Yesterday's Army for today?

My good friend Carol Young sent me some material recently that came out of an ‘all night of prayer’ she had attended. Some of it was for private consumption and some I am sure will find its way into the public domain via her blog (The Old Wells).

However, in a discussion afterwards, on the phone, she mentioned that (I think it was a quote from a book) the Army’s early success was directly related to the fact that it perfectly reflected the needs of the day.

Last night I was walking down Dartford High Street thinking about today’s needs and what a Salvation Army that met them might look like.

Dartford High Street is pedestrianised with a kind of cobbled effect road service. The shops are mainly made up of cheap cafes (what we in the UK call ‘a greasy spoon’) betting shops and pubs. We also have the obligatory ‘Primark’, a bingo hall, two amusement arcades (slot machine parlours) and two pawnbrokers. The people that walk up and down the High Street are primarily poor (though not as poor as some in the UK) and many of them look harassed and lost.

In Dartford (as in the wider UK) gambling, teenage pregnancy, violent crime, prostitution are all rife and on the increase and alcohol costs less than bottled water - it is very easy to get seriously drunk in Dartford for less than £3.

It would seem that in spite of new technology, sexual liberation, sexual equality, human rights legislation and political correctness, post modern Britain doesn’t actually look that different from how it looked 140 years ago.

So I’m going to attempt an experiment in consecration – that sounds less sincere than it ought to – I’m not playing games here, what I’m about to do I have been prayerfully considering for some time.

It seems that the primitive Salvationists in their attitude to things like worldliness, Sabbath keeping, evangelism, fighting for social justice etc actually got it about right.

Now I have a copy of O&R’s for Field Officers 1908, an early doctrine book, a copy of ‘Heathen England’, a Salvation Soldier’s Guide, Cadet’s Lessons and countless other instructive books from those early days.

I’m going to attempt to live my life as I would have been expected to live it if I had been a Salvationist about the turn of the century. I’m not looking to utilising old methods (unless they still work) but I do want to recreate that primitive spirit that enabled our pioneers to be so completely focussed in what they did.

I’ll use this blog to let you know how I get on.

Love and prayers

A

TSA and the origins of Alpha.

Check out the comment from Steve Court's non-Salvo mate here

Sorry to disagree with your non salvo mate Steve but TSA did come up with Alpha and most of the over modern evangelical tools used by the church today.

We were using the ward system long before cell church poked its head out of the womb! As for Alpha our system for making and following down recruits (welcome sergeants, recruiting sergeants, rolls, visititation sergeants, recruits classes, Soldiership classes) as used prior to 1950 surpasses anything Alpha has to offer! Add to that that directory and Corps Cadets, open-airs, pub booming, slum and gutter brigades etc and there is very little the contemporary church has ‘discovered’ that wasn’t used by or even initiated by TSA. We were doing ‘Café church’ and offering a sandwich alongside Salvation before cafes had been invented – Railton mentions salvation tea-parties in ‘Heathen England’ in 1877! As for the ‘4 spiritual laws’ how many tracts beginning with ‘How to…. Get saved… find holiness… win souls’ etc did the early SA publish? Our problem is not that Salvos spend “too much time asking why they didn't come up with good stuff rather than using that time to actually come up with the good stuff”. Our problem is that we stopped using the good stuff we’d already come up with and even today continue to discard that good stuff because we think it is past its sell by date.

When TSA has the guts to be TSA and stop trying to imitate other churches we might actually notice that other churches have been imitating us and borrowing our ideas for years!

"Salvationism is a clear and well-defined quality that represents distinctive features of doctrine and service which distinguish it from all other organizations and makes of it an entity entirely apart, incapable of being blended with any other people. Any attempt to harmonize it with methods employed by other religious bodies destroys its effectiveness and renders it incapable of achieving its purpose or continuing to develop its special characteristics." (Edward Higgins - When Chief of the Staff 1n 1928)

Love and prayers

A