JAC Online

“Rekindling the Passion”
by Captain Marion Platt

1st Generation, Blood and Fire Salvationist, Captain Marion Platt
is the Corps Officer of The South Atlanta Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center.

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In the early days of The Salvation Army, all of the flammable elements were present in one place. There existed in the East End of London the tinder of human suffering and brokenness; in every bar, factory, and on every street corner, cords of combustible humanity lay exposed and captive to the power of sin. Nevertheless, the rich wind of God had already begun to fill the streets, preparing the atmosphere for revival. And in the heart of William Booth, passion and vision began to strike and scrape against one another like flint and steel, producing a spark which eventually ignited the desperately dry kindling of humanity, and was blown into a flame which spread around the world in just a few years.

The Salvation Army came into being in an era when the urban church was, for the most part, neglecting its missionary calling.1 The Victorian church establishment of that day had become an exclusive group of respectable church-goers, unconcerned (at least in practice) with seeking the lost, or welcoming them into their communities of faith. Church congregations in that day were largely unprepared or unwilling to accept “riff-raff, derelicts, prostitutes, and other undesirables” into their fellowship. Sunday worship was for the respectable in society, and those who were disconnected and disenfranchised were rarely welcomed into church rituals and membership.

William Booth set out to remedy this situation by inviting those who were shoo-ed from the church, to give their lives to Christ and become “soldiers” in his movement. Fueled by a passion to make disciples of men, women, and children, Booth’s soldiers intentionally “invaded” neighborhoods where social evils were prominent, built relationships with the population, and engaged injustice on its own turf. The early Army was committed to Kingdom growth; not only did this “unchurchly church” gather for worship, but the soldiers of the early Army deployed into the streets of their communities to thrust the Gospel message upon humanity, and to put compassion into action in practical ways. William Booth was once quoted as saying, “What is the use of preaching the Gospel to men whose whole attention is concentrated upon a mad, desperate struggle to keep themselves alive?” Thus the early Army’s pragmatic approach to presenting the Gospel, and its desire to provide basic human needs to the impoverished, led to the establishment of many charitable ministries, to include soup kitchens, shelters, schools, and children’s homes.

In American culture, the church of today may be guilty of many of the same sins of the 19th century church, and even now, struggles with a poor reputation. Congregations have fled impoverished, inner-city communities in favor of wealthy, tidy suburbs, or “walled themselves in” to their church buildings. Here’s a question to consider: what would inner-city communities be like today, if we had stayed the course? Would we appear to be “insignificant, out-of-touch, and irrelevant”, as we are accused of being today? The Western Church in this age appears, to the outside observer, to be preoccupied with organizational prosperity and slick marketing and media, and not overly concerned with the salvation of men, women, and children.

In many communities, Army corps congregations have succumbed to this kind of neglect, yet gravitate toward a preoccupation with Sunday Worship attendance and statistics, leading exhausted officers to embrace an “any and all means necessary” approach to get people behind the doors of the church on a Sunday morning, and their appointments on the “Top Ten” report. According to Reggie McNeal, author of The Present Future, “You can build the perfect church—and they still won’t come.”

Is Sunday Church attendance the litmus for success? It definitely was not for the early Church, or for the early Army; it’s probably not a good success indicator for today’s Army, either. I would say that the early Army’s success was due in part to their reluctance to confine their worship and witness to a particular time and place. A study of history seems to suggest that early success was based on how many soldiers, moved by compassion and a Great Commission (see Matthew 28:19), got outside the church building, and into the streets and homes of the people of their community. Catherine Booth, in her lectures on Practical Religion, spoke of Jesus’ Kingdom-building strategy this way: “He chose men from amongst the people to be workers together with Himself, and sent them out into the byways and hedges, the fields, the marketplace, the seashore, and the hillside; in short, He sent them wherever the people were to be got at. Oh! if the Church had steadily adhered to the tactics of our Lord, who can tell whether the kingdoms of this world would not long since have been subjected to His sway?”

Jesus came preaching a gospel of reclamation. In the first chapter of Acts, He reiterated His intention to send the church beyond their known world, saying to His followers, “…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. 2” The early church was successful as they were empowered by the Holy Spirit, and sent out into the world around them. In the same lecture, Catherine Booth challenged soldiers to “become all things to [the people] in order to win them. If they will not come inside our consecrated buildings, we must get at them in unconsecrated ones.”

Our movement wasn’t called into being just to imitate an ineffective church model; it seems that the Lord raised up The Salvation Army as a remedy to that. Nevertheless, “We have stood to our stereotyped forms, refusing to come down from the routine of our forefathers, although this routine has ceased to be attractive to the people, and may, in many instances, be the very thing that drives them away. 3” In this age of fancy Army facilities, slick church-growth campaigns, and “40 days of This, That, or the Other Thing”, I wonder if the present-day Army is neglecting its rich heritage of soul-reclamation and Kingdom-building.

Human suffering, Godlessness, and all manner of social evils are normative in communities surrounding Salvation Army worship halls; there’s a high probability that all of the combustive elements which were present in the East End of London in the mid-1800’s, are present in Army communities today. Fortunately, the richness of God’s grace and mercy is there, too. The present day Army’s challenge is to allow the Holy Spirit to rekindle the passion in our hearts (He’s the only one who can do it), to rediscover the vision of the early Army (through courageous and thoughtful dialogue), to get ourselves and our comrades into the community, and to fan those 144 year old sparks and embers back into flame.


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1 Needham, Phil. Community In Mission: A Salvationist Ecclesiology. (The Campfield Press, 1987) 4.
2 Peterson, Eugene. The Message Bible. (Navpress, 2003) Acts 1:8.
3 Booth, Catherine. Lecture. Practical Religion: Aggression. 101, Queen Victoria St. London. 1879


 

 

 

 

   

 

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