Work Harder! The Salvo Work Ethic (by BRUCE REDMAN)

That and better will do (William Booth)

I think we’ve got lazy. Bone lazy.

I hear a lot of Sallies talk about “working smarter, not harder,” but they don’t seem to get much done. Well, not in the real Kingdom sense anyway. We dress it up as “busy-ness” and needing to attend very important seminars or leave town to attend conferences or get our AV stuff prepared or fancy newsletter done on our computers, but I think there is a lot of avoiding the really hard work.

If we are doing it properly, then I think we are going to have to lead from the front with our work ethic and move out of our comfort zones. Where I work, we call it “skunkworks”. We ferret around dealing with “real people” doing the bits and pieces that no one else wants to really do. There is no standing on ceremony about how important we are or what positions we hold, or theorising about what’s going on - we just get in there and get on with it, and it’s successful.

New York City’s ex-mayor Rudy Giuliani, in his book Leadership, describes how important it was for him at 9-11 to head downtown when the first plane went into the World Trade Centre. His team wanted him to head for a command centre/bunker, but he says: “While mayor, I made it my policy to see with my own eyes the scene of every crisis so I could evaluate it first-hand.”

Does that mean he didn’t trust his team? Well no, it’s just that by being “there” it’s so much easier to get a real perspective of what’s going on. I think we do too many things by remote control just because we can.

Go and do something (William Booth)

I recently heard a corps officer state quite openly. “I don’t DO hospitals,” (ummm… excuse me… have you read Matthew 25:35?) and another state “Home League is just NOT ME.” OK, fair enough, but what are you doing instead? Don’t you care about the sick and dying in your congregation or the womenfolk of the corps? Another officer from a busy regional centre was quite adamant recently that there was no possibility of any sort of youth outreach from his corps (sorry - what?).

A few years ago I was sent to do a location survey for a film company to a remote Philippines island called Mindanao. In the predominantly Muslim capital Catabato City, I was an oddity as a fair-skinned Westerner, and when I saw another one eating breakfast in a café I went up and said hello. This chap was a missionary from Mid-West USA who had been living with and ministering to a remote hill tribe for the previous 15 years, learning their language and translating the Bible for them. He told me it would probably take at least another 8 to 10 years. I was blown away at this man’s devotion and commitment to his calling, and I’ve felt pretty darn ashamed of my pitiful attempt at Christian service ever since.

Our Army is dwindling in numbers with each passing day, and people are dying without Christ. Let’s work HARDER.

Success does not come by accident but by labour and hard work (William Booth)