Pak maar m'n hand

I made a video for last Sunday. It's a dutch song, but you might get the idea. bless!

Chocolat!

I finally got round to watching the movie 'Chocolat' last week. What a great story about ressurrection in a community held hostage by tradition and fear.

Let's all be chocolateshop churches!

Church or movement

Lately there is a lot of discussion going on in the Salvation Army about the idea that the Salvation Army is a church. People say that this is not the case, because we are a movement. I would say that we are both or need to be both. Phil Needham puts it in his book 'Community in Mission' as follows:

"An inflexible and immobile Church is no Church at all; it is a religious relic." (Needham, 1987:55)

When we stop moving forward we stop being church.

Journeying Out - 03: Social Capital - the Big Idea

It took me a while but here is a short excerpt of the third chapter of Ann Morisy's book. This chapter is about Social Capital. Social Capital is simply the fact that people help others. The example given is about a lady with a buggy at the stairs of an underground station. There is always some bystander who sees her and helps her up the stairs.

There are a few comments to be made with regards to this subject:
First of all there are some distinctions to be made: Sometimes 'social capital' (helping others) can be limited to the 'own' network. Within the network it is all fine, but in this way 'social capital' works exclusively for the insiders, excluding everyone else. This type is called Bonding social capital.

When social capital bridges the gap between networks. it is called Bridging social capital.
A quote:

Bridging social capital leads to a broadening of people's identities because it requires journeying out to engage with the stranger. (2004:50)

According to Morisy this kind of social capital is diminishing and she also believes that there could be a task for the church in this matter.

A third version goes even further: Brave social capital. People that are involved with others on this level put themselves at a certain risk level. People that work with violent and sick people, perhaps in a dangerous area face a higher risk then others.

This last level is the most dangerous, but also the level where I would like to venture in more. But how do you do that, living in suburban holland and working in a relatively rich area?

Bibliography
MORISY, A. (2004) Journeying Out, Harrisburg, Morehouse.

Salvation

The Salvation Army is called Salvation Army, because it is in the business of saving people. But what is 'Salvation'? Is it simply helping people to a better standard of life? Is it the saving of people from their sins and eternal damnation? Bosch puts it like this in his book "Transforming Mission" (1991)

Those who know that God will one day wipe away all tears will not accept with resignation the tears of those who suffer and are opressed now. Anyone who knows that one day there will be no more disease can and must actively anticipate the conquest of disease in individuals ans society now. And anyone who believes that the enemy of God and humans will be vanquished will already opose him now in his machinations in family and society. For all of this has to do with salvation.

Strong and moving words that reflect the mission of the Salvation Army clearly. I believe that the act of salvation involves all of our lives. Leaving any aspect out of it is tempering with the Missio Dei: God's Mission.

Journeying Out - 02: Community Ministry

I am not sure how you relate to my former blog about this book. When I read it back it doesn't look all to coherent to me. I apologise! Hopefully this excerpt will be easier to read!

In the second chapter of this book Morisy focusses on the necessity of honest thinking and reflection. Going into the ‘Adaptive Zone’ head over heels could risk betraying the primary task of the Church: that of helping people to discover the scope of relationship with God through Jesus. (Morisy, 2004:23)

It is interesting and also stimulating to read her ideas about changing the focus of mission from ‘needs meeting’ to the way Jesus did mission in a coaching kind of way.

The radical, missionary activity of the Church cannot, like liberal, secular, social policy, aim at the transformation of the poor. In the new adaptive zone we have entered, the aim must be the transformation of the secure, the well-meaning and the well-endowed of this world. The processes that Jesus teaches and demonstrates invest potential in the most unlikely, not in the well resourced. Focussing on ‘needs meeting’ is at odds with the coaching and urging that we receive from Jesus to take seriously the reality of Gospel reversals. The ways of Jesus are not the ways of the world, but they are not a fairy story either. Gospel reversal are to be taken seriously. The challenge is to have the imagination, trust, expectation and capacity to facilitate situations where the upside-down nature of God’s kingdom can prosper. (Morisy, 2004:28)

Another really important aspect of this chapter is the idea of ‘grace cascades’. If you help others in this way it reflects on a lot of people. The grace that fuels and comes from helping others reflect on the people that are involved with helping, but also the ones that are helped. By changing lives, the lives changed can change others.

I believe on the other hand that the opposite of grace has its own cascade, that might be even more influential sometimes. We can battle this ‘curse’ crusade effectively by focussing in our mission on Jesus. He was in the business of turning people and ideas upside down and by that developing a relationship with them. He did not focus on the things that were wrong, but he replaced them by stories of grace. An example that I want to follow wholeheartedly.


Bibliography
MORISY, A. (2004) Journeying Out, Harrisburg, Morehouse.

Journeying Out - 01: Entering an Adaptive Zone

Last week this book arrived and I am almost half way through now. It occurred to me that it might be interesting to write a blog for every chapter. So here is the first one!

Holistic mission
In the first chapter Morisy focusses on the explanation of the subject of holistic mission, using one of the most influential books written about this subject: Transforming mission by David Bosch. Since this book came out social action gradually came back into the hearts of christians as being an integral part in ‘spreading the Gospel’

Ann Morisy also emphasises on the radically different approach that Jesus had with regards to mission: Jesus focusses not just on the poor, but even on the poor that in our human understanding deserve to be poor! When Jesus teaches us about ‘blessed are the poor’ in the Beautitudes He uses the word ‘ptochos’, the word for the poor that are not respectable.

The lesson we have learned over the last twenty years is that obedience to Jesus begins in relation to the poor and marginalized. (Morisy, 2004:8)

Obliquity
An interesting idea that the writer poses is that we should not focus on mission but on the journey out into the “Adaptive Zone”, the area where the church meets the ‘other’.

Effective mission is not achieved by giving it focal awareness. Effective mission is a fruit - a gracious outcome of other factors working effectively and appropriately. This upends all our habits and assumptions. It means that effective mission is something that emerges as a result of looking and journeying outward rather than by means of a self-conscious and self-regarding process. (Morisy, 2004:17)

Bibliography
BOSCH, D. J. (1991) Transforming mission : paradigm shifts in theology of mission, Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis Books.
MORISY, A. (2004) Journeying Out, Harrisburg, Morehouse.

Discipleship

William Booth is quoted by Roger Green in his biography on Catherine Booth. General Gowans probably used this quote when he summarised the Army's mission with the words: Save souls, grow saints and serve suffering humanity!

I have been reading Tyerman's Wesley in my illness and have, by comparison his (Wesley's) experience with my own, I think, derived some important lessons. One is that, under God, Wesley made Methodists not [only] by converting sinners, but by making well instructed saints. We must follow in his track, or we are a rope of sand. He laid as much stress on visiting the members privately, and in classes, as on preaching. Let us profit by the experience of those who have trod similar paths before us.

Equal emphasis on evangelism and discipelship! That's where we come from!

Respectability

Another quote from William Booth:

"The greatest curse on the church here is respectability. It sits like a nightmare on every branch of it, crippling all its energies, compressing its vitality, and shutting the Holy Ghost out of it."

Bless you all!

The Future of the Army by W. Booth

This text is quoted from "Origins of the Salvation Army" by Norman Murdoch.

... Booth worried about the "Rest and be thankful spirit" that destroys movements. The earth was full of movements that "became proper and temperate"; would this happen to his army? He believed that God would gather a multitude from England to shake the nations of the earth. If God thinned the army's ranks, it would be alright; an army can afford to be smaller if it is one in purpose, prepared for "losses and crosses, and agonies, and deaths."

I think this bit is strikingly relevant for today! Any reactions?

The rest of the chapter is quite scary, focussing on the military structure of the army...

Social Work in the Army

I have been looking for a good way of writing down the army's view on social problems. General Coutts has a great one in his book "No discharge in this war"

The quote is as follows:

It could therefore be justly said that the Army's approach to social problems is empirical, based on observation and experiment. Yet it is an empiricism born of the Christian truth that every human being is of value in the sight of God, and has as its end aim the redemption of the whole man - of himself, body, mind and soul, as well as his setting.

That says it fully! I believe that this mission should be the heart of all Social Work in the Army. I also hope it will be in the centre of my own heart!