I have now moved permanantly to another site!

As I've now changed to a new site I'm automatically redirecting you to it!

Hope you enjoy my future writing!

Graeme

On the move ....

It's not a physical move though, instead I've moved the location of my blog.

You will be able to find my continuing rambling at:

A UK Salvationist in Latvia

So if you do have me as a favourite place to visit make sure you change the address!

How do we treat the poor!

I found this excellent quote by someone called Esmée Chengapen over at opensourcetheology.net

"If we view poor people as not having enough to eat, a place to sleep, the unspoken assumption is to provide the missing things and the poor will no longer be poor. If they do not have the relevant skills or knowledge, then providing education and if the poor simply learns enough, they will no longer be poor. We, as followers of Christ, then add the knowledge of the gospel to our programme for the poor.

This has been the traditional approach of the church, however it creates a “Santa Claus” picture of the communities of faith and the poor become passive recipients of the church’s generosity. This approach has two negative consequences: it demeans the poor and it temps us to play god in the lives of the poor."

This is the danger we face whenever we 'do mission' without first understanding the community we want to work in. All to often we impose our thoughts of what the community is need of upon a group of people, instead of talking to people to find out what their needs are. The biggest reason for this is that we often don't live in the communities that we are trying to help, and instead of understanding the situations have become somewhat philanthropic in our attitudes towards them.

Over on Gordon's blog there is a quote from Catherine Booth where she calls us to be a "living embodiment of Christianity .... if The Salvation Army is not going to be that, may God put it out!". Gordon goes on to say, "I'm worried because if that embodiment has been allowed to become humanitarianism, that embodiment is partial and represents the 'sham compassion' that Catherine was so vehement about in her age of philanthropy."

I suspect that we have already crossed over this line and are guilty of the 'Santa Claus' mentality. Consequently, this may well be one of the 'sins of the camp' of which we need to repent. If we're not prepared to then maybe God is already in the process of 'putting us out'!

Dead or simply sleeping?

Yesterday we had our monthly meeting of leaders here in Latvia and following a period of teaching we were asked to pray about various things.

During this prayer period I felt the Lord directing me to Revelation 3:1-6 which says:

"To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."

It appears to me that this pretty much describes The Salvation Army (and probably much of the Church) in the West. To illustrate we spend a considerable amount of time looking at various strategies for extending the Kingdom of God through TSA here in Latvia, but I wonder when we are going to take the step of faith that is required to see the fruit of these talks. Commitment is there in the leadership group but we don't seem to be able to communicate it to the masses. What's worse is that we have a fairly good reputation for being a place where things are happening, but are not really seeing any growth and although our spirituality is increasing , some of our congregations are in decline.

This seems to be pretty much the norm that I see in my readings across the Army's blogosphere! Only in a few places do we seem to be fulfilling the mission that God has given to us. It reminds me of the Keith Green song "Asleep in the Light" which says:

"The world is sleeping in the dark, That the church can't fight, cause it's asleep in the light, How can you be so dead, when you've been so well fed, Jesus rose from the grave, and you, you can't even get out of bed, Oh, Jesus rose from the dead, come on, get out of your bed."

Our new General has already said:

"...but perhaps God is saying ever so gently and ever so lovingly: 'I love you, Salvation Army, but would you please look within and see if there is sin in the camp and if there is anything that causes the blessing to be withheld we must deal with it.'"

What concerns me though is that prophetic voices have been asking the question for sometime now, but still we have by-and-large continued in our sinful ways. There nearly always came a point when the Old Testament prophets stood up and basically said "There is sin in the camp and God says repent or be exiled/lose my blessing." Maybe now is the time for the General (because I suspect that is what it will take) to stand up and say what the sins of The Salvation Army are! This might not make him popular but its what is needed!

Real Freedom

I saw the following quote from the Dalai Lama on Phil Laeger's website and it got me thinking.

"It is fascinating. In the West, you have bigger homes, yet smaller families; you have endless conveniences -- yet you never seem to have any time. You can travel anywhere in the world, yet you don't bother to cross the road to meet your neighbours..."

"I don't think people have become more selfish, but their lives have become easier and that has spoilt them. They have less resilience, they expect more, they constantly compare themselves to others and they have too much choice -- which brings no real freedom."

This lack of resilience that he mentions made me think that maybe he is also describing the Church in the west. Last week someone said to me that our corps needed a projector and computer so that we were more effective in our ministry. My immediate thought was "Why?". There are a number of different tools that enable us to see how our church is performing in different areas, which in the wrong hands just become a way of comparing ourselves to other churches and we have so many different choices when it comes to where to attend worship on a Sunday that it is almost mind-blowing at times.

I believe this has led us to be less resilient. I suspect that should there be a sudden crackdown on Christianity many of those who go to their Christian club on a Sunday to worship would simply find something else to do. When you here the stories of the persecuted church I suspect that most of us probably wouldn't be able to cope with the trauma of persecution because our faith is simply not real enough!

How bad things are!

Thanks to Gordon for the heads up on the we blog cartoons site.

When I was looking through I just had to put this up as anyone who knows me well will understand! Lord help me avoid this type of mentality!

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Prophetic words?

There is an interesting article about a prophecy given by Rick Joyner over on the armybarmy blog today.

The first thing that struck me when I decided to take a look at the whole thing was that this 'prophetic word' was surrounded on all sides by advertising! In fact you would be hard pressed to find a more 'commercial' Christian website out there. It seems strange that a website about the prophetic needs finds it necessary to advertise the prophets books with every article thatis published!

The second thing is that although the article is not just about The Salvation Army, it is his main ilustration to support his word. Now the fact that Mr Joyner either didn't hear that the Army is growing worldwide at a fairly impressive rate suggests this is far less a prophecy, than it is Mr Joyners personal thoughts about the subject in general and The Salvation Army in particular!

The real shame is that whilst he does have some valid points about the Army in the west, he doesn't make that distinction and consequently he makes the statement that "they are no longer the army of salvation that General Booth foresaw." If he took some time to find out more about this Army of ours I'm sure he'd have to qualify his statements more!

Confession is good for the soul....

... or so I've heard!

Before coming and working in Latvia I spent more than 4 years working for the Anglican Church in the office that tries to link all the various provinces of the church together. At the time I was working in their accounts department and I take a lot of happy memories (as well as many unpleasant and depressing ones) away with me.

Having been brought up in TSA those years were my education into of the formal liturgical side of church. For that alone it is something that I value greatly.

One thing in particular that I have never really understood since this time is why we do not put more empathsis in our services on repentance. Ask me a few years ago and I would have been quite pro-sacramental in my outlook and part of this has shaped my thinking about this subject. In every eucharistic service before the sacraments are distributed there is an act of corporate repentance that is supposed to bring everyone in that service into a place where they can receive from God.

However, in the Army meetings I have been involved I can remember only a handful of times when we have been called to repent corporately. In fact, when I think about it, it is pretty uncommon in my experience for us to be challenged to repent individually within a meeting. How then can we be right with God if we are not willing to accept our own sin.

Is it pride? Is it lack of understanding?

I'm happy to admit that there are many dangers in the sin/repentance cycle. The most obvious being that we are in danger of falling for into the trap of sinning and then confessing without any real conviction of our sin. But I'm convinced that for many Salvationists they come to the Army on a Sunday and never even think about the need to repent of the sins they may have committed duing the week, and by not doing so are not opening themselves to the blessing of God in their lives.

The enemy's tricks

I've been reading Joshua for the last few days and have decided that it has to one of the most confusing books to read. God has given me a real passion against injustice, yet here is the same God telling the Israelites to inflict wholesale genocide against those who live in the promised land. Now I understand the reasons why this is, but it is still difficult for me to read!

Still I always try to get something out of what I am reading and once again this is the case even through the early chapters of Joshua. Yesterday I reached Chapter 9 which tells of the way that the Gibeonites deceived the Israelites and managed to avoid the destruction inflicted on all the city-states in the promised land.

This led me to think about how easy it is for us to be deceived by the enemy in our own lives. It many ways it was too easy for the Gibeonites to trick the Israelites by pretending to be something they weren't. It came down to one thing, the Israelites took their eyes of the Lord.

"The men of Israel sampled their provisions but did not inquire of the LORD." (Joshua 9:14).

After everything they had been through and the successes that God had already given them in their battles in the promised land! After seeing the famed walls of Jericho fall! Still the Israelites forgot to go first to God and seek His will.

How often do we make decisions based on what we see rather than what God sees? How often in life do we make a decision only for it to become clear later that it was the wrong one and wasn't what God wanted for our lives?

For the Israelites they continued to make this same mistake throughout the coming centuries. Various prophets came and went, and still they didn't learn their lesson.

For us it is important that we don't make the same mistake and that instead of doing what we want, we should instead try to keep our eyes fixed on Him.

Passion for souls

Over the last few weeks I've been reading a lot of stuff within the Army's rapidly increasing blogosphere about the way our movement should be going. Almost without exception the people expressing these views are voices of change, insisting that if the Army doesn't change it will die. For me, who has been praying that the Army will change for more than half of my 36 years, this is pretty encouraging.

However, there is something that is even more encouraging! There can be little doubt that we were called into being to be an Army of Salvation (the hint's in the name!!). Almost everything I've read has shown a real passion for what it is God called us into being for.

The important thing is that we reach the multitudes living in darkness and help bring them into a living, growing relationship with the Light of the World. How we do it is irrelevant!