal the sick and cast out demons”. Uh huh.

So why are some people who do that “ordained” apart from their Baptism to do that, and some not? Unless ordination is simply an admission ceremony for an exclusive club of those who feel the need for a little extra, a spiritual top up, to get them going in ministry? The rest of us just soldier on with our Baptism certificates in our back pocket repeatedly hearing and answering the call to ministry but never hearing the call to Ordination. Who among us are the truly deaf?

 John Harrison “went forward” as a teenager at the 1968 Billy Graham Crusade in Brisbane, and was involved in the Evangelical Union at university. From 1979 he worked for the Australian Inland Mission - founded by Flynn of the Inland, and subsequently as communication director for the Uniting Church Queensland Synod from 1981 to 1990. He has written a number of books on Christianity in Australia , and today he is a lecturer in the School of Journalism & Communication at the University of Queensland.

ORDINATION #2 - Level Ground (Craig Campbell)

 It’s all level ground before the cross.

In the southern hemisphere it is the ‘Commissioning’ season in The Salvation Army, when Cadets are ‘Commissioned and Ordained’.  Now there are two related errors that can be made as blue epaulettes are made red.

The first error is to believe that this makes no difference in the minds and hearts of those we serve. Geoff Ryan (Ordination #1) is correct when he says: ” It is a ‘role’ and not a ’status’ thing …”. However, it seems that people actually want a priest, a bridge between themselves and God.  God, the “mysterium tremendum”, is simply too scary for people to come too close, and from the time of Moses (and before) we have wanted a go-between.  Thus we elevate others to be the priest. We ordain, whether formally or not.  The body of people effectively ordains whether we agree or not.  And it is a mistake to not recognise this.  People do expect more.

The second error is the larger error. This is when those ordained (formally or informally) actually come to believe that they are elevated, substantially different, of a higher essence, indelibly marked.  And the more senior in rank, the ‘more’ ordained! And over time, it seems, this error asserts itself more deeply and widely.

The ordaining of officers was announced by General Arnold Brown as a pragmatic response to the recognition of officers as clergy in parts of the world such as South America, and no doubt this was an important consideration. It is noteworthy that at the same time the person eligible for election as General of The Salvation Army was confined to those who came from officer ranks.  Soldiers were no longer eligible to be General.  The assumptions of higher status for those ordained began to be written into Regulations. 

… a desire to protect the privileges of ordination.

A new style of Lieutenancy in recent years brought a large influx of high quality people into ministry and mission within the Australia Southern Territory as ‘non commissioned’ officers.  I suspect that the rapid retreat from this accessible apprenticeship scheme by IHQ was largely driven by a desire to protect the privileges of ordination.

Believing in the ordination of officers as elevation in status leads to many problems. Firstly the original shape and dynamic of the Movement is based in the priesthood of all believers. Ordination as elevation inexorably robs soldiers of their ministry and mission.

… The Army becomes what officers can manage.

In a related way ‘ownership’ of The Salvation Army transfers to officers, and increasingly soldiers ‘leave them to it’.  The Army becomes what officers can manage.

A third problem is the difficult interface between officers and employees. Officers sometimes object to being managed by employees. Some views of ordination imply non-officer service as less worthy, refusing to value the skills and capacities of the non-ordained.

 …  unaccountable power

However the most profound problem arising from elevation through ordination, and exclusive ownership of the Movement by officers, emerges in the exercise of unaccountable power. The Army’s structure concentrates enormous power in the hands of very few officers at the various levels of organisation.  Checks and balances are not robust, often non-existent. Healthy exercise of power then relies on the goodness of those in power. This leaves room for a ‘dark side’ within the Army that is rarely named and far less reflected upon.  This though is a topic in its own right, for another time.

How do we manage the errors that arise around the problematic issues of ordination? Name the issues, think and talk about them, and look to the one who best reveals God to us, who took the bowl and towel of functional service, who laid aside the privileges of Divinity. 

Remember, it’s all level ground before the cross.

 Writer: Married to Laurel and with two adult daughters, Dr Craig Campbell was for 27 years a Salvation Army officer. During this time he completed Doctoral studies, with a research project Emerging Images of Mission in The Salvation Army.  Prior to officership Craig practised as a civil engineer, and over the last four years has managed a youth service that offers an individualised and educational response with disengaged youth.

ORDINATION #1 - Every soldier a Missionary (Geoff Ryan)

“The Founder marched us out of the Church and into the World - and I’m not going to march us back in.”  (General Eva Burrows)

Major religious revivals and cutting edge churches usually exhibit certain commonalities, regardless of the era or context. One of these is a renewed commitment to the ‘priesthood of all believers’, a New Testament imperative that seems constantly in tension with established church structure. From the early house churches of Acts, to the emergence of the Franciscan order, the Waldenses, Quakers, Puritans, Moravians, Primitive Methodists, the Salvationists up to present-gurus such as Peter Wagner and Rick Warren and others  (for a quick survey of reform movements throughout church history, I would suggest ‘First Called Christians: A Study in Names’, by Gustave Isely, SP&S 1952). The idea is the common dignity, calling and privilege of all Christians before God. “Every shoemaker can be a priest of God, and stick to his own last while he does it’, said Luther. Yet, ‘no single Church has been able to express in its worship, work and witness, the full richness of this doctrine.’ (C. Eastwood).

‘In the early Church, decision making was neither highly structured nor done in isolation. It involved the community. As time went on and the priesthood developed, however, diversity of gifts was depreciated. The clergy were seen to be concerned with the spiritual, the laity with the secular. Hence clerical power and privilege expanded. The result was a considerable diminuation of lay participation in the life and decision making of the church. From time to time in the history of the church, movements such as lay monasticism and the Protestant reformation have made attemnpts to restore the laity to their rightful place, but the dilemma is still with us.”     (Community in Mission, Phil Needham, P. 16)

The Salvation Army developed a priesthood, in any case, through default more than anything else I believe, although concrete steps were eventually taken to formalize popular perception and practice. In truth, an officer is a Christian who has entered a covenant relationship with God in submission to the spiritual authority of The Salvation Army and its structural constraints as a means to release him or her from the distractions of daily life in order to invest completely in mission. It is a ‘role’ and not a ’status’ thing, more pragmatic in nature than anything else.

The impulse to spiritualize things is strong, however, and often the beginning of many of our problems. In spiritualizing - or overspiritualizing - things it becomes much easier to remove them from the realm of reality and thus, trivialize them into impotence. Call it the ‘Monty Python syndrome’.

… if there is someone standing up front getting paid to do it all, why not let them?

As the role and importance of the officer increased, conversely the involvement and commitment of soldiers - the laity - decreased. This cuts both ways, though some fault may lie with the organization that exalted the ‘office ‘of the officer disproportionate to its function thereby gradually disempowering the soldiery. The other side is that this agreement actually suited many, and maybe eventually the majority, of the soldiery (ever heard of the 80/20 principle?). The urge to  compartmentalize religion along with other facets of our lives is almost irresistable, and besides, if there is someone standing up front getting paid to do it all, why not let them? In todays Army, soldiership is by and large church membership rather than a commitment to being a missionary, with the corps functioning as a mission centre.

Yet the profound beauty of early-day Army operations was that anyone and everyone could and did do everything that eventually came to be regarded as the exclusive domain - if not sacred obligation - of the officer. That’s why we had ’soldiers’ as opposed to ‘members’ - we were enshrining within our membership structure an expectation of mission involvement.

 ’…the description of membership as soldiership means that there is no room for passive membership. In this sense, ’soldier’ is a better word than ‘member’. Members can be passive or active; they may do no more than belong on the rolls. Soldiers cannot only belong; they are either fighting or maintaining readiness for battle - otherwise, they are not really soldiers. To put it differently, the objectives of a society or club are usually primarily internal; the objectives of an army are primarily external. Hence, the Church’s use of the military metaphor is symbolic of its external purpose: mission in the world.’ (Community in Mission, Phil Needham, P. 55)

Most early-day corps were opened by soldiers with the officer being sent in later. This is still often the case in the areas of most intense Salvationist warfare (Africa and Asia). It was my experience in the Russia. Of the corps opened in the Southern Region (Division) during my time as Regional Officer, all five were pioneered by soldiers and four of these are still run by soldiers.

As the ‘Christian Mission’ mindset waned and we grew up and became a church, we took on characteristics of the churches around us. As generational Salvationists were born and grew up in the ranks, as persecution turned into acceptance, respectability and even emulation we adjusted accordingly. The models we had around us were churches and we gradually minimized the distinctives that distanced us from our cousins. As a prophetic movement, we slowly took on board priestly trappings, hiked in from the  hills to the sanctuary of the Temple and found that we rather liked it there. The Army’s hierarchal structure is actually closer to the Roman Catholic church than to most of the Protestant congregational models, but we were already tinkering with various aspects of our missional structure, bit by bit ending up with a our present day incarnation - a hybrid that is neither fish nor fowl, neither Army nor church, order nor denomination.  No less confusing for our cousins than for us.

 … we created static congregations and installed our ‘priests’

The mission emphasis shifted from ’sending them out’ to ‘bringing them in’ - we built Temples, we invested in equipment, we created static congregations and installed our ‘priests’ and our soldiers increasingly assumed the role of spectators who came to church, even as our corps increasingly ceased operating as mission centres and became churches.

A significant step toward this was made during Arnold Brown’s Generalship in the early 1980s when the decision was made to commence ‘ordaining’ officers in addition to the Army’s traditional practice of ‘commissioning’. I, for example, was ‘ordained’ and ‘commissioned’ - to cover all the bases, I suppose. This rather significant event passed, it seems in hindsight, with relatively little notice.

(Ordination) … was a defining moment …

In reality, I think it carried some vast implications in the way we view ourselves and our focus as a ‘missionary church’. I would go as far as to say that this was a defining moment in The Salvation Army’s journey from mission movement to church. ‘Commission’ is a military term and carries with it the implication of  ’sending’ and of being equipped for a concrete task. As such it reflected not only the military metaphor of early Salvationist mindset, but also the emphasis we had on mission. ‘Ordination’ is a church term, it is static and has to do with the offices of a priest and, if truth be told, historically implies access to sacramental authority (its origin is from the Latin ordinaire, which means ‘to put in order’ - does this imply a commitment to the ascendancy of the structure of the organization, rather than the mission?). It owes more to church tradition than Scriptural injunction.

Why it was really instituted is hard to say. I suspect that it had more to do with the Army seeking the validation of the status of our clergy class in the eyes of our fellow churches than anything else. My point though, is the shift in mindset from mission, to maintenance, from the war to the Army that fights the war, from sending to staying put, risk to risk management. In the end this change was official confirmation of the reality that was played out weekly in Salvation Army corps around the world.

All this is by way of background, however. That point is that were every soldier to understand their soldiership as a call to mission and that being a ’soldier’ is synonymus with being a ‘missionary’, and were every corps to understand that their reason for being is to engage in mission in the world and that ‘corps’ is synonymous with ‘mission centre’ then maybe our renamed ‘community churches’ would actually live up to their names and our soldiery would too. 

One other thing, I think a reemphasis on the ‘priesthood of all believers’ would go a long way toward correcting misconceptions of officership from both sides.

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.