Pilgrim Soldier

Surely the title of this post has to be an oxymoron! To be passive and to be a Salvationist, indeed to passive and be a Christian, must be the very antithesis of each other. Yet many people who claim to follow Jesus sit in their seats for Sunday worship and then at the end of the meeting go home and do very little either in the life of the church itself, or within the community their local congregation is there to serve.

A few weeks ago I saw a post on another blog that contained the following quote:

We are convinced that a church system which allows believers to fulfill their weekly spiritual obligation by listening to a sermon creates a consumerist audience who have not been encouraged to step into the responsibility of being a disciple and discipling others. source: emerginggrace.blogspot.com

In my 23 years of soldiership in The Salvation Army the majority of involvement in ministry amongst my fellow corps members has been in the Band and the Songsters. Other ministries in the 9 corps I’ve soldiered at has been limited to a small handful of the membership.

A few days ago I was chatting to someone who truly did not see the problem with the sum of Christian involvement being limited to the Sunday worship service. They could not see that sitting in a seat on a Sunday and singing a few songs is not what being a Christian really is. There was an acknowledgement that our role is to get other people saved, but they truly believed that this was the sole responsibility of a Christian, although they personally didn’t do anything about it.

In the west we seem to have become a church full of consumers. We complain if the style of worship doesn’t suit us, rather than worshipping He who died to save us. We moan if the meeting extends five minutes beyond the deadline, rather than getting lost in the presence of the Spirit. We come looking for sermons that speak to our situation, rather than applying teaching that will help others.

Surely this isn’t what Jesus died on the cross for?