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Marked Urgent!
By Commissioner Wesley Harris
SOME Christians are so laid back about soul-saving as to be
almost horizontal. Evangelism is for ‘some time’; revival can
wait! But the movers and shakers of the Church have
recognized that the need for revival has been urgent.
They have also known that although revivals may be
characterized by the gathering of crowds they are really about
individuals being won for God.
William Booth, the founder of The Salvation Army was one who
had ‘URGENT’ written all over his life.
My mentor as a young officer was retired Commissioner George
Jolliffe who had been a private secretary to William Booth and
had actually lived in his house. He spoke of the
intensity and urgency of the general who was not only
concerned that his soul saving army would continue long after
he was gone but took every opportunity to challenge the
unsaved whenever he met them. His saving passion for people
reached out to the cab or engine driver, the fellow traveler
or the person he met on the street.
Something of the same intensity throbs through Paul’s letters
to Timothy. He would have been aware of the hurrying and
scurrying that would take place before the Emperor visited a
city and he would want Christians to have a similar urgent
zeal to prepare for the second coming of Christ and save the
lost.
We might eavesdrop and listen to the great apostle as with
great earnestness he says, to Timothy, “I give you this
charge: Preach the word, be prepared in season and out of
season…” (2 Timothy 4. 2). This was something much more than a
casual request or a throwaway line. It carried something
of the explosive power of Paul’s pent-up passion and it still
reaches people today.
As a seventeen-year-old I was looking forward to a career in
journalism but attended a session of youth councils. It
would be nice to say that I was arrested by the sermon that
was given but it didn’t happen like that. God led the wife of
our Divisional Youth Secretary to whisper, “What about you,
Wesley?” That was all she said, but amplified by the
Holy Spirit it was powerful. The question reached my
heart.
It was the turning point of my life, the end of my small
ambitions and the discovery of my calling and destiny as a
Salvation Army officer. Had I known them at the time I could
have echoed the words of the poet Rupert Brooke, “Now God be
thanked who has matched us with his hour and caught our youth
and wakened us from sleeping”.
In his charge or parting command to Timothy Paul made clear
that his roles would be many and varied. He had to be
prepared to rebuke, correct and encourage with great patience
and careful instruction. This would be no ‘cushy number’
or soft option and no task for spiritual wimps. In the
Message paraphrase Paul’s dying warning, based on his own
experience, was “You’re going to find out that there will be
times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching
but will fill up with spiritual junk food”.
Christian ministry can take all we’ve got and then some. It
can be demanding and disappointing but I know of nothing more
fulfilling. Of course, the vocation will be as big as
our vision and as large as we make it with God’s help.
We live in what has been called the ‘me generation’ when many
are only out for what they can get. But really it is as
we learn to give that we learn to give. President Harry
Truman said, “The time is ripe for an appeal not to
self-interest but to the hunger for great living which lies at
the heart of everyman. What young people need is not the
chance of getting something for nothing but the opportunity to
give everything for something great”.
It is said that there is no such thing as sacrifice if the
cause is big enough and the hope of a movement like The
Salvation Army may lie in young people who are prepared to
forfeit the comforts of life in the well padded ways of
western society and do it tough in the third world or the
slums of our great cities.
My wife and I visited Brazil and saw the Army at work in
favelas or shantytowns of unspeakable squalor and violence.
There I was humbly proud to share with some young women
officers of whom their leader could say that all they wanted
was to live out their lives among the indescribably needy
people of the slums.
I was privileged to spend some time at the Army’s War College
in Vancouver. It is situated in a district of
unspeakable dereliction with decaying buildings, graffiti,
drugs, broken bottles and broken lives. But young Christians
are ready to spend a year or more living in flea-ridden rooms
and identifying with very needy people. The posh name for this
activity is ‘incarnational ministry’ but in simple terms it
means going where the greatest need is found and living and
loving for Jesus’ sake. These young people go in the
spirit of William Booth who said, “I don’t care how near to
the bottomless pit I go in order to saved mankind”.
A common expression nowadays is "Get a life" and sometimes the
connotation is that people should loosen up and go on a round
of pleasure seeking. But the essence of the call of
Jesus points in a different direction and affirms that,
paradoxically, it is as we lose ourselves in service that we
discover what life is really all about. As we share in the
urgent mission of our Lord we enter into his joy.
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