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Sage Wisdom – Barr (UKI)
by Colonel Ian Barr
The best preparation I had for
retirement came when my younger brother was offered early
retirement from the UK civil service and was immediately
offered a position with the World Bank. He was 56 years old at
the time. The one caveat set by his new employer was that the
job would only last five years because any knowledge he had
acquired previously would be out of date within that period
I realised then that when it came time
to retire my own knowledge and experience would quickly reach
it sell-by date. For that reason, I resolved not to get
involved in either the inner workings of THQ or any other
department of the Army, or to offer myself as a mentor, coach,
confessor, counsellor or advisor to active officers once I had
begun drawing my pension. Having served God and the Army as a
Corps Officer, in training work, as a divisional commander and
finally as secretary for program at THQ, I knew from
experience that things had moved on over the 43 years of my
Officership, and would continue to move on.
Nevertheless, William Booth College
contacted me a few weeks after my retirement and asked if I
would be interested in teaching a module on John’s Gospel, and
Revelation. I love John’s gospel, and because I had to study
it in depth at an earliest stage in my development, I said
yes. It was only after I had accepted the assignment that I
remembered the deficit in my understanding of the book of
Revelation. It was hard work, but to some extent rewarding
personally, to study Revelation for myself and try to write
and present a coherent 24 hours of teaching material. It
couldn’t have been too bad since I was invited to teach the
same module on four successive years. I did not get involved
in the inner workings of the college, or the program that I
had designed 20 years previously. If the college had managed
without me for 16 years, there was no need for any comment or
intervention from me.
When retirement did come, it was a
slightly less straightforward process than I had anticipated.
I had been diagnosed with the most common form of leukaemia in
2008. The disease progressed and in the Autumn of 2010 I began
chemotherapy treatment which caused frequent bouts of
pneumonia and hospitalisation. The Territorial Commander of
the day held my appointment open for me for the best part of
eight months while this was going on. The team I led was
perfectly able to carry it on with the job with minimal input
from me. When I did come back to work, I felt strongly
supported by my colleagues and the territory’s leadership, and
I knew I was loved. It became clear to me by the middle of
2013 that although I still had two years still to serve, I
would need to retire on grounds of ill health at the end of
that year. This was granted and I retired on 6 December 2013.
Three days later my wife and I went on
a Mediterranean cruise with a couple of officer friends. The
ship docked in Haifa and we stayed there overnight. It was not
an intended port of call, but it was a great opportunity for
us to spend a day visiting Galilee. It was for me one of the
most important days in the development of my understanding of
who I am before God. One of our stops was in Capernaum. I was
very tired and so I sat on a plinth while the others toured
the town. It was there that it came to me that the ‘sudden’
calling of the first disciples by the sea of Galilee may have
been more complex than I had imagined. I realised that there
was a very strong probability that the fisherman whom Jesus
called to be his disciples most likely knew him before this
time and had come to trust him as a man and even as a friend.
This resonated profoundly with a question I had been asking
myself over the years. Had I simply grown into the Christian
community and the Christian faith because I had been taken to
the Salvation Army as a baby and had grown up in it? I was not
one of those people who could put a date on my conversion,
although I could identify various points in my use childhood
and youth, and subsequently in my development as an officer,
when I had made commitments to love Jesus more dearly and
follow him more nearly. It had previously occurred to me, but
that day Capernaum I had a strong assurance that I known and
loved and trusted Jesus from my childhood and my conversion
had not been a sudden event. It was a gradual realisation of
who he was and what he required of me, a relationship that had
matured from my first conscious commitment to Jesus at the age
of seven right up to the man I had become at the age of 63.
The second thing I remembered on that
day was that that are many ways in which we confess and live
out our Christian faith and the unity is not the same as
unanimity – a gospel I had preached for many years. So, later
thar afternoon, as we visited the scene of the baptism of
Jesus in the River Jordan, I witnessed the baptism of Russian
orthodox Christians, of Catholic Christians, of Pentecostal
Christians and Charismatic Christians. I am sure that if our
stay by the Jordan had been extended by an hour or two, we
would have seen many more branches of the True Vine
represented in the waters of baptism.
I felt strongly that all the branches
of the True Vine comprised “one great fellowship of love
throughout the whole wide Earth” and I resolved to be less
myopic when it came to recognising the presence and work of
God through his “other” people in the world. The visit to the
Jordan sealed that sense.
When we moved into our retirement house
we started to attend a very small Corps that met in a
community centre about 200 metres from our house. On a good
Sunday we would be about 12 in number, and our arrival doubled
the number of actual soldiers from 2 to 4. The other two
soldiers were the Chief of the Staff and his wife, and when
they retired, we were obviously diminished in further. It was
decided to close and for us to move a corps a mile away. This
was a growing concern, largely made up of new Christians. It
is not very traditional either in our forms of worship or in
matters such as uniform wearing. Nevertheless it has become a
wonderful spiritual home to us, a diverse church built on the
sure foundation of Christ. Chris and I felt that we had come
home.
I wish we had experienced, and even
nurtured, the freedom of worship, the open mic, the absence of
rank, status and proprietorial interests of our earlier days.
The maintenance mentality that had characterised much of Army
life and ministry in our early Officership is remarkably
absent in this setting. The ‘replanted’ church had long since
outgrown its original building and we moved as necessary from
hall, to class room, to library to community centre as
necessary. I reflect now on the number property schemes we had
inherited or initiated over the years, as corps officers,
divisional leaders and even in cabinet appointments. Bricks
and mortar had somehow become a mission in themselves.
I wish we had been more forbearing with
people who did not ‘fit’ the Army scheme of things, not least
the folk who found the rules-based approach to membership
difficult or alienating. I think of the couple whom we
‘suspended’ for living together - they were much more than a
“cohabiting problem!” I wish I had not gloried in the ‘High
Army’ music sections, and traditional patterns of worship and
service. These things were important in their own way, but
people were more important still.
Having developed a dislike of preachers
who basically told their own story in every sermon I did
occasionally use my own life experience to ease our way into
or out of a particular set of circumstances. For example, a
local officer came to me once to raise a concern that I was
due to conduct the dedication of “the second illegitimate
child” of a young woman who had been brought up and still
attended the fellowship. “Thank you for expressing your
concern, which I know you share with others. Please let people
know that there will be two “second illegitimate children” on
the platform on Sunday morning: the baby who is being
dedicated, and the man who is conducting the ceremony.” He was
very gracious in his withdrawal.
As for my own spiritual journey, I
follow the Lectio 365 pattern of reflection of prayer and
reflection and I don’t beat myself up if I miss a morning.
Retirement has given Chris and I more time to pray together at
the end of the day focussing particularly on our children and
grandchildren, our siblings and their families, our Church
family and the wider world. It is a precious and unhurried
source of grace.
As I get older I am much more at ease
with my own shortcomings and the shortcomings of others. If
Heaven is a social set up, I will recall the words of John
Stott. “No doubt when we get to Heaven we (evangelicals) may
be surprised to see people we don’t think deserve to be there.
And we might not be pleased to see them.” Who knows what
Heaven is actually like, but the fact is that we will all be
there by grace.
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