i've been thinking of something lately. the salvation army is perhaps the most respected charitable organization in the world, yet there are only about 1.5 million members worldwide. a majority of salvationists now live in asia and africa, even though most donations come from the west. does this suggest a disconnect between the charitable mission and the evangelistic mission of the salvation army in western countries or is it indicative of the decline of religiosity of the western world in general? is the average person who puts a dollar in the kettle aware that the salvation army is a church? i don't mean any disrespect in asking these things. i've long wondered what the salvation army can do today to better realize the vision of its founders.
Oh man! I wish you were here in the UK. I could so sit and have a few coffee's with you my friend. We could talk for hours
How many people know we are a church? Not many I suspect. Is that a problem? Yes! Is it our fault? Yes! should we be doing far more than we are to change that? Absolutely Yes!
To your other main point. It's true that the Army is growing in Africa and Asia, whilst declining in the west. Yes, partly that IS due to a general turn away from church by people in general, and most churches have the same problem. Most, but not all. A look at the way the charismatic and Pentecostal churches are packing them in tells me that people ARE searching for God still, but that the Army has gotten stuck in a rut and has changed little in 50 years (in the UK at any rate). That is changing (Lord be praised) and we are starting to see results from that. We need to be contemporary again, as we were 150 years ago when Booth started out in east London.
As Salvationists we are Christians.That means we are supposed to be Christlike. And the Jesus if the Bible was the same yesterday, today and forever. That means that Jesus was always contemporary, and if the Army is not contemporary then it's stopped following Jesus and got stuck back there in a kind of spiritual time warp.
Like I said though, it's changing....and here's two examples.
Sunday School. This was declining rapidly because, in the communities we are trying to reach, many kids are from homes where their parents have seperated and/or divorced. So, the kids are living with one parent...which is usually their mother. So where are they on Sunday? With dad of course. So they are not around to attract to Sunday School. Eventually we got over this fixation that it had to be held on Sunday, called it a JAM Club (Jesus And Me), and have it on a weekday evening instead
The other example is that people can't relate, at least initially, to our style of worship. So what to do? Scrap the meeting format? Do away with band, songsters, uniform etc?
No. You don't wanna chuck out the baby with the bath water.
Look at what we do. Make sure it works. If it does then fine. If not then either change it so that it works or get rid of it. So we need to adapt our worship style to appeal to non Army people. So that's what we are doing. One thing we are doing is monthly cafe church. No sections, no uniform. Informal, relaxed worship. And people 'get it'
Once people start coming to church they are likely to continue coming to church. Now that's just two examples of area's where change is happening, and it's a couple of steps on a long journey, with many many more steps to take.
We need to get out of our halls and get back out into the community again. The best way for us to go forward is to go back...right back. Right back to Boothian principles.
General Booth once said "When Jesus told his disciples to go make apostles of all the world, he did not mean build a few nice halls, have some nice meetings, invite the people in, and if they don't want to come then leave them be. That is NOT a valid interpretation of Biblical teaching"
