Pastoral Letter - June 2009

Dear Fellow Salvationists,

This Pastoral Letter comes to you with my warmest greetings in the Lord Jesus Christ and with my prayers for each of you. The Lord is using the Army in wonderful ways. We seek to be faithful to the divine impulse to go out into the world representing Jesus Christ to all we meet. My constant prayer for you is that God will use you, just as he uses all who are faithful to him regardless of their denominational affiliation. My Fellow Salvationists, you are key players in a mighty Christian host of believers scattered across the globe. I hold you all before the Lord in prayer as I write to you. God has a part for you to play in his great plan of salvation.

The theme of this letter is Leadership.

There is a deep and true sense in which all Christians are leaders. Often we use the word 'leader' to mean a person in high position or with authority over others. This is a legitimate use of the word, but for now let me suggest that we can use it with a wider, more inclusive, meaning.

You are a leader just where God has placed you. You can influence other lives, leading people to consider the things of Christ. You can lead others into the realisation there is more to life than selfishness or the pursuit of pleasure. You can be the sanctified leader when someone suggests that you engage with them in some doubtful activity. You can lead when others do not sense someone's hurt, or another's need. You can take the lead when others stand by idly or are in confusion as to the way forward in a time of crisis.

To be a leader like this does not require a special rank or position, or any kind of formal authorisation. Each believer in Jesus is called to be a leader like this. All Christians are called to be leaders.

The very fact that we are known to be in the Army can sometimes make other people have expectations of us that mean we will often need to show initiative and leadership more than others. Our uniforms can result in expectations like this. There is a deep sense in which the wearing of Salvation Army uniform says to others that the wearer is ready to take responsibility in the unexpected moment, to take the lead in the unlikely situation.

In fact, there is a sense in which we are an Army of leaders. We each have a leadership function to carry out. Let us not minimise this or shrink from it out of shyness or fear. The Lord who calls us is able to accomplish through us everything he wills and wishes. The Holy Spirit is our guide and our helper.

Without diminishing in any way this 'leadership' role of all believers, let me also mention those who hold heavy leadership burdens in the Army because of their rank or appointment as officers. On Tuesday, 7 July 2009 London will host a gathering of the Army's most senior officers. An International Conference of Leaders like this takes place every few years. I seek your prayers for those who will gather with me. They are spiritual leaders like you, in the deep sense I have tried to outline above, but they are also leaders in the organisational sense in terms of the senior responsibilities they carry within the Army.

We shall number about 140 and will be together for seven days. Let me mention the two most important things we will do in that week: we will pray together, especially for you and your fellow Salvationists, and we will study the Scriptures together, waiting upon God for his divine direction and impulse.

We will also take a warm-hearted but hard-headed look at the state of the world, at the readiness of the Army in 118 countries to engage with the modern world, and at the need to see far into the future to discern God's way forward for his Salvation Army.

Please, please pray about this gathering. Let me give you the dates again: 7 - 13 July 2009. Perhaps you can enter these dates into your prayer diary or into your devotional schedule so that you can influence the deliberations through prayer. That would be wonderful! Perhaps you could covenant with the Lord to hold a particular participant, perhaps your own leader, before the Lord each day of the conference. What a difference you could make in that way!

God bless you in your own local leadership, both in your community and in your corps. Every soldier is a leader for God and the gospel. I pray that you will be used to lead others into faith in Jesus as their Saviour. I pray that you will be used to lead others eventually to their eternal reward when we shall see Jesus in Heaven. What a day that will be!

I commend you to the perfect love of Christ.

I pray for you daily.

Sincerely in Jesus,

Shaw Clifton

General

2009 June NewsLetter

Daniel Hor’s Story...

My name is Daniel Hor Chee Leung and I am 19 years old. I was born in Ipoh, but dur-ing my early childhood years, I lived with my parents in Johor. I have a younger brother and sister. When I was 8 years old, I started help-ing my parents at a Dim Sum shop in Johor Baru. When I was in Primary 4 (10 years old), someone from the So-cial Welfare Department came by and upon inspecting me, found cane marks along my back. My parents were reprimanded for this, and after that, my aunt from Penang brought me home to live with her. After staying with my aunt for a year, we were visited by Captain Leong and Mrs. G from the Salvation Army. After the visit, my aunt decided to place me in the Salvation Army’s Penang Children’s Home.

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Freedom above all

Freedom above all

The mystery of the world abides in freedom: God desired freedom and freedom gave rise to tragedy in the world. Freedom is at the beginning and at the end. I might say that all my life I was engaged in hammering out a philosophy of freedom. I was moved by the basic conviction that God is truly present and operative only in freedom. Freedom alone should be recognised as possessing a sacred quality, whilst all the other things to which a sacred character has been assigned since history began ought to be made null and void. I found strength to renounce many things in life, but I have never renounced anything in the name of duty or out of obedience to precepts and prohibitions: I renounced for the sake of freedom, and, maybe, also out of compassion. Nothing could ever tie me down, and this, no doubt, has to some extent weakened my efficiency and diminished my possibilities of self-realisation. I always knew, however, that freedom gives birth to suffering, while the refusal to be free diminishes suffering. Freedom is not easy, as its enemies and slanders allege: freedom is hard; it is a heavy burden. All things in human life should born of freedom and pass through freedom and be rejected whenever they betray freedom. The true meaning and origin of the fallen condition of humanity is to be seen in the primordial rejection of freedom.

From Dream and Reality by Nicolas Berdyaev