JAC Online

Great Aunt Sally
by Major Gregory Morgan

Sometimes, when I seek a visual illustration of what The Salvation Army has become, my mind turns to the image of a remarkable, eccentric Great Aunt. She’s wonderful, she would do anything for anyone – but she’s a bit outdated and unusual. We all love her, and the world would be far more dreary and inhospitable without her, but there’s no way we want to be like her!

The Salvation Army in Australia occupies an unprecedented position in terms of public acceptance and popularity for a Christian church, indeed for any organisation. Public surveys reveal that 96 per cent of Australians are favourably inclined toward it. But alongside this is the stark reality that the church aspects of our Movement have been in decline for many years. Attendance and membership figures are dropping. Everyone loves us, but fewer and fewer want to join us.

There are many reasons for the Army’s decline over several decades but a key current issue is the rise of postmodern thought and the need for a new missional Church. What are the implications for the Army?

Australian Salvationist John Cleary has written: ‘The Salvation Army’s practice and worship, as expressed over the past half-century, could be seen to represent all the worst aspects of the “modern”: imperialist, triumphalist, monocultural, inflexible and conformist. It could well stand condemned as a textbook case of an organisation doomed to irrelevance in the early 21st century, widow to a dead 19th century spirit.’
One of the key issues the Army faces is the fact that its militaristic structure, colonial-like world view and hierarchical bureaucracy served us well in the 19th and early 20th century but possibly condemn and doom us for the future.

In Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World, Robert Webber writes: ‘We now live in a transitional time in which the modern world view of the Enlightenment is crumbling and a new world view is beginning to take shape. Some leaders will insist on preserving the Christian faith in its modern form; others will rush headlong into the sweeping changes that accommodate Christianity to postmodern forms; and a third group will carefully and cautiously seek to interface historic Christian truths into the dawning of a new era.’

Commentators observe a pattern of modernist tendencies that the Church has internalised: attendance at church service equals faithfulness; size counts; one size fits all; join the club. At least three of these have been key to the Army.

Firstly, faithfulness and commitment have been measured in terms of attendance at two services on a Sunday and activities during the week. We have become centred on attendance at the corps building as the expression of Church.

Secondly, standardisation – one size fits all – has been common. A catch cry of the Army has been that you can go to an Army meeting anywhere in the world and the worship will be familiar and you will feel at home. Our sub-culture has evolved over many years to such a degree that we are distinct and at times distant from the community around us. We want people to join the club, be like us and spend their time and commitment sustaining what we have.

Thirdly, the easiest mistake The Salvation Army can make is to hold religiously to a modernist worldview and ecclesiology. We must interface historic Christian truth but if we desire to survive as a distinct expression of Church we must seek to interface historic Salvationist essence with the dawning of a new era. Worldview and structure are expendable. Modernist tendencies can be rethought. But the classical essence of what The Salvation Army is must be reclaimed and lived in a postmodern environment.

Let’s consider the emerging missional Church and look for connections with the Army’s original essence.

The emerging missional Church appears as a response to postmodern thinking but also as a result of the changing place of the Church within western society. The Church, and in many respects The Salvation Army, functions from a Christendom model of ministry in a post-christendom world.

Since the 4th century the Christian Church in the west has occupied a place central to society – one of prestige, power and influence. But society has moved on and the Church now exists on the margins, sometimes actively shunned but often seen as largely irrelevant.

The difficulty is that the Church still thinks it lives at the centre of society. Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch write, in The Shaping Of Things To Come: Mission And Imagination For The Emerging Church: ‘The heart of the problem is that we have been planting churches that are (smaller) carbon copies of the already beleaguered, failing Christendom-style church … An emerging missional Church on the other hand has abandoned the old Christendom assumptions and understands its role as an underground movement, subversive, celebratory, passionate, and communal. Mission is not merely an activity of the Church. It is the very heartbeat and work of God … The missional Church, then, is a sent Church. It is a going Church, a movement of God through his people, sent to bring healing to a broken world.’

The same writers articulate three modes for the emerging missional Church: incarnational, leaving its own culture and religious world to infiltrate and transform society; messianic spirituality, no longer dualistic but a spirituality of engagement with culture and the world; and apostolic leadership, an entrepreneurial creative mode of leadership rather than the existing hierarchical models of Church leadership and governance.

In many ways a consideration of these three modes may help The Salvation Army reconnect with its original essence and embrace the postmodern world of mission. The Army is thoroughly rooted historically in the modern world but many aspects of our original essence have potential to connect with postmodern individuals and can be explored through the three modes.

On a surface level The Salvation Army has become highly attractional in its focus, as opposed to incarnational in its mission. We have become programme- and building-centred. Our corps operate from buildings which they expect the community to come to, and are surprised at the limited effectiveness of this method. Our social welfare expression has become large, professional and programme-based. But this is a far cry from the early essence of The Salvation Army, which passionately believed in, and practised, incarnational mission.

Pioneer officers such as Booth-Tucker knew the necessity of incarnational mission, and the impact of the Army in India was largely due to the way in which early officers took on the local lifestyle. The early social work of The Salvation Army was often a localised response to obvious community need. Salvationists practised incarnation, living with and aiding the people around them. The Salvation Army set about transforming society from within rather than following an external attractional model that expected people to come to us. However, over time we have adopted the dominant attractional model of Christendom.

Derek Linsell writes, in Thank God For The Salvos: ‘To communicate the message today, Salvationists must be developing relationships with the unchurched. Ministry in a post-modern society is no longer about the development of programmes but living out the lifestyle so that people can see the relevance of the Salvationist’s belief. This is a major concern for the Movement because the Army is a sub-culture in itself. In reality, few Salvationists have close or intimate friends outside the Movement that they can build quality relationships with.’

Salvationists need to rediscover the call to incarnational mission, which is a key mode for the emerging missional Church.

The concept of messianic spirituality as a mode for the emerging missional church requires some explanation. Frost and Hirsch offer a helpful definition: ‘We use it to describe the Church’s spirituality and activity. It is messianic in that it acts in the same way Jesus acts, it is essentially structured around the person of Jesus, and our actions in some way extend the messianic Kingdom.’

The origins of The Salvation Army are firmly Wesleyan and sit strongly in the holiness movement within 19th century evangelicalism. Central to the Army’s faith and practice is the conviction that people are able, through the Holy Spirit, to be transformed and grow in their likeness to Christ. Coupled with this, the Army at its inception carried a strong belief that this transformation must extend throughout society – bringing about the Kingdom of God in the here and now.

As Cleary recounts: ‘Booth declared the Army was about “the reformation of human nature in every form”. The first requirement was “to change the man when it is his character and conduct which constitute the reasons for his failure in the battle of life”. The second was: “a change [in] the circumstances of the individual when they are the cause of the critical condition and beyond his control”.’

The passing of generations and a growth in internal Church focus have distracted The Salvation Army from these passionate spiritual convictions. A rediscovery of practical holiness and commitment to Kingdom transformation are key for the Army to embrace the possibilities of emerging missional Church.

The third mode of the emerging missional Church, apostolic leadership, also has strong correlations to the early days of our Movement, but on a surface consideration our departure from this mode appears more problematic to address today. Linsell notes that, upon its arrival in Australia in 1880, The Salvation Army ‘was cheeky, daring and creative. The Salvation Army in 1997 is a bureaucracy, made up of conservatives.’

One hundred and twenty five years of mission in Australia necessarily required consolidation, and this was delivered well through the strong control of the militaristic structure. However, daring and innovation do not sit well in a bureaucracy and the apostolic style leadership which resulted in the missionary explosion of The Salvation Army during its first 20 years has been squashed or pushed to the margins of the Movement.

Catherine Booth said: ‘The Army’s success has been built upon the great fundamental principle of adaptation.’ This fundamental principle must be rediscovered for the Army to continue meaningful mission in the post-christendom era. Phil Needham, in Community In Mission: A Salvationist Ecclesiology, reminds the Army of the importance of adaptability in structure, saying that when rituals lose their power to challenge people to respond to God they must be abandoned, along with programmes which once held life but have become stale. ‘The Church,’ he says, ‘is a people who are free to abandon structures that no longer hold promise for helping them to move decisively toward the future. When a decision-making process is so cumbersome as to create missionary inertia and so ingrown as to create self-serving goals, it should be abandoned. When the processes and procedures of ecclesiastical government block forward movement, they should be abandoned.’

In embracing the apostolic mode of the emerging missional Church, the Army needs to harness God-inspired boldness to abandon those processes and structures which cripple and inhibit an incarnational and messianic lifestyle.

Most challenging for a Movement modelled on military lines is the need to move from a ‘hierarchical mentality to a networking mindset’. In an age marked by rapid change, distrust of bureaucracy and a web-like approach to leadership (as demonstrated by the Internet), flat relational networks appear to offer the best model for creative and innovative mission. This type of change will be costly and difficult, but ultimately necessary. The world is changing at a rapid pace and a new form of leadership and ecclesiastical structure is required to engage with this postmodern reality.

Let’s consider what the postmodern Salvation Army might look like.

In the United Kingdom we encounter ALOVE, ‘a new sub-brand of The Salvation Army for young people and young adults ... It expresses the heart and passion of The Salvation Army for a new generation.’ ALOVE is part of the UK Territory’s response to the disturbing decline in the number of young people attending Salvation Army activities over the past 50 years. In establishing a sub-brand and promoting a ‘new expression of Church’, ALOVE recognises that young people ‘don’t always identify ... with the military metaphor, which is often seen as old-fashioned and Victorian. ALOVE is a commitment to building on the essence of The Salvation Army and expressing it in 21st century youth culture.’
Evidence of the web-like networking of the emerging missional Church within The Salvation Army can be found in the 614 phenomena: a series of church communities which began in inner-city Toronto (Canada) in the late 1990s, later appearing also in inner-city Vancouver (Canada), Melbourne (Australia) and Manchester (United Kingdom) and continuing to evolve and appear in new locations.

Melbourne 614 engages in meaningful ministry to the most underprivileged people of the inner-city while developing a relevant expression of Church that is a mix of young and marginalised people. Currently a special ‘Order:614’ is being established for young people who are ‘a group of passionate Christians who, for one year, will live and work together and be abandoned to the cause of winning the City of Melbourne for God … and fight for the lost, the last and the least of our city’.

Also, in outer north-eastern Melbourne you will currently find the first official Salvation Army house church for the Australia Southern Territory, which seeks to be a new form of Salvation Army church, connecting in meaningful mission with its local community. This house church does not hope to become a ‘real’ Salvation Army corps but to ‘coexist peacefully alongside the existing Army, and yet add to and bring benefit to the existing Army’.

The group’s perceived future is different to what would have happened in the past, when it would have ‘graduated’ into a corps with a building and employed staff. Instead, those involved see a developing network of Salvation Army house churches engaged in incarnational mission in their local communities.

So, what of that eccentric Great Aunt we all love but don’t want to be like? Do we care for her into old age and then bury her, along with the values and essence of a Movement that has radically impacted millions of lives across the world over 125 years? Or do we dare allow her essence to live on in a post-modern Salvation Army that has rediscovered itself?