What type of Army do you belong to?

Later in the year we should be starting a Mission Team in Latvia from amongst the youth. The leader of the project has asked me to teach Salvation Army history to them during the first few weeks when they will undergo intense training.

In preparation I’ve started re-reading various books and yesterday I picked up Phil Wall’s ‘I’ll fight…’. I found the following that really made me sit up and think:

“In military terms they [Booth and the early Salvationists] did not see themselves as defenders of some religious enclave from which they occasionally fired artillery and launched ‘hit and run’ commando raids only to return to their ’safe haven’ citadels. No, this was an all-out offensive into enemy territory where the majority of lost people were to be found.”

Being totally honest, there is no doubt in my mind that the majority of corps that I grew up in, and there were a lot of them, were far more of the former type of military unit, than the latter. That ’safe haven’ mentality coloured my view of this Army for far to many years. I pray that I don’t perpetuate that understanding of The Salvation Army in my daughter’s life, or indeed in the type of Army I show through my history lessons to the young people of Latvia!