JAC Online

The Lost Passion
by Major Howard Webber
part 1 of a 3 part series

  

We cleared the last lamp post in the World – Invercargill (New Zealand) - on a boisterous dark evening when General Booth came on board. I saw him walking backward in the dusk over an uneven wharf, his cloak blown upward, tulip fashion, over his grey head, while he beat a tambourine in the face of the singing, weeping and praying crowd who had come to see him off…I saw no more of him till I picked up my P. and O., which happened to be his for Colombo, at Adelaide. …I talked much with him during that voyage. Like the young ass I was, I expressed my distaste at his appearance on Invercargill wharf.

‘Young feller,’ he replied, ‘if I thought I could win one more soul to the Lord by walking on my head and playing the tambourine with my toes, I’d…I’d learn how.’

- ‘Something of Myself’ by Rudyard Kipling

 

‘Soul saving is our avocation, the great purpose and business of our lives,’ Booth wrote to his soldiers[1]

 

Founding Passion

The passion of the early Salvation Army was that of its founder - to get people saved, saved from a fate far worse than death, whatever the cost, however difficult the task. What has happened? Jesus Christ’s mission statement was a very simple brief one, ‘The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost,’ (Luke 19:10) and he called us to be partners in finding men for him, ‘go and make disciples of all nations’. (Matthew 28:19) St Paul referred to us as “fellow workers with God.” (2 Corinthians 6:1) Christ’s greatest desire was and is to see men and women reconciled to God. He made it quite clear too that it was indeed man’s greatest need, and that they could only be reconciled to God through him.

 

We do a wonderful work providing social care and helping the community; we are loved and appreciated for the good we are seen to do, all commendable. But where is the conviction, the passion, the burden that we once had for the lost? What has happened to the prime purpose for which God created this army? Has the objective on which our movement was founded been smothered by a multitude of other objectives, interests and concerns? 

 

The things that distract

It was George F. Dempster who wrote, ‘All about us are the means of fulfilling God’s high purposes, but we miss them, being so preoccupied by lesser things, to which we ignorantly attach such importance, that they entirely blind us to the things of real value.[2] Again, ‘he calls us to be ‘fishers of men.’ This is his commission still to the Church on earth. But we are too busy, too encumbered, too distracted often, to even hear his voice.”[3]

 

So often, it seems to me, that we are more concerned with ourselves as a movement; our image, promoting ourselves, worrying about our future as our numbers diminish, and maintaining the public’s financial support for the good we do, than the eternal welfare of those who are lost. Look at the reaction that occurs when we have a financial crisis, yet how exercised are we for the far more serious ongoing crisis that there is of millions eternally lost around us? ‘Loyalty to organisations, movements, has always tended over time to take the place of loyalty to the person of Christ.’[4]

 

Passion rediscovered

Jesus said, ‘Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’ (Matthew 16:25) I believe his words apply to both corporate groups of believers and individuals. Christ’s heart was filled with compassion at the sight of the multitudes; ‘they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.’ (Matthew 9:36) When he looked upon Jerusalem he wept over it, crying, ‘if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace.’ (Luke 19:41-42) Is that how we feel when we look at the crowds in the high street, the faces in the queue in the supermarket, those on the bus or train? I believe that if we were much more concerned and burdened for the issues that concern and burden God most, we would be a far more God-honouring army, and God would honour us and take care of us, as he promised he would; ‘those who honour me I will honour.’ (1 Samuel 2:30)

 



[1] The Salvationist, January 1879

[2] George F Dempster ‘Lovest Thou Me?’ p128   Hodder & Stoughton

[3] George F Dempster ‘Until He Find It’ p44 Hodder & Stoughton.

[4] Francis Schaeffer   letter 12th Nov 1954

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

   

 

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