JAC Online

Integrated Mission:
The Salvation Army's Opportunity To Participate In God's Renewal of Vancouver
by Jonathan Evans

  
The Salvation Army is widely known as a social service provider despite its roots in Christian mission and evangelism. The founder, William Booth, foresaw the tension between these supposedly different spheres vividly stating, “If you want my social work, you have got to have my religion; they are joined together like Siamese twins, to divide them is to slay them.”[1] Indeed, Christian witness and evangelism is compromised without a Spirit-led and biblically centred concern for people and vice versa as, “there is no participation in Christ without participation in his mission to the world.”[2] Leslie Newbigin makes the case for the integration between the spiritual and social spheres; “Christian programs for justice and compassion are severed from their proper roots… and so lose their character as signs of the presence of Christ and risk becoming mere crusades fuelled by a moralism that can become self-righteous. And the life of the worshipping congregation, severed from its proper expression in compassionate service to the secular community around it, risks becoming a self-centered existence serving only the needs and desires of its members.”[3] This paper will argue that an integrated mission of the spiritual and social dimensions is necessary for survival of The Salvation Army in our secular, post-Christian world by recapturing its theology, history and Christological mission to “win the world for Jesus.”
 
Theology As Foundation For Mission
 
At the apex of Christendom and at the onset of the university, theology was held in high regard as, “queen of the sciences,” acting as the foundation of the Trivium and Quadrivium that students were expected to study. The foundation for sciences and social work were birthed from a Christian worldview. Alister McGrath reminds us that the Christian teachings of creation and holism against platonic dualism birthed modern science known as the Foster thesis.[4] It is from modern science that the social sciences emerged and continue to have a theological root in civil rights. Yet, in today’s secular worldview, Christian theology must not assume that it is in a place of authority. Hirsch, however, gives hope to the current position of the church; “vital movements arise always in the context of rejection by the predominant institutions (e.g., Wesley and Booth).”[5] David Bosch highlights that a marginalized view of Christianity is the predominant landscape for the church and missions:
 
Strictly speaking one ought to say that the Church is always in a state of crisis and that its greatest shortcoming is that it is only occasionally aware of it… This ought to be the case because of the abiding tension between the church’s essential nature and its empirical condition… That there were so many centuries of crisis-free existence for the Church was therefore an abnormality… And if the atmosphere of crisislessness still lingers on in the many parts of the West, this is simply the result of a dangerous delusion. Let us also know that to encounter crisis is to encounter the possibility of truly being the Church.[6]
 
Christian theology has historically interpreted the world as its mission field. Seemingly there is a problem in the world where people needlessly suffer through oppression, famines, wars and neglect. Noting Augustine, John Calvin, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, the Puritan tradition and Karl Barth, Niebuhr discovers they try to convert the values and goals of secular culture into the service of the kingdom of God.[7] Yet, in a world that has moved on from the influences of Christianity and is increasingly sceptical if not antagonistic, integrating Christ and culture is hardly an easy project. Defining culture, however, can help progress the human project as a spiritual and social enterprise. Brunner defines culture as “that which man does beyond biological necessity.”[8] Theologian Donald Bloesch asserts that “[Culture] can also be defined theologically. In this sense culture is the task appointed to humans to realize their destiny in the world in service to the glory of God.”[9] Consequently, Christians should view social work as the cultural mandate from God to continue the creation and redemption project in which God unwaveringly utilizes both reverent and secular humans. Some evangelicals incorrectly interpret eschatology as an escape or final act of God to set things right that rids them of responsibility for social action or creation stewardship. In reviewing the four major eschatological perspectives, however, Finger concludes:
 
All evangelical eschatologies anticipate significant degrees of continuity between our present earth and future world. To be sure, this contrasts greatly with what seems to be believed in some evangelical churches: that our ultimate destiny is an immaterial, spaceless heaven, and that our present earth will be wholly destroyed. Wherever these views may come from, they have no sound foundation in either evangelical theology or Scripture.[10]
 
Therefore, with the earth as God’s eternal enterprise for his care and concern for humanity, a robust eschatological vision allows for Christians to realize their participation in the renewal of the whole earth.
 
True theology is expressed in praxis. Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity describes the noted difference between rich, the middle class and particularly the doctors who would flee when their town was struck by plague. Christians, however, usually among the poorest, would stay and care for the sick, including those who were neither Christians, nor their own family members, nor in any other way obviously connected to them.[11] Christians explained it was “natural” for them to care compassionately because the God they discovered through Jesus is self-giving love. The trajectory of Christian history to this day is filled with examples of service stemming from a theological understanding of the world and humanity. Notably, “The origins of The Salvation Army lie in such concerns for the poor, whose situation its founders believed could be alleviated by combining evangelism and social action. William Booth’s remarkable book In Darkest England [and The Way Out] drew attention to the social deprivation experienced by millions [at home] in England in the 1890s... The movement pursued its twin tacks of revivalist evangelism and social action.”[12] In Vancouver, The Salvation Army was the first holiness movement established in claiming, “holiness as its distinguishing doctrine and social work as its public manifestation.”[13] It was not just social work that attracted people to The Salvation Army:
 
The Salvation Army’s blend of enthusiasms of revivalistic Methodism along with Booth’s military innovations attracted many Methodists who were disillusioned with the modern changes in their church… The rapid growth of urban centres, in which the Salvation Army had most appeal, also played a key role in its expansion in Canada… The relative strength of the Salvation Army in British Columbia was due to several factors. Its fervency and unorthodox style were well suited to the rough new urban environment in which most of the inhabitants lived. In Vancouver, hundreds of converts, mostly single men, were gained in the first few years, as large crowds of curious onlookers followed the singing, drum-beating officers to the primitive opera house to join services that where characterized by boisterous enthusiasm and spontaneity… Moreover, the army always retained strong traits of its English origins, and while not holding much appeal for the large numbers of non-British immigrants in the rest of western Canada, it was attractive to many of the British immigrants of British Columbia.[14]
 
It was this ability of The Salvation Army to capitalize on British Victorian culture and urban venues along with its appeal to the lower classes that it endeavoured to “purify the moral atmosphere.”[15] The War Cry, the Army’s weekly newspaper claimed to sanctify commonplaces:
 
The genius of the Army has been from the first that it has secularized religion, or rather that it has religionized secular things… On the one hand it has brought religion out of the clouds into everyday life, and has taught the world that we may and ought to be as religious about our eatings and drinkings and dressing as we are about our prayings. On [the] other hand it has taught that there is no religion in a place or in an attitude. A house or a store or factory can be just as holy a place as a church; hence we have commonly preferred to engage a secular place for our meetings… our greatest triumphs have been witnessed in theatres, music halls, rinks, breweries, saloons, stores and similar places.[16]
 
Winston concludes, “The Army’s spectacles, pageants, films, and slide shows were vehicles for explaining its brand of religion and social service both to donors and spiritual seekers. The effort succeeded – especially with the former, members of the middle and upper classes, who saw the Army providing a vital public service.”[17] Today, however, Vancouver is far removed from its British Victorian roots and is confronted with secularization.[18] Newbegin instructs that we “Recognize the most urgent contemporary mission field is to be found in their own traditional heartlands, and that the most aggressive paganism with which they have to engage is the ideology that now controls the “developed” world.”[19] However, a recovered two pronged approach of social work and secularized spirituality may prove as effective as it did one hundred years ago.
 
Christology As Foundation For Integrated Mission
 
The theology of integrated mission is derived from the integrated person Jesus Christ. The centre of the story of God’s redemption is in the person, message and mission (including the crucifixion and resurrection) of Jesus. Ross Hastings begins his section Discovering Shalom in Missional God, Missional Church with an anecdote: “Ivan Illich was asked what he thought was the most radical way to change society; was it through violent revolution or gradual reform? He gave a careful answer. Neither. Rather, he suggested that if one wanted to change society, then one must tell an alternative story.”[20] Most modern stories end with death being the final end of humans. God as author of the story, however, has stepped into history to introduce a new form of existence; “now his [Jesus’s] humanity is of a different order, no longer orientated toward mere earthly existence. His new humanity is oriented toward a new creation in which heaven and earth are in perfect union. Jesus now is in a body that is prototypical of the resurrection bodies Paul speaks of in 1 Cor 15:42-44.”[21] The true story of Jesus confronts us with the reality of death but also the hope of resurrection. That is, Jesus is the significant key towards the notable crisis humanity is in: death. Rather than choosing social work or spiritual renewal as the project for saving humans, Jesus integrates both approaches in his person, message of the Kingdom of God and his mission. In Christ we see the perfect union of the spiritual and physical because in that integration humanity is re-integrated into whole beings. Wendell Berry corrects the often mistaken evangelical dualism between body and soul:
 
The formula given in Genesis 2:7 is not man = body + soul; the formula there is soul = dust + breath. According to this verse, God did not make a body and put a soul into it, like a letter into an envelope. He formed man of dust; then, by breathing his breath into it, He made the dust live. The dust, formed as man and made to live, did not embody a soul: it became a soul. “Soul” here refers to the whole creature. Humanity is thus presented to us, in Adam not as a creature of two discrete parts temporarily glued together but as a single mystery.”[22]
 
Considering the proper understanding of mankind as a single entity, integrated as a physical, relational and spiritual being, missional work must address the whole person. Relying on the Anthanasian argument against Arius is helpful here. Anthanasius rightly argued that Jesus must have had a physical body if the atonement were to have any effect on the resurrection of the Christian. Jesus, by being fully human and divine, offers a full salvation to the entire person so that every faculty of the person may experience regeneration and eternal life. Consequently, Christianity that does not address the whole person misses out on the intention of God’s restoration.
 
Jesus’s first declaration after his baptism and temptation in the gospel of Mark begins, “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:14-15, NRSV, emphasis added). Utilizing the militaristic language of the time, Jesus is announcing himself as a new ruler. “The term [good news] is generally used to declare the news of something that has happened to rescue and deliver people from peril.”[23] NT Wright observes, “This can only mean that Israel’s God himself is arriving at last, to renew and restore his people… Israel’s God is now becoming king – Israel’s dream come true. But Jesus is talking about God becoming king in order to explain the things he himself is doing. He isn’t pointing away from himself to God. He is pointing to God in order to explain his own actions.”[24] In Christ and therefore in Christianity you cannot separate the person from his message and his mission. Jesus begins his ministry with another proclamation centred on himself and his activity:
 
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
(Luke 4:18 – 19, NRSV)
 
The Kingdom that is announced in Mark is expounded upon in Luke’s gospel. Again, the good news is explicitly expressed in a great reversal for the poor, captives, blind and oppressed. Jesus’s ministry follows his proclamation where he will do such things. Just like in the Exodus God reveals his power over seeming powers through his mighty deeds: healings, signs and miracles. The final power to be defeated that holds humanity captive is death itself. Jesus spoke openly about his crucifixion and resurrection and its function in Luke 9:22, “saying, ‘The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.’” Mysteriously through Jesus’s atonement he has become the “mediator of creation” instituting a new world order where resurrection, not death, is the final act. Moltmann explains, “If Christ is the foundation for the salvation of the whole creation, then he is also the foundation of creation’s very existence. If being the foundation of salvation, he is all creation’s goal, then he has been its foundation from eternity.”[25] It is to this reality that Jesus calls humanity to “repent” and “believe.” Though highly specific and centred on one person, Jesus, the salvation and kingdom he institutes is universal. Moltmann expands on Jesus’ creative mediation as a holistic and integrated salvation for the whole world, “the salvation experienced and revealed through him is related, not merely to believers, and not merely to men and women, but to the whole of reality. Christ came ‘to his own home’ (John 1.11), not into a strange land. That is why even though Christians are ‘strangers and sojourners’ in this perverted world, they too are at home in God’s real creation as its true citizens. The experience of salvation makes the extension of the experience of salvation to the whole of existence and to ‘all things’ necessary. Salvation is liberating because it includes everything, accepting all things into an all-embracing hope.”[26] It is into this all embracing hope that believers are citizens of the Kingdom of God. This kingdom is surprisingly a reversal of the world’s power dynamics found in Jesus’s teachings. This task of discipleship is “to embody the message of Jesus, the Founder. In other words, this is the strategic element and therefore a good place to start. C. S. Lewis rightly understood that the purpose of the church was to draw people to Christ and make them like Christ.”[27] Hirsch continues to stress the essential task of making disciples because this task is where Jesus “invested most of his time and energy, namely in the selection and development of that motley band of followers on whose trembling shoulders he lays the entire redemptive movement that would emerge from his death and resurrection.”[28] Without that investment the disciples would likely have been a lost cause. Robert Coleman ensures that to realize the goal of Jesus we must think in long-term discipleship:
 
Here is where we must begin just like Jesus. It will be slow, tedious, painful and probably unnoticed by men at first, but the end result will be glorious, even if we don't live to see it. Seen this way, though, it becomes a big decision in the ministry. One must decide where he wants his ministry to count-in the momentary applause of popular recognition or in the reproduction of his life in a few chosen men who will carry on his work after he has gone. Really it is a question of which generation we are living for.[29]
Disciples then have a specific calling to adhere to Jesus Christ while also realizing their participation in God’s universal renewal. Christopher Wright addresses the fact that it is God’s mission, not the church’s:
 
Mission is not ours; mission is God’s. Certainly, the mission of God is the prior reality out of which flows any mission that we get involved in. Or, as has been nicely put, it is not so much the case that God has a mission for His church in the world but that God has a church for His mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission—God’s mission.[30]
 
The church is hardly alone in this endeavour. Moltmann assures us that people are integrated into the history of the Trinity, “Through the Spirit of Christ they not only become participators in the eschatological history of the new creation. Through the Spirit of the Son they also become at the same time participants in the Trinitarian history of God himself.”[31] Hastings likewise demonstrates that the church is in mission through the Holy Spirit: “The grand motif of Acts is that the church is able to have a missionary witness because it is baptized in the Spirit, endued with the Spirit’s power, and led and sometimes nudged forcefully by the restless, missional Spirit. The church’s pneumatic saturation and orientation is undeniably evident: it exists and continues because of the Holy Spirit’s work. It is the Spirit who gathers new converts and incorporates them into new church communities.”[32] Thus it is the work of God’s Spirit in the church to embody the message and mission of Jesus. The Salvation Army’s ecclesiological document is rightly titled Community in Mission. Needham focuses on the unity of the church in mission quoting the Salvation Army’s founder Catherine Booth, “God cares very little about our sectarian differences and divisions. The great main thing is the love of God and the service of humanity.”[33] Citing William Booth’s love of innovation and adaptability Needham commends that specialized mission teams commit together for a particular community ministry. These teams are to strengthen commitment to the universal gospel, attract persons with specific needs in order to effectively implement the ministry of evangelism, and organize for spiritual battle:
 
Because modern Christian warfare must take place in a shifting, pluralistic terrain, it requires a ‘guerilla style’ which relies on the strategies of smaller commando units which are adaptable to the exigencies of the war. It also requires disciplined units which understand their military objectives and maintain combat readiness. The mission team is ideally suited for this disciplined pursuit of objectives and the adaptation of structure and method to the needs of the battlefield.[34]
 
The Salvation Army is well poised with its urban, missional DNA and urban history to cultivate such teams. By integrating intentional disciples who armed with the gospel, filled with the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus with The Salvation Army’s social ministries, many conquests await. Today in Vancouver the restructuring of a thrift store, family services, women’s recovery, social housing centred in a new church community, Boundless Vancouver, presents the opportunity to provide holistic discipleship and present an open sign of the radical transformation of personal and social relationships in the light of the Kingdom’s future.
 
William Booth’s famous mantra of “Soap, Soup and Salvation” was about the loving care shown to the whole person to ready them for spiritual renewal. Today, in Vancouver, few would express their interest in the church but many do express concern for the marginalized, for social issues and are supportive of the pragmatic outworking of the gospel that Salvationists undertake. A crisis is at hand, however: like the YMCA in Canada many years ago the social ministries of the Army are poised to eclipse or rid its evangelical foundations by mere budgets and public relations. However, by reframing itself in its theological, historical and Christological callings it is poised to keep Salvation in The Salvation Army.
 
 


 
Bibliography
 
Berry, Wendell. Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community. New York: Pantheon, 1992.
Bloesch, Donald G.  Freedom for Obedience: Evangelical Ethics in Contemporary Times. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987.
Burkinshaw, Robert K. Pilgrims in Lotus Land: Conservative Protestantism in British Columbia, 1917 – 1981. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995.
Brunner, Emil. Christianity and Civilization. London: Nisbet, 1948.
Coleman, Robert. The Master Plan of Evangelism. Grand Rapids: Revel, 1993.
Finger, Tom. “Evangelicals, Eschatology and the Environment,” Scholars Circle Monograph 2, Evangelical Environmental Network (1998): 27.
Green, Roger. War on Two Fronts: The Redemptive Theology of The Salvation Army. London: Salvation Army Supplies & Publishing, 1989.
Hastings, Ross. Missional God, Missional Church: Hope for Re-evangelizing the West. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2012.
Hirsch, Alan. The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006.
Keller, Tim. Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012.
Needham, Phil. Community in Mission: A Salvationist Ecclesiology. London: The Salvation Army, 1987.
Newbigin, Lesley. The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Revised Edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.
Mackey, Lloyd. “Shifting Stats Tour Shook the Church, But Also Provided Grounds for hope” The Church for Vancouver, May 14, 2014. Accessed November 10, 2014, http://churchforvancouver.ca/shifting-stats-tour-shook-the-church-but-also-provided-grounds-for-hope/.
McGrath, Alister. A Scientific Theology: Nature. New York: T&T Clark, 2007.
________. Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007.
Moltmann, Jürgen. The Trinity and the Kingdom. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.
Stark, Rodney. The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Winston, Diane. “All the World’s Stage: The Performed Religion of The Salvation Army, 1880 – 1920.” In Practicing Religion in the Age of the Media. Edited by, Stewart M. Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark, 113-137. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Wright, Christopher J. H.  The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006.
Wright, N. T.. How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2012.
 


[1] Roger Green, War on Two Fronts: The Redemptive Theology of The Salvation Army (London: Salvation Army Supplies & Publishing, 1989), 128.
[2] Willingen Conference of the International Missionary Council (1952), Quoted in, Lesley Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, Rev. Ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 1.
[3] Newbigin, The Open Secret, 11.
[4] Alister McGrath, A Scientific Theology: Nature (New York: T&T Clark, 2007), 138-40.
[5] Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006), 56.
[6] David Bosch, Quoted in Ibid., 49.
[7] H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper, 1951).
[8] Emil Brunner, Christianity and Civilization (London: Nisbet, 1948), 142.
[9] Donald G. Bloesch, Freedom for Obedience: Evangelical Ethics in Contemporary Times (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 54.
[10] Tom Finger, “Evangelicals, Eschatology and the Environment,” Scholars Circle Monograph 2, Evangelical Environmental Network (1998): 27.
[11] Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 161.
[12] Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007), 325.
[13] Robert K. Burkinshaw, Pilgrims in Lotus Land: Conservative Protestantism in British Columbia, 1917 – 1981 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 33.
[14] Ibid., 33-34.
[15] Diane Winston, “All the World’s Stage: The Performed Religion of The Salvation Army, 1880 – 1920” In Practicing Religion in the Age of the Media, eds. Stewart M. Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 115.
[16] American War Cry, September 23, 1896, 8.
[17] Winston, “All the Word’s Stage”, 132.
[18] Lloyd Mackey, “Shifting Stats Tour Shook the Church, But Also Provided Grounds for hope” The Church for Vancouver, May 14, 2014, accessed November 10, 2014, http://churchforvancouver.ca/shifting-stats-tour-shook-the-church-but-also-provided-grounds-for-hope/.
[19] Newbigin, The Open Secret, 10.
[20] Rowland Croucher, Quoted in Ross Hastings, Missional God, Missional Church: Hope for Re-evangelizing the West (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 121.
[21] Ibid., 122.
[22] Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community (New York: Pantheon, 1992), 106.
[23] Tim Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 29.
[24] N. T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2012), 92.
[25] Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 102.
[26] Ibid., 103.
[27] Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, 102.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Robert Coleman, The Master Plan of Evangelism (Grand Rapids: Revel, 1993), 35.
[30] Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006), 62.
[31] Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom, 90.
[32] Hastings, Missional God, Missional Church, 295.
[33] Catherine Booth, Quoted in Phillip Needham, Community in Mission: A Salvationist Ecclesiology. (London: The Salvation Army, 1987), 59.
[34] Ibid., 60-1.