The recent Salvation Army has produced a written statement endorsed by all international leaders. The full text will be published in SA periodicals but in the meantime you can find the full text here at Jin Knagg's blog.Below is a quote from the statement:
"... a vision of the worldwide Salvation Army kneeling in repentance, prayer and rededication at the Mercy Seat. We have spoken together of all that this might mean for the Army, seeking new grace, new spiritual power, new divine prompting, and asking for and receiving afresh God's mercy....
... Also we affirm our conviction that, to be truly useful to God, the Army needs to be pure and free from sin, and that senior leaders must, by grace, be effective role models in this. We feel the urging of the Holy Spirit to examine our own hearts afresh to see if there be any wicked way within us. We want to yield again to the demands of divine love, to return to first things, to cast aside distractions unpleasing to God, and to be in a relation of entire obedience to the Father. We acknowledge our constant need of grace.
We renew our sacred vows and covenants as both soldiers and officers of the Army, thanking God from our hearts for the privilege of the calling he has placed upon us. We declare again our availability and our readiness, as senior officers, to go anywhere to do anything at any time under God and within the structures of the Army, seeking only the advancement of his Kingdom. We acknowledge our humanity and weakness, seeking the unique strength that God provides when we are weak and he is strong. We confess our limitedness, knowing that God is all sufficient. We abandon explicitly any desire that has sprung up in our hearts to place self first. We ask for the prayers of our fellow Salvationists to help us in this renewal of our covenants as soldiers and as officers, and in so doing we recognise our vulnerability and our personal need of divine help. In sharing this Spiritual Statement with Salvationists everywhere, it is our hope and prayer that it will be received with humble and understanding hearts, and that by the abundant grace of God it will be used to inspire and prompt others to seek with us repentance, with renewed purity and holiness in Christ."
In his first interview as General Shaw Clifton said in response to the following question:
Do you have a sense of where that breaking and moulding needs to happen? What strategies do you want to use?"
"It is too early to be specific, but this High Council has mandated the next General to find appropriate, loving ways of asking The Salvation Army some fairly awkward, difficult questions. We are all exercised by the Army's inability to grow numerically in certain parts of the world. We rejoice that in many places the Army is rapidly expanding. Globally we are bigger than ever before and getting bigger. This High Council has mandated me to ask: If God is withholding numerical growth from parts of the Army, why is that blessing withheld? Rather than discussing strategy, method, ceremony or even identity, I have a deep sense in my heart that God wants us to follow the example of the Old Testament prophets when they sensed God's blessing was withheld. The prophets went to God's people asking: Is there sin in the camp? Now that is a very difficult and pointed question. One has to be very tender and sensitive before even raising it but perhaps God is saying, ever so gently and ever so lovingly: I love you, Salvation Army, but would you please look within and see if there is sin in the camp, and if there is anything that causes the blessing to be withheld we must deal with it. Some issues will be personal to individual Salvationists, others will be corporate. I would like to find a way as General of being a catalyst and put that biblical question to Salvationists. We may find that as we draw nearer to him, closer to him in purity and righteousness, the blessings begin to flow where at present they sometimes appear to be withheld."
I'd never noticed before (until I read the text again this morning) that General Clifton said "this High Council has mandated the next General..." The call to repentance came from our leaders, it was a corporate call from the very top of our organisation.
On Wednesday night at a united churches prayer meeting in Dartford - knowing nothing of this leaders' statement - I urged the church ministers gathered in our hall to repent both personally and on behalf of the denominations they represented. I then went on to offer a prayer of repentance on behalf of TSA.
There is 'sin in the camp' and until we remove 'the consecrated things we have hidden among our own possessions' we will be 'obligated to defeat' - hold a million seminars, enquiries and conferences and nothing will change. If we repent then the Promised Land lies ahead of us!!!
Thank you to our leaders for their discernment, honesty and humility.
May we have ears to hear, minds that understand and hearts that will follow!
Grace and peace, A
