Set Apart In Christ

Today I received my copy of The Salvation Army’s Year Book for 2016. I’m sure a lot of people just put it aside, place it on the shelf and ignore it; barely even taking note of what’s inside. For me, though, I always read through it. In particular, I’m interested in the statistics for my Territory (Australia Eastern). Every year when I receive the Year Book I look, in particular, at the number of Senior Soldiers. This year it is listed as 7,880. Last year it was 8,159.

I once heard it said that if you want to look like a leader then make small decisions loudly. Consider a couple of examples. Firstly, you’re standing behind someone in a queue at a fast food outlet. It takes some time to get to the front of the line and inevitably the person before you waits until that moment to decide what it is they would like to order. Or consider driving behind someone into a car park with hundreds of empty spaces. Spoilt for choice the driver in front ends up unable to decide which of the many free spots is best for them, thus delaying everyone behind them. In both of these not so imaginary situations it can be frustrating to be forced to bear the consequences of their indecision.  “Just make a decision!”

Announcements. For any worship leader the place for announcements in the weekly worship gathering can be difficult to fit in. You want to ensure people are as informed as possible, but if left unchecked they can become simply another “commercial break” in people’s lives, or go on for an unnecessary amount of time. Alternatively, they can disrupt the flow of a meeting or cause people to switch off. Constance Cherry, the author of The WorshipArchitect , conducted a little experiment around this very issue. Having the opportunity to visit a number of different churches over an extended period of time, and with a keen interest in the place of public scripture reading and prayer in corporate worship, Cherry’s experiment was to calculate the amount of time, as a percentage, devoted to different aspects of worship in a variety of churches. The details of the experiment and the results can be found here . It should be noted that this is not an exhaustive analysis and so the results sh...

Come with me on a journey. A journey outside the box. This year is a year of significant anniversaries. For The Salvation Army the most significant was celebrated last month in London at the Boundless Congress; our 150 th anniversary. There is another one coming, though, that I think is worthy of note. October 4 this year will be 125 years since the death of Catherine Booth.

Today is a day I’ve been looking forward to for a number of months. On this day, fifteen years ago, I was lying in a bed in the emergency ward of a Balinese hospital in a desperate state when a doctor whispered in my ear “We think you might have diabetes” (read the full story here ) A lot has happened since then. Somewhere in the vicinity of 13,000 needles, 25,000 finger pricks, and 1,000 infusion set changes for my insulin pump. But my life is much more than numbers, needles and insulin. Type 1 Diabetes is a diagnosis but it does not define who I am.

This was a sermon I preached on Sunday 9 November, 2014 at Gosford Salvation Army. We follow the Revised Common Lectionary. One of the passages for that day was 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, a passage which is frequently suggested to make reference to the so-called "Rapture". This is a very pervasive, and I think incorrect, theology that many people take for granted and so I decided to challenge it. I've had more conversations about this sermon than any other I've preached before.  I apologise for the very low volume in the videos. I've included the full text underneath so you can read it if listening becomes too difficult. I'd welcome your comments on this one.

I recently sent this to the President and Vice-President of the International Doctrine Council. I have received a response (which I won't publish because it's not my place to). Rather, I publish my letter here to continue the discussion with others who may be interested. ___________________ The issue of the sacraments and sacramentality in The Salvation Army is one that has interested me for a number of years. When given the opportunity to choose a topic for my honours dissertation in 2007 it was a relatively easy choice to make. At the time I wanted to consider the often asked question “Why don’t we practise that?” alongside its rarely asked correlate “But why do we practise this?”  The conclusion of my research was that we are indeed a sacramental people, something that was affirmed well in Salvation Story , [1] but our expression of this sacramentality was new in terms of church history. I used the term “neosacramentality” to describe this. [2] Whilst I would sugges...