Sounds good. When are you next due over? Must be be due a trip soon!

Off to the Isle of Wight on Saturday to do a little worship leader training and a bit of encouragement. Would love to come over and experience what you are doing with worship sometime. I’m sure you a doing a great job leading and calling people to experience God.

Hope all is well, it’s been too long my friend.

How are you and the family?

Thanks for your comment. Always enjoy being challenged in my thoughts – it’s how we grow and move forward. I’ll take your comments in order and see if I can articulate my thoughts on those.

Totally agree that there needs to be a significant change in culture in the Corps. One of the priorities in this culture change is that those who are passionate about what I would consider the right things (seeing people saved and growing in faith) are willing to stand up and (lovingly) confront the culture we do have from the very vocal few who are passionate about the wrong things (wearing your uniform, the band playing no matter what etc. etc.). I also agree that if we could return to the original (ie 1865 – 1900) culture of TSA then we would see a different church altogether. We now have a lot of baggage. The problem is that, by and large, that baggage defines who we are. The SA brass band was an accident which proved to be an exceptionally effective evangelistic tool, in the 19th and early 20th century. Culture has moved on, and we are consistently trying to define ourselves by a culture which became unpopular decades ago. Today a brass band in worship can be effective. It can also be in-effective when used poorly. We need to step away from the belief that the band has to be used week in week out when it is a required taste which is certainly not mainstream in our culture. (I use the brass band as an example as I believe I can speak with authority on the subject).

Your next comment falls into a trap that TSA seems incapable of shaking off, though I expect your meaning behind the comment is sound! J TSA has this seemingly unshakeable view that our programme defines who we are. TSA has long been the church (though many believe it just to be a charity – big subject that needs a different post) that is recognised for what it does. That does have its merits – belief in action. But the primary aspect is belief. William Booth clearly stated his passion was to see as many people saved as possible. Whilst all our community work is admirable, if it doesn’t result in the salvation of people it is, quite frankly, pointless in the grand scheme of things. Our Corps needs to be defined by who we are, not what we do.

Endless strategy and management committee meetings are pointless, I agree. However, for the Corps to move forward you do need the Local Officers and leaders to both own the vision and demonstrate it. That can only happen if they buy into it and feel they have a hand in formulating it. Whether you do that through one-on-one meetings in a coffee house (my choice would be Costa – Flat White please), or you bring people together on a quarterly basis to seek after God’s will is irrelevant (it’s a programming point – not a reflection on the church). Ultimately, the need for these sort of meetings is to ensure that you have the right people all together in one accord who can then go out into the church, believe that shared vision and also demonstrate the behaviour and maturity etc. that is necessary to go forward. If you have these meetings and nothing changes then yes, they are pointless. If they tackle important issues and then this is allowed to impact the life of the church then I think they are a good way of bringing together those who are appropriately gifted to cast the vision or work out the mechanics of the program and resource maintenance.

I am naturally quite autocratic, something I share with William Booth, though I think I temper it better than he had to! I also hold onto the fact that God gives some people in the church vision and gifts them appropriately to lead that vision forward. I also know that those who are visionary and can say it like it is are an easy target, being accused of being “spiritually arrogant” amongst other things. The bible clearly gives us a guideline of how to deal with prophesy and vision, through confirmation amongst others and agreement with scripture. It is clearly necessary from a scriptural point of view to have agreement of the leaders. It is also imperative from a human perspective (after all, we are dealing with a group of people) to gain the support of the influential people who will be followed. In short, to a certain extent, we need to play the game. It would be very easy to start from scratch, but we have a community which needs to be shepherded, coaxed, taught and gently led.

Regarding the pre-service prayer meeting in the morning. Yes it is badly attended, but I don’t think that reduces its effectiveness. There is a lot of merit in your suggestion, but I think the approach would need to be broader than simply slapping 15 minutes prayer-time at the beginning of the service. The time people spend welcoming and talking to each other before the service is important in building the community and fellowship. People in the corps are generally uncomfortable in any public prayer, evidenced by the same few who will pray during services and the poor attendance at prayer events. So, what we do needs to be about coming alongside people and walking with them on their journey to a place where corporate prayer is better understood and better supported. I have no doubt about people’s personal prayer life.

Our new worship team are rehearsing and will begin taking part in leading sections of worship services in the coming weeks. This small team is all about demonstrating that worship in a different style is not scary nor anything to be afraid of. It is also about ensuring we have the right “delivery” for worship dependant on the context. As mentioned above, a brass band can be hugely effective for “O Boundless Salvation” and the like, but a different approach is called for when we sing some modern songs (and traditional hymns). We also have the opportunity for a different style of leadership of sung worship, being able to intersperse with prayer and scripture and being flexible enough to follow where the Holy Spirit leads.

I know Andy well, and agree that the worship team need to really seek God before rehearsing and leading worship. That is why I feel it is also incredibly important to ensure those on the worship team are in a place to be able to worship themselves before even leading anyone else. Believe it or not, prayer is the bedrock of all we do, and forms the foundation on which we work. But it could be much better.

So to change the culture I think the greatest challenge we have is to have the majority of people in the corps wanting to grow, to be challenged, and to see new life in the Corps and in their lives. Prayer forms the bedrock of this for the leaders, and those who are “there”, but the greatest and most effective way to engage people is through effective, “John 4” worship. Worship is a glimpse of heaven. It is sacrificial and should result in a change to the worshipper. If we can help people understand what worship is, how we can worship, and that it is not an experience for us to get something out, but to give wholeheartedly to God I believe we will see a passion renewed in the corps for people to seek after God in a greater way. This will feed into every aspect of the corps. Corporate prayer events will be better attended, a better understanding of what we stand for and our purpose will be fostered, and we will be far greater in growing as believers individually and also evangelising to the lost. Prayer forms the basic foundation to all of this, and that prayer ministry will grow as people are re-kindled into passionately wanting to grow and evangelise.

Sorry about the length of response. I think we need lunch again!

Jon

Interesting thoughts. I would suggest that actually we do have autonomy within each corps. We have autonomy of programme, style, financing (to a certain extent), lay leadership etc.

Where there is a lack of autonomy in these things it is usually a reflection of the mindset and agenda of the members of that corps. Whilst we may wish to see more people come through the doors we may not be willing to “sacrifice” our status quo to do it. For example, we may be unwilling to relax uniform wearing on Sunday in the hope that people may feel more part of the corps instead of demonstrating a two-tier membership. We may be unwilling to allow non-uniformed members of the corps to serve in specific lay positions despite their being gifted and skilled appropriately.

So, I would suggest that any difficulty in meeting the needs of those around, and therefore fulfilling the Great Commission are borne out of being too tied down, not in red tape, but in the expectations and agenda of those members of the corps.

You mention packing up and starting again. I think the secret of why this is successful is the unity and focus of purpose among those who do the starting up. As an organisation ages (ie a Church) then people themselves have differing needs. For example, when a church starts it’s focus may be all people like themselves, passionate about the same ends. People’s life experiences are different so there will come different needs – family may come and go, priorities often change, work life, all sorts of things that make us all different. That group who were all focussed on the same ends and also the same means to those ends will naturally diverse. What you then end up with is a watered down version of the initial vision, trying to meet the needs of the many differing needs instead of focussing on the one at the beginning.

So, to summarise, the issue I see is the lack of a common focus which is to be expected (though not a compulsory result) in a Corps like L’Islet. There have been too many years of focus on service, lack of focus on those outside the fellowship, and lack of spiritual formation. A fear of the unfamiliar (created by a self-centred, silo mentality) and a gradual loss of passion and energy associated with a lack of growth and continual same-ness has taken its toll.

I’ll shut up now.