WARNING…Dear Salvation Army, We Are Losing Our
Young People!!
by Captain Scott
Strissel
July 10, 2014
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Scott Strissel
“Pasadena Tab Youth Chorus at IHQ”
It is a common scenario: An Officer family moves into an
inner-city or even rural appointment and finds little to no
adult role models that they can trust to instruct their
children. In a similar situation a married couple joins the
Army corps to serve and to help but also finds little by way
of adult, spiritually mature, role models to guide their
children while at the corps.

Yes, it is a parent’s job to train their children up (Prov.
22:6) but are we lacking strong, spiritually mature leaders
within our corps today to assist in this? Is it detrimental to
children of Officers as well as families coming into corps who
encounter this problem? Where have all of the godly Local
Officers and Saintly Sunday School/Corps Cadet teachers gone?
Admittedly many of them have been promoted to glory after
decades of faithful service…but the question remains why
aren’t others stepping up to lead? Where have all the saints
gone in our corps?
I have heard from a number of faithful local officers as well
as Corps & Divisional Officers who share this sentiment. What
are doing wrong? Why are we losing so many pillars only to
have no one to take their place?
Edification of our Youth:
We mustn’t neglect this portion of our ministry! As an Army,
we are losing young people in droves as they become young
adults because there is little keeping them at our corps. This
is one of the biggest threats facing our modern Army world.
Who will step up to lead them? Who will hold them to godly
standards? How can we stave off such a tremendous loss?
We need strong local officers! We need discipled leaders! We
cannot settle for warm bodies in Sunday School classes solely
because they “show up”. This is an epic crisis. It might not
be felt currently in some of the larger metro c orps
where leadership is in abundance, but drive a few miles away
to one of the younger supporting corps or further out into
some of the rural communities and this crisis will become more
and more evident.
An extension of this crisis begins to reveal itself in local
officers, who are spiritually mature, who
are there to help serve, who have children at the
corps and are beginning to question if, perhaps, it is time to
find another ministry to belong to because the edification of
the youth (and specifically their children) is sadly vacant
due to the lack of leaders.
Are we doing something wrong?
Have we lost a step?
Can we recover from this?
Solutions:

It is certainly not my intention to criticize or direct any
blame without attempting to offer some kind of solution or
corrective steps. I will be the first to admit that I do not
have all of the answers here, but I do want to begin asking
these very important questions. What I do know is that if
something isn’t done to help local officer families and
Officer families, a large portion of the next generation will
be lost to the Army…and it has already begun.
We have territorial and even divisional events to send our
children to, but coming home to a corps that lacks the kind of
leaders our children are seeing at the divisional or
territorial level can
be debilitating and discouraging. It is rather telling of the
quality of leaders we may have when we have to employ our
teenagers to teach a class because none of the adults are
equipped or mature enough to handle this responsibility.
Solution #1 Discipleship, Discipleship, Discipleship!
For years we have done our corps a disservice by not
adequately discipling our adults and youth properly. Jesus
instructed and lived out model discipleship to His followers.
Officers and currently leaders need to continually think of
who will replace them when they are gone…who will follow in
their footsteps? Who will carry on the legacy? Who can WE
train up? We must invest our time in those who need to grow
and have the potential to become leaders so that future
generations will have someone to look up to and emulate within
the corps setting.
Solution #2 Divisional and Territorial Support
A few years ago the Eastern Michigan Division created a
program called “The Ambassadors Program”. What this program
did was take young adults and send them out into corps that
needed young leaders and role models within their youth
programs. They helped conduct lessons, tutored young people
during after school, played sports with them in gymnasiums, in
essence they became mobile young adult disciples and role
models. We need more mobile young adult discipleship programs
that are sent out into these frontline ministries and rural
corps to help with the mission! We need to consider such
opportunities as a two-fold solution. (1) The young people
being sent (Ambassador or Disciple what ever you call it) are
learning how to become strong(er) leaders of our Army by
actively participating in ministry as a divisional missionary!
They learn through hands-on training and it is a trial by
fire. (2) The youth that these Ambassadors/Disciples are
instructing and taking under their wing begin to see active
and loving leaders who are committed to the Lord and have a
passion for what they do! This is the kinds of role models our
young people in problematic corps (where leadership is vacant)
need.

There are probably many more solutions out there to help with
this crisis. My hope is that in writing this and sharing my
frustration and fear others will begin to offer ideas and
share further solutions. We are losing our youth in the Army.
We can probably all share in the blame. Beyond the “blame
game”, however, we need to get up, we need to mobilize and
begin developing leadership networks to help properly instruct
our youth once again so that we do not lose another generation
and their parents who are currently testing the waters of
other ministries.
Something else for the Army world to ponder today.
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