Finally, the big day is almost upon me. Tomorrow I leave my little family here in Latvia whilst I fly off to England ahead of my Assessment Conference which starts on Friday.
It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t nervous, but at the same time I am remarkably calm about the whole thing. Without a doubt the weekend is going to be tough, but I’m really up for the challenge. I just want to get in there and show those who interview me the passion that God has put on my heart.
Any prayers would of course be appreciated!
So I’ve just discovered that The Salvation Army now has an unofficial Wiki. There is a lot of work to do, but I can see the potential for it eventually becoming a repository for a lot of useful information from across the world.
Check it out at www.sawiki.net
This is the second of the articles I wanted to bring out of the achives. Posted on my very first day of blogging it was called “What type of Army do you belong to?”
Later in the year we should be starting a Mission Team in Latvia from amongst the youth. The leader of the project has asked me to teach Salvation Army history to them during the first few weeks when they will undergo intense training.
In preparation I’ve started re-reading various books and yesterday I picked up Phil Wall’s ‘I’ll fight…’. I found the following that really made me sit up and think:
“In military terms they [Booth and the early Salvationists] did not see themselves as defenders of some religious enclave from which they occasionally fired artillery and launched ‘hit and run’ commando raids only to return to their ’safe haven’ citadels. No, this was an all-out offensive into enemy territory where the majority of lost people were to be found.”
Being totally honest, there is no doubt in my mind that the majority of corps that I grew up in, and there were a lot of them, were far more of the former type of military unit, than the latter. That ’safe haven’ mentality coloured my view of this Army for far to many years. I pray that I don’t perpetuate that understanding of The Salvation Army in my daughter’s life, or indeed in the type of Army I show through my history lessons to the young people of Latvia!
As I celebrate a year of blogging I hope you won’t mind indulging me a little if I pull some stuff out of my archives from my earliest posts. The following was posted on 19th February last year and was called “Offensive Christianity”.
One of my favourite secular authors is Terry Pratchett and, despite him being humanist, I sometimes find stuff that speaks into my own life! In one of his books I found the following:
“If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched ‘em like a father and cared for ‘em like a mother … youwouldn’t find me just being gen’rally nice in the hope that it’d all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin’ sword. And I did say burnin’…’cos that’s what it’d be. You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people any more, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just … is just bein’ nice.”
Here a humanist writer has written something that all Christian’s should understand. Why are we satifisfied to sit in our often empty churches and be ‘nice’ instead of getting out there and communicating the gospel?
Jesus is the “Stone that causes men to stumble and the rock that makes them fall” (Isaiah 8:14
), yet all too often we try to clear up the stones in the path of people so that they won’t stumble over us and be offended by us. Why? Instead we should be pushing on in the attack (note the American English equivalent “offensive”) and start fighting for the Lord of Lords and King of Kings!
As of today I’ve now been blogging for a year, well actually it’s over a year as I started with the Patverums blog, but personally its been a year. When I set out on this journey I was searching for something and my numerous attempts to start a journal had failed miserably. Now I’m still posting regularly on this weblog and still feel motivated to do so.
12 months ago I was frustrated with where I was. This was not frustration at being in a physical place, but rather where I was spiritually. I was searching for direction in my life, struggling with worship and felt I was stagnating in my faith.
My very first post said:
My main reason for starting a blog is that I’m not the best person at keeping a journal and the idea of sharing my ramblings with others through this medium quite interests me. I’m currently going through a process of trying to better understand both the Army I serve in and my place within it.
How about now? Well, 230 posts, over 56 000 words, 3 sites and numerous designs later I’ve definitely found out more about myself and my passions. I have found new direction and calling in my life, freedom in worship to be true to who God made me, and a surrender of my heart, soul, mind and strength so that God can mould me into the man of God that he needs me to be. This time next week I will be on my way to Sunbury Court for my Assessment Conference, which I did not expect 12 months ago!
I intend to continue to post, although it is possible that the frequency will drop a little as my life continues to change.
If you do read my ramblings then feel free to comment at anytime. I purposefully have left comments open to everyone as I feel that we cannot learn in isolation and that we need to learn from our fellow brothers and sisters.
Over at the Journal of Aggressive Christianity there is an excellent article from Captain Geoff Webb called “Time to grow up?” which was orginally published in the Australian OnFire publication.
Having just read this for a second time in only a couple of days, I’ve got to say that it is one of the best articles I’ve read for ages.
In particular, especially off the back of current discussions on cultural relevance, it’s interesting to see Captain Webb’s thoughts around relevance/identity.
Those at the ‘relevance’ end of the continuum, including neo-Salvationists, argue we can afford to sacrifice anything relating to ‘forms’ that gets in the way of relevance.
By contrast, those at the ‘identity’ end—including traditional Salvationist voices and primitive Salvationist voices—contend we need to remain true to our past, and that it is often very difficult to separate form from essence.
Can these two ends ever be reconciled and co-exist peacefully within The Salvation Army as a whole? Whilst they may currently, a lot of work will need to be done in order to avoid an irreconcilable split at some future date. It is also possible that in some places this split is already close at hand.
What musn’t be forgotten in the debate is that the views of all sides are valid expressions of belief on the part of the people who hold them. Many on each extreme are operating within what has come to be called “Salvationist DNA” and our inability to se that is more to do with form of which Webb speaks than it is essence. We must be aware of this and always act in love when finding our way through the differences.
A good few weeks ago in our small group we were looking at Jesus’ prayer in John 17. One area we particularly concentrated on were verses 14-19. Over the last few weeks I’ve been turning these over, on and off, in my mind.
These words where Jesus basically prayers for his disciples to be filled with holiness so that they can survive in the world are so powerful. The normal reaction to a world full of sins is to retreat into a Christian sub-culture where we can be safe amongst like minded people. Yet Jesus clearly says that he has sent his disciples into the world. He came from Heaven to live amongst sinful man and immersed himself into 1st Century Jewish culture. He didn’t seperate himself and live within a little sub-culture all of his own.
In an earlier post I mentioned that my Dad recalls the Army of his youth. He also recalls his Army friends who were thrown out of the band for going to a football match because this was ‘of the world’. Why did we put these sorts of rules in place? Why did we take ourselves away from places where we could meet with the very people who need salvation?
It feels as if we can be so frightened of the world that we don’t believe that our God is greater than the false gods of the world!
There is a growing tendency today to retreat from the world. This is to some extent what the growth of fundamentalism in all areas is about. It sees the rapid change that is going on around us and retreats into what is known best. Thankfully this isn’t too evident amongst the more passionate amongst us. However in some places home schooling is prevalent to avoid children from Christian families being subject to the ‘inherent evil’ in the school system. More and more Christian music, books, videos, even computer games are produced (much of it extremely mediocre or even based on suspect theology) in order to supply the need for the Christian sub-culture.
Do we turly have such a small picture of God and the strength that come through His Spirit, that we have to hide ourselves away to avoid the arrows of the evil one? Could it be that we are exchanging the Armour of God that was so effective for our forebears with an impenetrable fortress that offers total safety?
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