Pilgrim Soldier

There are moments in life when things you have been thinking and pondering over suddenly fit into place! I had one of those moments this week.

Since taking on my responsibilities as Project and Development Secretary I’ve been trying to understand the real reasons why social action is so important. I understand both the Biblical imperative and the historical identity that puts such a high emphasis on this issue for The Salvation Army. The problem is always the balancing act between the social and spiritual work and how, to use Gordon Cotterill’s phrase, the false dichotomy of mission that can be the danger of going one way or the other.

Enter two books that I am reading at the moment. Firstly, The Drama of Scripture and secondly, Journeying Out. On Tuesday night whilst reading Journeying Out a particular paragraph jumped off the page at me (added emphasis mine):

In Transforming Mission Bosch also emphasized how the Church’s life and work are intimately bound up with God’s cosmic-historical plan for the salvation of the world. This requires Christians to see and understand themselves as kingdom people, not church people. We must not fall into the temptation of treating the Church, and faith itself, as ‘a waiting room for the hereafter.’ Bosch articulated clearly how ‘the Church can only be a credible sacrament of salvation for the world when it displays to humanity a glimmer of God’s imminent reign - a kingdom of reconciliation, peace and new life.’ With meticulous scholarship, Bosch demonstrated that mission which serves the Gospel has to manifest itself in action, and not just in proclamation of a message of salvation in the world to come. The Church, if it is to honour the Gospel, has to journey out, embrace strangers, work for social peace and justice and partake of God’s gracious gift of salvation.

pg 5 - Journeying Out by Ann Morisy (with quote from pg 378 - Transforming Mission by David Bosch)

This coupled with the ideas from The Drama of Scripture, that are helping me to understand the whole Bible as a story of God’s redemptive process, suddenly slotted into place. We shouldn’t be doing social action because it’s one of the historical traditions of The Salvation Army, but simply because by doing it we are manifesting God’s kingdom values here on earth.

The Gospels are full of Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven and what it is like, but all too often the Church has relegated the teaching to illustrate what God has planned for the future. The fact is though, that through His death and resurrection Jesus was not only giving us a way of being brought blameless before the Father, but was also creating the route through which the kingdom values would be shown in the future.

It is only when we understand God’s redemptive power for the whole of His creation and, from that understanding, start being kingdom people, that we can truly fulfil the primary task of the Church, namely helping people discover the saving power of Jesus Christ.