JAC Online

A Do As You Like Army?
by Commissioner Wesley Harris

 

REFLECTING on more that sixty years as a Salvation Army officer I have the impression that oversight and control is less rigorous than it used to be.  If asked whether that makes the Army more or less effective my reply would be both yes and no. In most organizations there is reaction against a too tight yoke of control by headquarters but at the same time if every one does what seems good to them an organization can cease to be organized and certainly an army can’t live up to its name. 

 

A leader has to strike a balance between a cramping control which prevents the exercise of local initiative and a laxity which could spell the end of united action.  (Paradoxically, if someone joins a football team they may both enlarge and limit their scope for action. Left to themselves they could accomplish little but while in a team they must subordinate some of their notions.) 

 

I have heard some officers complain that their leaders restrict their initiative but whether as a corps officer or as a territorial leader I never found this to be the case.   Subject to reasonable financial and other limits there was encouragement for initiative and experimentation, as indeed there should be. 

 

At one time I was involved with others at IHQ in vetting possible changes to orders and regulations and learnt about the efforts made to ensure that a change in one territory would not cause problems if applied in another. Cohesion as an international movement means that we must have a care about how our actions affect others for in many ways we are indeed our brothers’ keepers. 

 

Our general has well reminded us that we are one army and not a series of little armies around the world.   Of course, methods and means will vary from country to country.  Initiatives will save us from being imprisoned in the patterns of the past.  New occasions will call for new duties and, according to our Founder, there must be ‘adaptation of method but continuity of principle’.  Part of the genius of our Army is that this can and does happen all the time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

   

 

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