short term vision

I could have entitled this post, Another Corps Bites the Dust, and for my non-Salvationists friends, I apologize in advance for a post that will probably leave you scratching your head (then again, maybe most of my posts leave people scratching their heads).

We do a lot of weird things in the Army, many of which I find very destructive to our mission. But, after seven years of working and worshipping with the Army, I’ve come to believe that the most destructive thing we do is the practice of moving our officers (ministers) from one Corps to another, on an average of about four or five years. We could name a lot of destructive things here, but I believe that this practice directly relates to all of those other things.

Many reports have been done over the years concerning growth and the lack thereof within the Salvation Army. And in every one I’ve ever seen, one conclusion is always drawn: The Corps that have experienced the largest amount of growth (in numbers) and the most sustainable amount of growth, are those Corps in which the officers have been in place the longest. In my own Corps, we have gone from ultra traditional to contemporary, drawing in even those who are the most frustrated with church hierarchy. We’ve seen the Corps go from a place only Salvationists would attend, to one attended by over 30 different nationalities, very few of whom are Salvationists. And we’ve seen the power and work force shifted from officer to lay people. And do you know how long our officers have been in place? Fourteen years. And we’re still growing and trying to figure things out. And here’s the thing that puzzles me the most. In the seven years I’ve been with the Salvation Army, nobody has ever been able to answer the question of why in the world we move our officers so much. I mean, part of it is obvious. Some get moved to headquarters where they’ll have more influence and (so the thought goes) where they’ll be able to rub off on local officers. But many just get moved from Corps to Corps. And here’s how I see that going.

First of all, discipleship takes a long time, no matter how you do it. As a youth worker, my first instinct is to build a congregation from the youth up. But even in my own local ministry here in London, we didn’t start with older teenagers, we started with the youngest, understanding the idea that in a few years, they’ll be our leaders. And the same holds true with any congregation, with a few exceptions. But no matter how you do it, whether starting with young people, or starting with adults, it takes time to disciple somebody. Time that, in too many cases, Officers never get.

Second, unless you’re Rob Bell or any of the other handful of gifted preachers/teachers who can draw people in with their sheer presence, even the best of church growth plans take a while. Between accumulating a pool of people from whom you can raise up and disciple leaders from, to actually raising up and discipling those leaders to head up your various areas of church programming, it takes five years before your congregation is even in a place to start effectively welcoming in and discipling new members. And that’s if you know what you’re doing and actually have a gift for it. And, sadly, most people don’t.

Thirdly is the fact that, like it or not, people follow leaders. I know it’s bad and we’d all like to judge each other for it, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. Look at the Jews who’s ultimate leader was God speaking through various prophets. It just wasn’t enough. They wanted a king to rally around. And so God gave them one. And that hasn’t changed. People find leaders they can believe in, and then they rally around them. And when those leaders leave, if the people have not been effectively discipled yet, the people leave too. Almost every time. And so these people, whom the church has invested in, and were depending on in the long term, are now gone, leaving only the most loyal Salvationists, many of which are often too tired to lead/work anymore. And so another Corps dies.

And fourthly, (and this may be the toughest part of all), when a Corps remains small and ineffective (again, as a direct result of no sustainable leadership or discipleship), you obviously have a smaller pool to draw new ministers from. Which leads to our current problem; small seminary classes and even fewer capable leaders graduating from those seminary classes.

I could pause here to comment on the percentage of good leaders we’re actually cranking out of these ministry classes, but I’ll leave that discussion for somebody else.

And so we’re a witness to this ever growing decline we like to call an Army.

Is there anybody, outside of certain offices spread throughout the world, who doesn’t see this?