Pilgrim Soldier

Yesterday, Bank Holiday Monday, I went on to Strangers into Citizens service and rally, which was something of a first for me. Despite having been involved politically with a number of projects over the years this was the first real chance I had to actually go on a march.

Strangers into Citizens march

For those that don’t know anything it about the campaign pay a visit to their site (link above) and read a little about it. Basically though its about giving an opportunity for those undocumented migrants who want to contribute to UK society, who want to work and live here, a chance to do so. I’ve heard quite a bit of negative feedback, people saying that it won’t make any sort of significant difference to the problem of at least 750,000 people in this country, but it’ll make a difference to those who take up the opportunity if the government were to give it too them. Jesus said that we will be judged according to how we respond to people including the stranger, so if you’re in the UK why not write to your MP to see if they support the campaign!?

As you can see from the picture The Salvation Army were represented on the march and in the Free Church service before it. There were around 80 people connected to The Salvation Army marching amongst the marchers and several people spoke to those around me saying how good it was to see the Army supporting them in this campaign. This is, of course, part of our heritage that we’ve forgotten so it’s great to see the Army out there where it really matters supporting some of the most marginalised people in our society! Let’s hope we keep it up and if anything increase our support for this and other campaigns that are about lifting the mantle of oppression from the lives of individuals and communities.

Below is also a link to the YouTube campaign video if you want to find out more!

In my post about ‘the uprising’ I included the quote:

“unless the Bride of Christ is holy, no one else in the world will meet the Lord. Without our holiness, they won’t see the Lord.”

I’ve found myself coming back to that quote a few times because I found I needed to give the thought more consideration.

The first thought I found myself having was about the make-up of the Bride of Christ. My understanding is that it is actually the Church universal, rather than the individuals that make up the Church.

However, this was followed quickly by the reality that unless the individuals are holy, then surely the Church universal can’t be! At the very least there would be implications for the local expression of the Church should the members of the congregation not be pursuing holiness. This for me is where the crunch comes!

I believe passionately that the only way to reach the lost and to fulfil the Church’s mission in the world is at the local level. And by local I don’t mean at the level of the town, but at the level of the street!

In a paper to the Incarnate conference earlier this year Geoff Ryan said that he believes:

that God cannot – or will not – present himself in a neighbourhood or a community or amongst a people, unless his people, The Church, are themselves physically present and sharing life with the community.”

This is a difficult statement and whilst on one level I agree, I disagree on another level. However, if we accept that at some level this is correct it makes sense of Olivia Munn’s quote from the book. If the Church is not fulfilling its divine appointment and mission within a particular location then how will God be seen in that place? The only way for the Church to fulfil its mission is through the actions of its individual members working both individually and co-operatively. Therefore if the people of God, both as individuals and as a community of believers are not holy then how can the light of God reach the communities they live and serve in?

When thought of like this it makes absolute sense that our individual and corporate holiness is the key to fulfilling the mission!

Here is the start of a Mission Statement that I saw recently in a church:

As a Christian Church and an integral part of the [denominational name] we offer…

I won’t go on to say the 3 things they offered because these in themselves are of significant difficulty to me. The real reason I raise the statement is to explore our attitudes towards mission.

Personally, I’m not sure whether I am comfortable with the word ‘offer’ being included in a mission statement for a church. It suggests a passive attitude in terms of the gospel. It suggests a come and see attitude towards church, rather than a get out into the world and live the life type attitude.

In preparation for some teaching I’m going to be doing here in the corps I’ve been glancing through the excellent SA courses over at armybarmy.com. In the first session of SA201 there is a wonderful comment:

“Mission is to a movement what rice is to Chinese food. Without it, there’s just a bunch of vegetables lying around.”

My immediate reaction was to think of the Army I belong to and ask whether or not this is the experience we have. Thankfully in an increasing number of places mission focus is increasing and the fruit of people’s labour in the Spirit is being seen.

Another quote from the same source is a citing of William Booth which says:

“What is a Salvation Army Corps? – To this I reply that it is a band of people united together to attack and Christianise an entire town or neighbourhood. When an officer receives an appointment from headquarters, it is not contemplated that he shall deal merely with those who are already gathered within the walls of certain buildings, or with those who are already enrolled in our ranks, or with those who may be induced to come inside them; but it is intended that he shall be an apostle of the gospel to all those who live around. When you reach a station assigned to you, if it has not been done already, you should take your stand in that hall, or theatre, or tent, and draw a line around the breadth of population you can hope to reach, and make that your parish, and aim, with tears and prayers, and the trumpet blast of truth, and the power of the Holy Ghost, to convert and sanctify and enlist and disciple every soul within it.“(emphasis mine)

This is our mission and should be the mission of all Christians. Yet the important bit is to recognise the difference between getting people “born again” and Booth’s objectives! It is not enough for us to get people to proclaim Jesus as their personal Saviour and then move onto getting the next ‘convert’. Instead, we must follow the command of Jesus to go and make disciples and lead them to a life of committed discipleship rooted in holiness.

When we think about being provocative I would guess that a lot of people would see this as a negative thing. I suppose this is mainly because provocation is one of those words that seems to be a bad thing. We think of people being provoked into an argument or of someone hitting someone else after being provoked. So when a book suggests that the church should be provoking a response from people it could well get assigned to the spiritual dustbin, along with terminology such as ‘getting out of comfort zones’ and ‘taking risks’.

However, a few months ago a book that does exactly that was recommended to me. At that point I didn’t get it, but then as I was browsing the shelves of my local Christian bookshop about a month ago there it was simply begging me to buy it!

On Sunday night I finally got round to starting to read it, and so far I haven’t been disappointed. Its actually a book about evangelism, although I suspect that some reading it might not agree with the methods it suggests. What is refreshing though is that this is not a book that consigns verbal evangelism to the scrap heap, but instead elevates it to its rightful position within the church, front and centre.

By the way the book is Graham Tomlin’s The Provocative Church. The basic premise is that unless an individual, or a congregation, live their lives in such a way as to make people start asking questions about the way they are living no amount of evangelism is ever going to make an impact. One quote that stood out on the first page of Chapter 1 was,

Sometimes Christians assume that people ‘out there’ are eager to listen to what the Church has to say. The only problem is learning how to say it louder and more clearly.”

It immediately made me think of the stereotypical ‘Brit abroad’ picture. We have a reputation for talking to people who don’t speak English ‘loudly, slowly and clearly’ so that they will understand what we are saying. Of course the real problem is that we aren’t speaking their language. The same mentality still exists in some circles of the church, including The Salvation Army. It doesn’t seem to matter that people no longer speak our cultural language. All we have to do is say the same things louder, slower and clearer and everything will be ok.

As someone who has never felt entirely comfortable in traditional evangelistic methods this book is really speaking to me and I’ve been thinking in depth about possible efforts that we could get involved in here in our location. I’m well into chapter 5 and have numerous thoughts coming out of it, so I’ll probably be posting more on this.

Slowly but surely I’m working my way through Restoring the Woven Cord which is about various aspects of Celtic Christianity and how they are relevant to today’s world. Interestingly, I’m noticing that I don’t agree quite so readily with some of the ideas that the author puts forward as I did when I read this through 10 years ago. Shows just how much we change over the years!

Yesterday I read the chapter about Evangelism and how the Celtic Church and of particular interest was the following quote:

…the Celtic church was utterly given to mission. It thought, lived and breathed mission. It could understand no Christianity that did not include mission. It had no interest in bureaucracies and institutions that existed simply to support the church. It had a wild, childlike, simple and overwhelming passion to see me, women and children of these lands and beyond find faith in Jesus Christ and it gave itself utterly to that end.

This reminded me so much of the earliest days of The Salvation Army and I couldn’t help but wonder why we lost this lifestyle. This is a subject that has been covered a great many times and I don’t want to go there fully. However, I think that the book has something to say about one of the reasons why the Celtic church managed to maintain the passion, where the Army fell down.

The church grew so fast because these cells were so wonderfully flexible and unrestrained by any institution, that they could easily multiply.

It is in this area that we got bogged down in my opinion! Now anyone who has studied Army history will acknowledge that William Booth was something of a control freak and that those that crossed him found themselves pushed out. Despite this there was a wonderful freedom in expression in much of what happened in the earliest days. Unfortunately, this wasn’t sustained for a multitude of reasons and we started concentrating on creating a culture. If this had been solely about building a Kingdom culture then that would have been wonderful but we ended concentrating on Salvationist culture which is not the same thing!

Thankfully we are seeing a rediscovery of a focus on mission, that isn’t restricted simply to proclamational evangelism. This again was a hallmark of the Celtic church, although they always made sure that the gospel was presented in some way. The keys to their success though was that they operated according to the Holy Spirit’s leading, were people marked by personal holiness and remarkable humility, and were also adaptive to culture. If we can be people marked by the same traits maybe we could all regain the same focus that the Celtic church did!

In the January/February 2008 issue of the Officer publication, which I seem to get despite not being a commissioned officer, the editorial issued a challenge for officers to write articles about:

…how to be holy when we get out of the house and ‘test our style and morality in the mire of the times’

I wouldn’t consider writing an article for the Officer, partly because I would fully expect a rejection slip but also because it wouldn’t be accepted as I’m not an officer. So instead I get to post my thoughts here instead!

Basically the challenge has been there in the back of my mind for the last few weeks ever since I read the article. This has probably been helped by the fact that I’ve been preaching on the subject for the last few months. One thing I’ve realised that if holiness isn’t practical and based firmly in our life outside the house in the ‘mire of the times’, then its not really holiness at all. You see holiness is a bit like the wind, you can only really see because of the effect it has.

Firstly, holiness is a gift from God. It is not something that can be attained through adhering to the rules, no not even to the Army’s Orders and Regulations. Holiness can only be given to us by the One that is Holy. Secondly, its about being fully human, being the human we were created to be, just as Jesus is.

Now having got this out of the way, I come to the real thought of the post. Back in 1995/96 I was on the Frontline course that was run by the Oasis Trust and The Salvation Army. During my year I was introduced to Celtic Christianity and it touched a real chord within me and I picked up a number of books. After reading them once most of these ended up on the shelves and during our time in Latvia gathered dust. However, this week I picked up one of them again because of where my mind is and as I was reading I found this gem of a comment,

He [Aidan] was a man who had an infectious holiness, which, far from making him remote and other worldly, enabled him to mix with all kinds of people and to understand their world. They could believe in his message because he was a person whose life-style was transparently attractive to all who were seeking God.
Mitton, M., Restoring the Woven Cord – pg 16

How’s that for a testimony of someone’s life. Holiness was so evident in Aidan that it came across as infectious. People could ‘catch’ holiness of him because of the way he lived his life. Of equal interest is that his holiness opened him up to other people, who wanted to spend time with him and helped him to understand their world. This in many ways mirrors the sort of life that Jesus led, and leads me to think that the test of someone’s holiness is how attractive they are to others and how that holiness rubs off on them.