Salvation Army Vocational Responses

I first wrote this essay in 2005. The passage of time without significant change merely demonstrates the critical need to rethink what we've 'always done'.

As we now well into the third century of a Salvation Army presence in this world, we continue to ask what the Army will be like in the future, our near future.  Certainly we desire to be filled with the passion and drive of the 19^th century; and we cannot fail to appreciate the systematic growth and stabilizing structuring of the 20^th century.  But just as assuredly, we know that only dead things stop growing, stop evolving and changing.  Our prayer is that as we grow we follow God’s plan, his path, move forward by his Spirit.

Among the many questions that head the list of concerns at this critical time is this one, paired with an observation: In many parts of the developed western Army world, we continue to see a lack of qualified officer candidates; is God simply not calling our gifted soldiers into service anymore?

This statement-and-question is packed with assumptions, of course; these assumptions can be separately debated, but many readers will find them readily recognizable.  Our training colleges enlist fewer cadets than in even recent decades.  The cadets, on the whole, come to the training colleges less prepared and less able to provide the strong leadership needed; and some require remedial work and/or counseling to even rise to a minimum standard (and not just in an academic sense: spiritually, emotionally, and socially candidates carry many challenges).

Meanwhile, across many territories, a good number of our corps’ soldiers who are quite skilled and capable, who possess many favorable spiritual qualities, and would seemingly be  ‘good’ candidates for officer service, find instead valued and fulfilling service opportunities elsewhere; some even as Army employees.  So: is God not calling these soldiers into service?

We must say, clearly and forthrightly, from both experience and conversation, this: God is calling soldiers into service.  Some are called to be officers, some are called ‘other’ wise into service.  But all are called.  Every believer is called, and the will of God is clear that a believer has a consequent duty to respond.  The path this response should follow is likewise established by God, by the giftedness of the individual.  It is to be a natural response, and identifying an area or emphasis of service might well be a clear task.

What stands in the way of naturalness or clarity of response is, of course, the unnatural: in every church denomination there are such impediments.  With the Army, we might identify several areas.  Together these institutional barriers form a network that pushes away potential candidates for service.  These same structural habits work also to depress and discourage the good functioning of many who have already responded.

I believe one means of remedy lies in part with a recapturing of an ancient Christian understanding of holy vocation.

At its root meaning, vocation is the response to God’s call.  When we speak of vocations (plural), we mean the variety of paths God designs by way of the spiritual gifts and talents given to an individual.  God’s will is that every believer be in his service, and more: that each one follow the progressive path to growth to meet new and unexpected challenges and opportunities, through the leading and grace he provides.

This is to say that any one of us benefits and learns from new situations; indeed, the unexpected (or latent talents) may be the very way God leads us into once-unknown and unconsidered avenues of service.   So we cannot say that being placed by others (as officers within the appointment system) into situations and appointments not of our choosing does not allow for the progressive leading of God in our lives.

Yet we can acknowledge that a system that largely ignores or is forced to disregard giftedness can work to deflect potential officer candidates from responding, and discourage those already in service as officers in their work.

A more developed sense of vocation would regard responses to God’s calling as entailing a spectrum; a variety of ways by which one may faithfully and responsibly develop their giftedness in God’s service.

Note here that a spectrum necessarily implies degrees; in this case degrees of formal adherence to the role of commissioned and ordained officership.  That is, every soldier and every office are to be found somewhere along a spectrum of holy vocation.

This is a profoundly biblical concept.  Consider simply these two principles: that tenet of faith commonly called the “priesthood of all believers,” by which we mean that every believer has a role within the larger community that itself plays a witnessing, intercessory function in the non-believing world; and the understanding that not all are identically called, but rather there are necessarily different members of the whole that must work together for healthy functioning.  There is not a spiritual hierarchy here, but rather a straight-forward acknowledgment of diversity and integrated variation.

So: so one soldier’s giftedness find suitable service within the local corps setting, even as they find “living wage” employment outside of this arena.  Their vocation is not in this secular employ, however, nor is it, strictly speaking, to be confined to their time at the corps alone: their vocation is to be worked out in every sphere of life, but focused as vocation by considering life lived as service to God.

Another soldier find their giftedness might well be used of God within the wider employ of the Army, so that both their “living wage” work and their holy vocation merge within this role as Army lay leader and/or employee.

Yet another soldier senses God’s call to respond as an officer.  But perhaps this one does not also sense that this call means to volunteer as an itinerant generalist, a mobile “jack/jill of all trades.”

An institutional framework limiting responses tot he generalist role only might very well be filtering out the “specialists.”  (Indeed, did not the Methodist New Connexion Conference of the mid-1800s move along to other fields a fervent and gifted evangelist for want of a flexible vocational response framework, one that instead insisted that Rev. Booth be restricted to a role that did not fit?)

These specialist-leaning soldiers (identified as such by gifts, and – dare we say? – interests and desires) may well choose after all to become an officer.  And then face the discouraging possibilities of not serving in ways that are fulfilling or fruitful.  Again, this is not to say that there is not a great need, nor even that circumstances often require that some fill roles “unsuitable” – for God can surely use anyone who is open and yielded: His strength in our weakness, His eternal plans not finally frustrated.

But still the observation remains: if you are not yourself an officer who has had at some time felt less than suitably appointed in some manner, you need ask around too long or far before finding some who are so discouraged, perhaps even near resignation for want of a hopeful option.

Again: I am cognizant of many objections, so hear me clearly – not one of us has ever initially felt comfortable or fully prepared for any newly-received appointment, yet God’s grace is plenteous and sufficient, and many of us find that despite our initial reservations we discovered wonderful times of growth in our dependence upon God.

I am really aiming at a problem surrounding vocational understandings that is much more fundamental than this kind of anxiety and discomfort in an appointment: this speaks to those who are profoundly out of place in their appointment, and who find their service to be significantly out of sync with their holy vocation.

An ancient Christian understanding and practice of vocation included a variety of institutional and non-institutional responses.  Some responded as faithful believers who Christian witness flowed throughout their lives in whatever “secular” work life they found matched their talents; this service – as farmer, baker, seamstress, etc. – was rendered unto others as unto God.

Others found their life’s vocation to be a merging of their service to God and “living wage” labor in work roles within the church structure as laymen.  Their full-time Christian service – as scholars, teachers, musicians, clerk and so on – were sometimes formally ordered (that is, categorized, in orderly fashion) as a vocational response to God’s call, worked out along the lines of their giftedness.

Yet again others found a sense of calling that led them to offer their lives in God’s service in ordered institutions that used them in prophetic and pastoral ways, and were recognized as ordained clergy.  In each of these more formal categories we could see administrative leadership rise within the orders, with gift-expressions developed across the spectrum.  But there were (and still are, in some traditions) more-ore-less clearly defined avenues of service that could be held up as viable paths of response.

What are the implications, then for the Army world?  Among perhaps others, are these:

·         we must be willing to continued blurring the lines of distinction of ordination (and commissioning) between soldier and officer

·         we must be willing to formalize an array of employment opportunities as vocational options

o   this would include standards of education and proficiency, and entail as well some time spent in training in addition to “secular education” (such as music, education, social work, finance/accounting) that would describe a period of Army training, whether at a training college setting or through home-steady course work

·         we must be willing to consider commissioned officers interests and desires, in concert with a careful evaluation of giftedness, to be a predominant factor in making appointments

o   this should take place within a re-structuring of the appointment availabilities, whereby one may enroll in a course of officer training for service that is ordered to follow, say, social work, or counseling, teaching, finance or other types of administration work; or ordered to follow prophetic and pastoral roles; all of this restructuring done with the understanding that leadership is a gift that may be expressed within each (and across all) orders of vocation

·         we must not allow even this new thinking to become so structured and inflexible so as to prevent an easy crossing over, from order to order, as God’s leading calls and equips, and as needs require positions to be filled by individuals who faithfully respond

This essay is a considered reflection offered in the great hope of opening discussion and spurring on to good work those who may hear God and respond in his holy vocations.

He Was Dust

He was dust.  That was his conclusion.  It was who he was, where he lived.  He had rejected more likely descriptions such as it was dusty, as too passive.  It was a dusty place to live, and he breathed in the dust and breathed out the dust, and he kicked up the dust with every step he took…that was true, but ultimately too indirect and beside the point.

            He was dust, not dusty, and definitely not Dusty.  D., yes; so maybe Dee.  Dee was dust.  So long as you remember that, you’ll get it.

            Dee was also lonely, in that I’m not alone yet feel like I’m apart kind of way.  It’s not that Dee would get lost in a crowd, but when he was with other people Dee was not always present.  His mind couldn’t help but shift over into that stream of thoughts that began with futility and that eventually ended up going nowhere.

            Somehow Dee had hoped that it would be different, moving from Chicago to Santiago, Chile, in the middle of the U.S. Midwest winter to the middle of the South American summer.  January here was hot: skies overtaken by a sun that refused all cloud cover, fickle breezes and thus occasional stultifying nights, and yes, dust. 

            No clouds meant no rain.  An entire summer without rain.  And that was normal.  Walking around in the mornings and late afternoons, Dee would pass people with water hoses and sprinklers, wetting the dust that rose to reign in the front of their houses.  Patches of grass existed in this part of town, but it was ruled by the hard-packed dirt and so yellow dust.

            It was hard to grasp, this watering of the dust.  Watering front lawns to grow things, he got.  And people did water their patches of grass, their flowers. (Though that too suddenly struck Dee as futile.  Why water the grass to make it grow only to cut it down?  Too hot, this work, but at least water for plants made some kind of natural sense.  But not water for dust.)

            The thing that really killed him was when Dee would pass an early morning dust sprinkler where the water splashed across the already warmed over concrete of the streets and sidewalks.  Do you know that smell?  That evaporating water that carries the essence of the concrete into the air kind of smell. 

            For the years Dee loved that smell.  The smell of an early summer sprinkler splashing the sidewalks of a small town USA sunny day’s morning walk would remind him of the days on end with no school no cares no worries but getting home in time for supper.  The smell of clean, the scented trail of possibilities. 

            But the nose is the most devilish of memory sparks.  Odors travel faster than touch, more sure than sight or sound.  And every time, every yellow dust-forsaken time Dee caught a whiff of that mist the memory would catch him up and toss him down. 

            The dust that usually brought it on was the concrete dust of a construction site.  That was the most powerful, and piercing.  But first cousin to the hovering dust of concrete powder mixing with water smell was that of water on a hot road.  Dee couldn’t help it, this memory chain.  It’s like telling someone Don’t you dare even think about elephants and see what happens.  Pachyderms flood the mind.

            Dee tried to disassociate the dust from, well, he didn’t know what or why, but Dee couldn’t do it.  The very effort to not think about it brought it to bear anyway.

And what was it?  It was the two weeks he spent in NYC, the two weeks that began at the end of September 2001.  The two weeks-plus-whatever that began at the end of September and stretched into October.  And it stayed with him, long afterwards, long after he stopped staying in Manhattan, soaking up into the slush and sun of Chicago.  Stayed even now, in yellow dust of Santiago. 

            Of course in Santiago they don’t say two weeks, but quince días, fifteen days.  Sort of like the fortnight of the UK.  The same, mas o menos, only different.  And so it was.  Dee was dust the same only different.

            The day that towers fell Dee had stayed late in bed, enjoying the pleasures of a pastor’s rare Tuesday morning off, when the kids are at school and the schedule is clear for the morning, and the Monday had been too much and yet not enough.

He had sat up in bed that morning and turned on the TV, the Today Show and suddenly the tone changed with an odd report not yet understood, and Dee thought what everyone thought, and turned to CNN and saw what everyone saw.

            When the phone rang later that morning, it was one of the chiefs at HQ. 

“We’re putting together a team, Dee, the first group to reinforce the locals in New York will be from Chicago.  Can you go?”

“Sure, probably.  I mean yeah, I want to, I gotta clear the schedule. What would I do there?”

“Well, the official title is Grief Counselor, but, you know...it’s all kind of fluid right now.  Things change.  We’d have to know by Friday.  The team leaves on the 28th.”

A couple of days to decide, and a week to prepare.  The phone rang again, this time his best friend from a couple of states away.  Dee tells him about the trip.

“You better be ready, Dee, ready for how it’s gonna change you.”

“Yeah, but that’s why I’m here.  That’s why I got into the ministry.  This is what I want to do.”

This is what I want to do.  The same thing he had said when he and his wife pushed HQ to send them out of the country.  I want to serve overseas.  And now here he was, in Chile.

In Chile, where there were mountains all around that you could see sometimes, if the air wasn’t too thick with smog.  The best days were after a hard rain, but the relief of rains wouldn’t begin until after the Fall.  In Summer, the mountains were brownish smudges against a dirty haze of a blue sky.

And Dee arrived in Summer, in the dry season. 

One day, about a year and a half after he landed, after an unusually cold and wet Chilean Winter, and an unusually long and pleasant Chilean spring, Dee set out for another walk.  It was a Tuesday in mid-November that had Summer firmly in sight, with temperatures already in the 80s and removed by at least two months from the last of the seasonal rains.

His students were finished with their classes, and were away from the school where they all lived, for two weeks of practicum work in the area.  The sudden cessation of the busyness of the long school year that had begun in March appealed to him.  And yet.  And yet after only one day of this relative quiet and emptiness of the school, he felt the solitude returning, in all of its towering empty presence.

And so he set aside the final grade reports, pushed away the planning pages, turned off the computer and went to change his clothes for a walk on that almost-Summer Tuesday afternoon.  Dee pulled on shorts, a t-shirt, and decided on a pair of sandals that he’d never wear in Chicago but which were almost required by the heat here.  Coating his neck and face with sunscreen, he pulled on a baseball cap and then sunglasses. 

Turning the first corner, Dee saw the streams before he saw the sprinkler.  Rivulets of water were moving toward him, slowly filling the cracks in the road between him and the man halfway down the block with the water hose in his hands.  Watering the dust.

Dee stepped around the streams, walked ahead, shook his head again at the thought of someone wasting water like that.  And in his half-wasted effort to protect his new sandals and dance around the moving puddles, Dee stepped in it anyway, a confluence of water and the dust, and made some mud. 

And then of course it flashed in his brain, like a musical odor returning to flavor flaccid senses, a wrong lyric to an old song about the yellow dirt down in his toes. 

He gets up every morning and he lights upon the floor.
He migrates to the washroom and he opens up the door.
The whiskers on his chin tells him he's in, and then
Through the paste and the soap, sees an image without hope.
He's a broom of a fellow, an oddity in parenthesis.
So infected with disease of yellow dirt down in his soul.

He usually spends his spare time counting hairs upon his arm.
The ants upon the cupboard to his thinking add their charm.
He never starts to notice that his shoes are full of lead.
He's dead, through cough. Labored breathing, he is seething.
He's a sandwich of a fellow, an all-spread personality.
So infected with disease of yellow dirt down in his soul.

Last night a thousand stars were his to mold like clay, and so
In one split second's anger he did reach and take a hold.
He saw himself a captain way off in some kissin' situation.
That would have made his father proud, he laughs out loud.
He conceals the hurt. He reveals the dirt.
The yellow dirt down in his soul. The yellow dirt down in his soul.
The yellow dirt down in his soul. The yellow dirt down in his soul.

(Lyrics by James Seals & music by James Seals & Dash Crofts, 1971; from the album Summer Breeze, 1972).