Canary in the Mine (by BRUCE REDMAN)

Give it to me straight Doc … Well, at this stage I see very little chance of an internal cure and all tests indicate that the body is not responding to anything we have tried. Some of it has been really radical treatment but ultimately it’s been ineffective. But hey, you’ve had a good life, people respected you, even loved you, some people even laid down their own lives for what you were on about; but I’m pretty sure it is terminal and it’s now only a matter of time…

Is that the current prognosis for the Salvation Army in the western world?

We can no longer ignore the fact that we are in serious decline. Sunday attendances are generally poor and continue to nosedive as people seek contemporary relevance, a change of culture and perhaps a situation where a pastor’s position is not determined behind closed doors but by the church congregation itself.

“Our” youth are getting crushed in the rush as they head for the doors, no longer satisfied with an arrogant inflexibility that declares “This is how we have always done it.” Our average age in the congregation creeps higher each year towards the age of retirement, pointing towards a time when tithes and offerings will not be enough to keep the doors open.

Many officers seem stuck in a rut, complaining about money and conditions or their lack of appreciation, autonomy or “personal time.” Some corps officers grasp desperately at any new, fangled “magic bullet” model of church growth that they can grab and put into action with all of its trademarked colouring-in exercises. They seem to be constantly in meetings, at seminars or away at conferences and have nothing significant to report back. They construct teams but fail to lead from the front and then blame those same teams when initiatives fail. They complain about how uncommitted and selfish corpsfolk are these days while having most of their material needs and retirement guaranteed by the SA.

Social officers bemoan the fact that they are the forgotten engine room of the Army. They resent that they do the lonely hard yards at the frontline to maintain the SA’s brilliant reputation and are only trotted out at appeal time for publicity and conveniently forgotten the rest of the year. Overall there is frustration. Officers are frustrated because they are doing work that neither fits their skill sets nor satisfies their sense of calling - or they are not being promoted quickly enough, or they missed out again on that overseas posting, or they are punished for speaking out or trying new things. Others are frustrated because the Division doesn’t appreciate them or their local flocks don’t adore them.

Corpsfolk and soldiers are frustrated because they believe they are not empowered to change anything without being an officer, and in addition they are forced into respecting an officer based not on his/her respectability but purely because he/she has plonked into the position at a particular corps or admin position in an ever-decreasing numbers game.

Middle management is always the sinister villain in any business failure, and you have to admit that even the name “division” is a negative, highly charged SA word. The people at the top often start out with great “together we’ll change the Army” rhetoric when they commence an appointment, but they are soon bashed into reality and ultimately defeated by the oppressive culture perpetuated by their underlings. They pledge to restructure or ratify headquarters but usually end up just creating new departments and employing even more people to sit behind desks while the money and officer numbers bleed out of the frontline. Then they shuffle off to another appointment.

Not a week goes by when we don’t hear of long-term soldiers who have “retired hurt” from a near fatal spiritual injury, or officers who’ve been forced out because they “stepped out of their boundaries,” or have been bullied into compromise by their bosses, or are just sick of bashing the heads against the wall of the system and the overbearing culture. Lay church planters give up because officers are eventually appointed who try to make a place in their own image rather than recognising the true DNA of the plant.

Now I know that the psycho-babbling sweetness and light brigade would criticize me for my negativity and claim that we should concentrate on the wonderful examples of God’s continued work in our movement, but the fact is that we cannot keep sticking our collective heads in the sand and hope that sometime later all will be sunshine. It ain’t gonna happen.

We cannot continue to paper over the cracks that are quickly becoming chasms. It’s now time for immediate action. Firstly we have to identify and internalise what the real problems are. Make no mistake; this is not about peripherals like uniforms or worship styles.

It’s actually about unfaithfulness, unforgiven sin, resentment, injustice and mistreatment of each other. It’s also about complacency, distractions, lack of vision, selfishness and a downright laziness to fulfil our true mission.

In the words of Hosea - “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land (4:1) … my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests … they exchanged their Glory for something disgraceful.” (4:6/7)So is this a word of prophecy? I wouldn’t be that presumptuous, and anyway we’re “not really into that stuff,” are we? On the other hand, we have some brilliant, passionate, totally committed people around the world who see our movement as the ideal outlet for their expression of Christian faith - but it just seems to be getting harder and harder.

Is it terminal? Well, maybe not yet, but the canary in the coalmine has certainly stopped singing. The threat to life is genuine, and if we don’t face up to the escalating danger it will be too late. It starts with me and you, today. Are you ready?

… you must return to your God; maintain love and justice. (Hosea 12:6)