What happens when you get a pastor who doesn’t relate emotionally to their congregation? How can that work or be healthy? Shouldn’t the pastor of a church, the minister to a congregation, care deeply and passionately about the people in their care? What happens when that person is me? I am someone who doesn’t particularly…
Every corps (local church) needs to be planting and re-planting on a rolling cycle. A corps should be continually reflecting on its embodiment in the local context at a minimum of every ten years. An easy and cost-effective way to keep a corps is through Micro-Planting. Micro-Planting focuses on grassroots church growth and isn’t dependent…
Donald Trump has, for better or worse, made himself someone that history will remember. But his bizarre and dangerous rise to power did not come from nowhere. Trump is both the cause and the consequence of a culture. He is an embodiment of the Trickster. A person who both forms and is informed by the…
The Salvation Army is a Christian Church and Charity. It’s members are called Salvationists. But what is Salvationism? What are the distinctives of Salvationist life, faith, and culture? Is there a difference between The Salvation Army and Salvationism? We can find some answers from the work of Shaw Clifton. Foundations of Identity and How the…
Why was William Booth scared of Brengle? This question reveals a culture of anti-education that existed win the Army for almost a hundred years. Samuel Logan Brengle is one of the most significant figures in Salvation Army theology. His writing inspired, and continues to inspire, Salvationist holiness theology around the world. He was famous as…
Yes, but only if it makes it happen. It will not happen naturally. If The Salvation Army is going to have gender equality it will need to choose to change things. The Salvation Army has a responsibility to do better with gender equality. Particularly for women in ministry. This is a theological imperative. The Army…
There are no priests needed in The Salvation Army. That time has gone. The life, death, and resurrection of Christ has changed that. But still the language of priesthood has clung on in Christian churches and ideas of ministry. No Priests Needed – Everyone Is a Priest When the Army first began, it pushed back…
You, I, and everyone else in the world have a vocation. But what is a vocation? I’m not talking about some kind of preordained task that everyone has to fulfil. Instead, what I mean is that everyone has something they can do. Each person has a way they can be human that uniquely participates in…
A question that Christians have been asking for two thousand years is to what degree a Christian must obey the government. There has not been a consistent answer, and there is still a broad disagreement over the question. But of course, like everything in life, the question itself is not actually as simple as it…
The staggering expansion of the early Salvation Army from the United Kingdom to the rest of the world was driven to a great degree by individual initiative rather than formal planning. The story of the Army in Jamaica is an example of that kind of faithful initiative and personal commitment to evangelism which shaped the…