At times like these, when it can feel that everything is getting darker and harder, joy is an act of resistance. Our choice to claim joy for our lives stands in opposition to the kind of dark and sinister powers and principalities which seek to corrupt and destroy us. Choosing Joy as an Act of…
Understanding Theopoetics simply means using poetic forms to practice theology, and I have been reflecting on this a lot lately. Poetic Theology – When Prose Fails Sometimes we don’t have the right words to explain what we believe. Sometimes we are confronted with the infinitely unknowable, uncontainable person of God, and find our response utterly…
The story of how The Salvation Army became conservative is a complicated one, but one which needs to be understood. It is the story of how one of the world’s biggest social service providers left behind its radical roots. Setting the Scene The Salvation Army began with a radical commitment to evangelising the people who…
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…
This is the excerpt for your very first post.
The Bible as we know it today was not written by the original authors. The words are the same, subject to translation and transmission, but the way we read them is very different. When the Bible was written, it was not collected into one book. The individual books of the Bible did not have chapters…
The Salvation Army’s doctrine of holiness has changed over it’s existence. In this article I will track how that belief has developed. The tenth doctrine of The Salvation Army says: We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be wholly sanctified, and that their whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved…
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…
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….
During the Second World War, Salvationists in the military ended up in prisoner-of-war camps. This did not mean they ceased to be Salvationists. For many of them, this was to be the greatest test of their commitment to Salvationist principles. This is the story of one of those groups. The information is taken and adapted…