Being a soldier is more than a form of membership or a way to belong. It is a vocation. It is not the only vocation that God calls people to, nor is it a higher or more important vocation than any other vocation. However, it is a distinct vocation.

What is a Vocation?

Vocation is how God has called a person to be holy in their particular context.

Jesus calls everyone to come and follow him. When we say yes, we become a disciple. In becoming a disciple, we commit to obedience in following Jesus. To follow Jesus means to work out what it means to be a disciple.

To follow Jesus means to be holy because Jesus is holy.

It is not just about what we do, it is about who we are. Once we know who we are, we can determine how to be, and then we can decide what to do. Everyone who follows Jesus has been made a new creation in Christ. This is who we are: a child of God. In consequence, we are called to he holy.

Being holy doesn’t mean being separated from the world, being perfect, or being morally pure. Being holy means being profoundly filled and transformed by the love of Jesus so that we commit our lives to being a neighbour for people in need. The love of God is both perfect and perfecting. To fully experience God’s love through sanctification is to enter into participation in Christ, which is to be continually transformed ever more closely into the likeness of Christ. Loving God and loving our neighbour is what it means to be holy. How do we know this? Because only God is holy, and God exists entirely for that which is not God. So to be holy is to be directed towards others.

Once we understand this, we can begin to determine what we are meant to do as a result. This is what Paul discusses in Philippians 2:12, where he tells us to work out our own salvation. He is not telling us to work out how we are to be saved, nor is he telling us to save ourselves. He is telling us to work out the logical consequences of being saved and then apply them in our lives.

Called To Holiness

This is what we mean when we speak about the vocation of Soldiership. For some people, working out how they should live as God’s holy people means becoming a soldier. This is not for everyone. Not everyone needs to be a soldier. But for some, being a soldier is part of their vocation to holiness.

Being a soldier is not simply being a member of The Salvation Army. It’s not more than that, but it is different. For those people who find becoming a soldier is the way they are meant to be holy in the world, that is, those people who have the vocation of Soldiership, they are committing themselves to a particular way of living in the world. This includes the lifestyle requirements of soldiership and commitment to believe and uphold the doctrines and regulations of The Salvation Army. This is well known, although many struggle to be faithful to those promises.

However, for those who do fall short of perfection (everyone!), we can rest assured in the covenantal nature of soldiership. To become a soldier is not just a series of promises that we make to the Army. Becoming a soldier means entering into a covenant with God. This covenant is every bit as serious as the officer’s covenant or any other covenant for that matter.

We enter into it with hope, so that as Called to be a Soldier says, these promises are more a statement of intent and a target to aim for, than they are a stick to beat up people who make mistakes or fall short of their goal. The Bible tells us that even though we are frequently false, despite our faithlessness, God remains true and faithful to the covenant-relationship God makes with us. This is the root of God’s righteousness, the Greek word for which can also be translated as covenant-faithfulness.

But if we think soldiership is only about a series of lifestyle promises, doctrinal beliefs, and obedience to an organisational hierarchy, we miss out on what the whole point of soldiership is. The vocation of soldiership is not just about not doing some things or believing other things. That reduces it to a pale shadow of what it is meant to be. Soldiership is about a radical commitment to living a life of active love in the world.

Radical Soldiership

In the early Army, the rapid growth of the Army was due to its soldiers. Wherever they went, Army soldiers lived their lives for Jesus. They witnessed to the transforming power of God in their lives. They actively sought to bring the people around them to know Jesus and experience the transformation that could be theirs. It was frequently soldiers who started new corps in towns, cities, and countries where the Army had not even officially started the work. It was soldiers who evangelised, who carried out pastoral care, who supported their friends and colleagues, and who worked to sustain and grow the work of the Army. This doesn’t mean that non-soldiers can’t do those things. But it does mean that soldiers are specifically called to these things.

When people say there is a problem with leadership in the Army today, that there are not enough officers or envoys, we need to look at the number of people becoming soldiers and how soldiership is understood.

We need a return to focusing on the vocation of soldiership. We need soldiers who are committed to a radical way of showing love in the world. We need soldiers who are committed to sharing the love of God with people everywhere they go. We need soldiers who are passionate and committed to ministry and mission, who will start new initiatives without always asking permission or waiting for an employee to do it instead.

An Army that rediscovers the vocation of soldiership is one which will rediscover the powerhouse which propelled it across the world in the first place. We need to see soldiership as an expression of the vocation to holiness.

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