Pilgrim Soldier

What is it that gives me my sense of belonging to a church or corps? What makes me feel as if I belong to it?

Is it the sense of belonging to a community of people who love each other? Is it a commitment to the mission of the corps/church? Is it the style of the worship that makes me feel at home?

Or do I simply go because that is where I’ve always gone? Or rather where I’ve been sent!

Why do I belong? Why even ask? Why?

Isn’t it enough just to belong? Isn’t it? Do I?

Lots of questions but no answers! I don’t know, but there must be a reason; there must be a purpose!

As always these days it’s been awhile since I last posted anything. It seems to be more a case of trying to keep the blog alive at the moment as life has been so busy because of training! Anyway, just a thought that came from the last book that I was reading, Pete Grieg’s A Vision and a Vow.

In his book Grieg writes:

Lately I’ve been longing more than anything else to belong to a community that is purely and simply deeply kind.

Kindness seems to be an underrated commodity, even in the church, and to be honest I’ve been unkind a lot in my own life and have suffered been on the receiving end of a great deal of unkindness within some of the congregations I’ve been a part of. So the idea of a church community that places a high value on kindness is appealing to say the least!

Imagine for a moment belonging to a place/community where everyone is kind to each other, not just those who they have things in common with but those they don’t. That’s what we should be aiming for if we believe in the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, kindness…! What’s more in that sort of community the aim would be to constantly strive for more of the same, not out of a spiritual one-up-manship but out of a genuine love for each other!

Grieg goes on to say that in the context of our striving to be more evangelistic:

Ironically, it may well be when we stop “doing” evangelism and start loving our neighbours for their company rather than their scalps, that the Church will grow in breadth and depth.

I wouldn’t invite people to a church where people are unkind to each other but I would certainly invite people to a place where kindness is part of the make-up!

We hold on to what is comfortable and familiar to us.

This was a comment that I read recently elsewhere and it suggested that this should be seen as a positive thing so that we would be unique whilst other denominations/congregations kept copying each other, with little success. I also heard something similar today!

Now I know that change is uncomfortable and that many people might actually like the idea, but I couldn’t help thinking about it in the context of Jesus’ disciples! What would have happened in the early church had held onto ‘what is comfortable and familiar’ to them?

If nothing new is ever considered, if nothing ever changes, then where will we be in 20, 30, 50 years time? If everything must stay the same then how are we ever going to reach out to a rapidly changing world?

Now I’m not naive enough to expect everything to change, but what is sacrosanct and what is up for grabs? I’m coming to the conclusion that very little of what we actually get upset about when things change is what really matters, because in fact a lot of that is cultural. It is though a way of protecting ourselves from change in other areas. But then what does that say about our reliance on God? Surely it is the never-changing God who really protects us, not the never-changing ‘Army’!

So what am I holding onto that needs to change? Probably more than I’d like to admit, but please Lord don’t let me hold onto it just because it offers me comfort. Instead I want to throw off everything that hinders for the sake of God’s Kingdom!

There’s a news article over at the website for the men’s magazine Sorted that says:

“Men who go to church regularly prefer “proper macho songs” and feel uncomfortable with hugging and sitting in circles discussing their feelings…”

The whole area of why men don’t go to church is one that I’m increasingly concerned about so I did a search to see what some of the other blog writers around are saying about it. I found only a handful of articles most of which seemed to fall into two categories: those who seemed to complain about women in ministry within the church, and those who got caught up on the ‘happy-clappy’ vs ‘traditional’ forms of worship, plus one who focussed on the fact that men do things other than blatant evangelism to bond! In each case it seems the same theme runs through many of the posts on those sites!

My question though is why people can’t see that men are in the minority in the majority of our congregations in the Western world? Why does it have to come down our personal agenda all the time when issues like this crop up instead of trying to work out what to really do about it? Maybe the solution is not necessarily in the things we value but in really change to something that isn’t necessarily comfortable for us!

It was another of what are known in WBC (William Booth College) language as ‘Corps Sundays’ today. A Corps Sunday is a Sunday (remarkably enough) when you go along to the corps that you have chosen to attend during the time you are in college. For Zoe, the girls and I we’ve joined up with Deptford Corps, which is only just about a mile from where Zoe & I used to live before going to Latvia.

Now Abigail is not in the happiest of moods at the moment; a combination of being ill and 19 months old, meaning that she is not really happy to sit around and wants to be up and about all the time. Because of this I was sat at the back of the hall with her, slightly away from the meeting. I suddenly realised as I looked around that I was no longer seeing the corps as a place to go and be involved with for the next 18 months. Instead I’ve begun to see it as my corps, the place that I go be part of the community.

As I chatted to the guys after the meeting, talking about the Mens’ group we’re doing on Friday, I realised that I was valuing their friendship as well as the fact that the group fulfils some of the college curriculum requirements. So Deptford is my corps now and I love being part of that community!

The last week has been spent on our Social Placement at Faith House. It has been a great week and has left me with a lot to think about over the coming days. The challenge for the future is particularly strong and trying to put it fully into perspective is not going to be that easy.

Having said that it has certainly brought a few things to mind as I wrote my reflections in my journal. One of the main things is how poorly we tend to reflect Jesus’ way of doing things. I suppose I’ve always felt that many churches did not embrace those on the margins of our society, but having been immersed in just a fraction of their lives this last week that sense is really strong at the moment. How many churches do you know that would unhesitatingly embrace a drug-addicted prostitute into their fellowship? What about the dishevelled homeless guy?

Mahatma Gandhi is reputed to have said, “The best test of a civilised society is the way in which in treats its most vulnerable and weakest members.” For some reason I’ve never really thought too hard about those words; I’ve simply accepted them as being valid. This week though I’ve been forced into reconsidering their focus. Maybe it’s me but too often I think we see the society of which he was talking as being the society of our country, headed by the government. But I think the real society that we need to consider is much more basic than that. It’s about us and our place in society. So the phrase could be seen as being, “The way we, as the individuals who make up our society, treat the most vulnerable and weakest members of that society is the best test of our society.”

So how do we treat people? Do we go out of our way to include everyone in our corps, or do we still enjoy our little cliques that prevent the weak and vulnerable from being part of it? I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t gone out of my way that often, but this week has challenged me to think differently.

It’s been a quiet month blog-wise, mainly because I don’t really get time to process some of my thinking these days. This college thing seems to have taken up all my free time!

Anyway, today was our Sure Foundations class, which is basically a Church history class. We were given a handout that included some text from a book that believe it or not was published in Godalming, which both Zoe and I have had a look at during our research for an essay. That’s beside the point a little I should get on with the actual post!

This handout included the following:

“[The Church] did not see the need to go to the people on the streets but took the view that the people must go to it.”¹

I couldn’t help but be struck by the similarity in many places today. There are still churches and corps across the country that seem to think that people will just instinctively come into them and see no reason at all to reach outside the building, which of course many actually think is the church in the first place. In fact what is becoming clearer as we study the history and circumstances leading to the birth of The Salvation Army is that little seems to have changed in the last 200 years. Society has moved on but the Church is still stuck, by and large, in a bubble that seems to protect it from the world outside it. This is true of the Army whether we like to admit it or not.

There are corps in our Territory, and across the western world, which are quiet simply so stuck in their way of doing things that God basically doesn’t get a look in. It’s not that the people aren’t Christians, it’s just that many of them long since gave up listening to, or at the very least acting upon, the voice of the Holy Spirit. They are almost exactly like the churches that William & Catherine Booth despaired so much of when they set out on their God ordained task. Ironic isn’t it?

However, there is encouraging news. Many of those who are training have some sort of experience of this sort of corps and none of them, or at least those I’ve spoken with, want this malaise to continue. I suspect though that there will be some difficult times ahead, when many ‘Army’ people lament the loss of ‘the Real Army’ yet I suspect that the real ‘Real Army’ will start making an even bigger impact than it already is!