High Council

Not a religious blog today. Just a few random thoughts about the Army and the High Council.

As an aside, I get frustrated with the really poor standard of the Army's official web pages. They are old, slow and lacking information. Trying to find out the appointments of the relative High Council members has been almost impossible, as it has been to find their ages, let alone a bio of the members. Pictures - easy, but information - not so. Surely we can do better...

Anyway, Ten nominees for General with Comm. Knaggs declining leaving nine candidates. All of them white. All of them either male or single female, i.e. no married women nominated ahead of their husbands. All of them relatively old - but so are most of the high council members as it's almost impossible to reach Commissioner rank until retirement is looming large.

Why, if the Army is growing in Africa and the Sub Continent whilst declining in Europe, USA & Oceania, are there never any Africans or Asians nominated for General? And what does that say about the Army, its structure and priorities? Is the Army so fixated now on programmes that only Europeans have the nous to run the organisation?

The age of people reaching senior leadership positions is a real problem. Not that it is wrong for someone in their sixties to be in a senior leadership role, more that it is wrong that someone in their mid forties or early fifties (if not younger) cannot, it seems, under our current structure reach a senior position at those ages. Secondly, the military structure almost means that any entrepreneurial thinking has either been beaten out of a person by the time they make it to Commissioner rank, or they will not make it there in the first place either by reason of being overlooked or having resigned in frustration.

Get the feeling that I don't like the Army's structure?! I'm sure that the person elected to be the next General of The Salvation Army will be a fine candidate and will lead well. But, despite the fact that I have been following the High Council proceedings daily, I almost feel the appointment of the next General will be largely irrelevant to me. It will be more of the same. Will there be a General who makes me feel that Army is inspiring again? Or is the problem mine and my attitude, not the Army's and it's structure?

One final thought. Bear in mind that I am almost 50 years of age and I think the structure is outdated. What do teenagers and people in their 20's and 30's think?

O Happy Day!

19,16,15,14,7,2,0 It looks a bit like one of the questions from an I.Q. test where you have to select the next number in the sequence. What it actually is is the number of blogs that I have written from month to month, starting with July and ending this month. As the initial enthusiasm for the blog waned so did the number of entries. And then we arrived in December when every Salvo's blog entries dropped as we grappled with Christmas caroling. After today the zero will become one.

In life we often start on new things with enthusiasm and gradually drop off. And a drop off in intensity and enthusiasm is something that happens to us as Christians too.

This morning I have been watching/listening to a bit of the Welcome to The 2011 High Council. The advances in technology that allow us in Australia to be a part of the High Council welcome in London are quite remarkable. Apparently the programme is about 3 hours long - even longer than our Divisional meeting last night! Speaking of which....we sang that great song 'O Happy Day' and were asked whether the day on which we were 'saved' was the happiest day of our life, or words to that effect. I'm not sure that it was my happiest day as such. Most momentous and important, yes but I don't recall leaving church that night as happy as I was when I left the MCG on grand final day 2008! But it was certainly the day that my life changed in a way that has eternal consequences.

I often think of 2 Thess 3:13 which says "And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good." I do tire of doing good sometimes. I tire of doing a blog, I tire of being in a band (is that doing good?!), I tire of being in a leadership position and so on. I guess it is important to understand what 'doing good' really means. Being a disciple of Jesus, learning from him and doing what he did is really about 'doing good' I suppose.

So, in a new year, already 24 days old, celebrating the 'happy day when Jesus washed my sins away' and 'never tiring of doing good' are two challenges for me this year.

Santa and car horns

I saw Santa up the street this morning along with one of his elves and a real life reindeer. It didn't have horns so maybe it was a female. I guess that makes the Preston S.A. Band a male band as we have 2 horns! (boom boom). (Actually they would be antlers rather than horns but that would ruin the story. And I think the reindeer is not a reindeer but another type of deer but that would ruin the story too.)

It's interesting watching the reaction of people to this unusual sight. It brings a smile to almost everyone's face and especially the children. There are cars pulling over to the side of the road so that the kids can get out, meet Santa and have their photo taken with him, his helper and the reindeer with no horns.

Just a metre or so away is another kind of horn. A car horn. I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on whether car horns are used more at Christmas than at other times of the year. I'm sure that you could get a government grant to do one. Just say that you are studying global warming and you will instantly get $100,000-.

In that one or two metre space between Santa & the road there is a major difference in attitude. On the footpath there are smiles and joy. On the road there is road rage.

When Jesus was walking the road he managed to extract wildly different reactions from people too. On the one hand he was swamped with people looking for healing. There must have been a lot of joy and smiles as lepers were healed, as blind people saw again. And just a couple of metres away were the religious leaders seething with rage, looking for a way of killing him.

As we play carols at Christmas we get all sorts of reactions. Some people are thrilled to hear us. Others ask us to move on!

People's reactions to Jesus today are varied too. Some will embrace him with joy. Others will react with rage and want to shoot the messengers. We need to remember that as we minister to people. Not everyone appreciates God and won't appreciate us but the message has to get out there whatever the reaction.

Asleep on the job

"Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter." Matt 26:40

I am not a great tv watcher, especially when it comes to reality tv shows. However, in recent weeks I have become interested in a show called "Great British Chef", where some of the best chefs in the UK were competing to cook one of the four courses to be served to Prince Charles and one hundred others at a banquet.

The final programme was the banquet itself and the four chefs who had previously cooked their dishes for four judges now had to replicate it for 100 people. The day proved a real problem for some for various reasons but, in the end they made it through. One of the reasons was because the four chefs who had previously been competitors worked as a team to ensure that each of them got their dishes out even though seemingly insurmountable problems came up along the way.

On their own they couldn't have achieved their goal. It would have been a disaster.

When Jesus and his disciples headed to Gethsemane it would have been fair to assume that Jesus could have expected that group of men to offer the support that he needed at that time. But, unlike the chefs who all pulled together at a time of crisis, the disciples offered Jesus nothing. They fell asleep. It must have been a real disappointment to Jesus that at his time of greatest need his most devoted followers didn't discern the gravity of the situation and fell asleep leaving Jesus to cope alone.

Being able to discern when people need help is not always easy. We don't all have the ability to see past the outward appearance to the inner core of turmoil. But sometimes it is not so much a matter of lack of ability but more a habit of not looking beyond our own circumstances to see what should be obvious to us.

God has created us to work together, to help each other when circumstances are such that individually, no matter how talented we are, we can't do it alone.

I hope that I am not found to be asleep when my friends most need me be to be alert and helping them through their problems.

Bah Humbug

I was asked yesterday if I would cancel Christmas if I had the chance. Without hesitation I said yes. That wouldn't surprise anyone that knows me! But why?

Well, it is the busiest time of the year. Everything goes up a notch. The band & to a lesser extent the songsters have a lot more commitments. Also, everyone seems to think that it is a good idea to have a Christmas breakup or that Christmas is a great time to catch up. And, for the last 21 years, 31/12 has been end of financial year at work. Being a 'beanie' it means December is busy.

This year the Amazon rainforest has been trying to reclaim the block of land on which I live. The council has given me until 13th December to clear my land or they will fine me. With no free weekends before then and having had monsoon conditions almost every weekend for a couple of months, it seems an impossible task. Another reason to cancel Christmas.

And finally, on top of everything else there is the situation at work where we may well be handing people redundancy letters. Ho Ho Merry Christmas everyone.

Surely this isn't what Christmas is all about. Contrary to popular opinon (and one that I actively promote!) I do quite like Christmas music and I do listen to it in my car on my commute. This morning I grabbed a couple of Christmas cd's as I flew out of the door and on one is a song that we sang a few year ago. The chorus says:

Let the world take the glitter and the greed,
The only Christmas presence that I need
Is you beside me like you were at the start
Then I'll know it's Christmas
Then I'll know it's Christmas in my heart.

It's not going to happen, but it would be great one year to have nothing except the celebration of Christ at Christmas.

Nowhere is safe!

"When Jesus got the news, he slipped away by boat to an out-of-the-way place by himself. But unsuccessfully—someone saw him and the word got around. Soon a lot of people from the nearby villages walked around the lake to where he was. When he saw them coming, he was overcome with pity and healed their sick." Matthew 14: 13-14

Jesus had received the news of John's execution. His response was much the same as mine would have been, and probably that of most people. He wanted to get away to a secluded place to be alone and contemplate what had happened and try to come to grips with and deal with his emotions.

But, even in that remote place he was spotted and Jesus would have seen a large group of people heading his way. This is where his reaction differed to what mine would most likely have been in the same circumstances. I would have groaned and maybe tried to disappear before the crowd reached me. Or maybe I would have told them "Not now. I can't handle this at the moment".

Jesus' reaction? He was overcome with pity and healed the sick. Jesus was so full of love that often he would react in a way that was best for others rather than what was best for himself.

It's a challenge for me to examine how I react when people put demands on my life and when the circumstances aren't always convenient.

God, help me to be filled with love that has compassion for people even when it doesn't fit with what I want or think I need at the time.

A total absence of proof

"The only proof you're going to get is what looks like the absence of proof: Jonah-evidence. Like Jonah, three days and nights in the fish's belly, the Son of Man will be gone three days and nights in a deep grave." Matt 12:39-40

These days I guess we forget, or don't realise, the despair and hopelessness that must have been in the lives of Jesus' followers following his crucifixion. How could anything good possibly come out of the killing of Jesus, let alone proof of his divinity?

A few religion scholars and the obligatory Pharisees had asked Jesus to prove his credentials. "How about a miracle?", they said. Jesus responded that the evidence he was going to give them would appear to be an absence of proof i.e. his death.

Today, the things we look for as proof of Jesus' credentials are usually obvious and grand such as miracles, the great moving of the Holy Spirit in our church services and so on. We still tend to underestimate God's ability and desire to move in ways that seem, at the time, to look more like a complete absence of his presence rather than proof that he is God.

What might God be doing in my life, at my church, in the lives of my friends at the moment that looks more like a total absence of proof? And what does that say about my trust and faith in God?