Yesterday (Wednesday, November 20th, 2024), I had the privilege of participating in the Tri-Territory Webinar series for The Salvation Army. Along with colleagues from New Zealand (Captain Steve Molen) and Australia (Captain Natalie Frame), we discussed what is distinctive about faith communities and the creative edges of mission and ministry in our countries and contexts….
Spiritual Warfare is one of those topics that gets people either all hot and bothered or makes them scoff and turn their noses up. But I think the reality of spiritual warfare is not ghost-busting or fighting demons like a Marvel character. In this piece I’m going to try and give another dimension to what…
The Salvation Army is a holiness movement. It’s radical commitment to sanctification as the privilege of every believer has impacted it’s emphasis on the Priesthood of all Believers. Introduction and Context The Salvation Army has historically understood itself as a movement of saved and sanctified people committed to a world war against evil to usher…
The General of The Salvation Army, Lynden Buckingham, has called for a new global strategy. It’s intention is to mobilize the Army for mission through increasing its governance, improving it’s structures, freeing it’s recourses, and empowering it’s members. This is my reflection on it. Introduction At the moment, an overview page and a short video…
There are lessons to be learned for ministry, particularly church leadership, from military history. Here are seven lessons for ministry from military history highlighting key elements of church leadership and ministry more generally. 1 – Thermopylae and the 300: Not Everyone in Ministry is Remembered. Remembered in films and comic books, the final stand of…
This post makes no claims about whether the reader should adopt Christian Anarchism as a political philosophy, nor does it argue that The Salvation Army should be organised around its principles. Rather, this article seeks to set out what Christian Anarchism is, its biblical roots, and its relationship to The Salvation Army today. The basic…
At the moment The Salvation Army is experiencing a culture war. To understand what that means, and how it might be resolved, we need to understand how culture wars work and the essentially theological nature of culture wars. What Is A Culture War? At its heart, a culture war is an argument over the identity…
For a Salvation Army Officer, part of life is moving from one role to another with some frequency throughout their career. But each move brings with it a whole range of complexities, anxieties, and opportunities, which makes for a heady mix of emotions, especially when combined with the loss of the previous appointment and the…
The Bible tells us to love the Lord with all our heart, strength, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37). But we often forget how to worship God with all our mind. Be Prepared to Give a Reasoned Argument During our last Recovery Church meeting, questions were asked about baptism and freedom and faith and temptation and…
The grass is not always greener on the other side. The grass is greener where we water it. The Spiritual Danger of Looking Sideways It is easy when we look at colleagues and friends, at other people’s situations, at celebrities or neighbours, to think how much better things are for them than for me. Maybe…