International Congress in London 2015

AFTER a selection process lasting several months, the official logo for The Salvation Army's 2015 International Congress can now be revealed. Designed by Kim Hansen and Jan Aasmann Størksen from Norway, the logo will become a familiar sight in the lead-up to the congress, which is being held in London, UK, to mark the Army's 150th anniversary.
 
The logo is comprised of interwoven shapes, each of which resembles a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit. Commissioner William Cochrane (International Secretary to the Chief of the Staff) explains: 'We are a holiness movement and this congress will express that from the outset. Additionally, the interlocking shapes in the traditional Salvation Army colours of yellow, red and blue infer the unity that is ours through our diversity. The Salvation Army is at work in 126 countries around the world, yet we are one.'

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Interview with the new General

The General retires

From the Salvation Army International web-site:
'FOLLOWING a period of personal reflection and prayer, General Linda Bond has decided that she should relinquish the Office of the General with effect from 13 June 2013. The General’s decision to step down comes after 44 years of ministry.'

Vision for the Lost or Lost Vision - PART FIVE

- Harold Hill on fsaof.blogspot. com - "Can the vision be re-found? Yes! But it will look different.
The alternation of renewal and decline as the context within which we have attempted to place our visionary theme reminds us that entropy and dissolution are not the whole story. In the Salvationist micro-climate, we may occasionally have our equivalent of what in the Catholic Church Karl Rahner called a “winter period”, and we may regret the repetitive pattern of institutionalisation and decline, but we can rejoice also in the reiterated springtime which, God-willing, ensues. May the Holy Spirit give renewed vision for our times."

Vision for the Lost or Lost Vision - PART FOUR

- fsaof.blogspot. com - "As Arbuckle goes on to say, after describing how prophetic movements become human institutions, “When this happens, new prophetic movements within the Church and/or re-founding people arise within existing congregations to challenge them to return to the radical demands of the Beatitudes.”

Vision for the Lost or Lost Vision - PART THREE - Harold Hill

From fsaof.blogspot.com:

The Salvation Army emerged in the late 19th century as the latest body of Enthusiasts, those Max Weber called the virtuosi, the dazzlingly skilled, the spiritual athletes. The Army was widely recognised as a de facto new religious order within the church.

The poet Francis Thompson in an essay on “Catholics In Darkest England” wrote, “Consider what the Salvation Army is. It is not merely a sect, it is virtually a Religious Order…”

But, as Gerald Arbuckle writes of Catholic Orders:
"Historically, once these movements cease to be prophetic, though in Church law they may remain religious congregations, they are no longer authentically religious. By sinking to the level of purely human institutions they have lost their reason for being."

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Vision for the Lost or Lost Vision - PART TWO

- Harold Hill in fsaof.blogspot.com -

"To begin with, how about saving people from hell? An early-days Salvationist was an uncomfortable person with whom to share a railway compartment. You would be ear-bashed on the subject. Today, many of us are more anxious to demonstrate our inoffensive normality. The fact that many Salvationists have become less motivated to engage in personal evangelism probably indicates a slackening commitment to the doctrines underlying such activity. A diminished conviction that our neighbour is going to hell renders us less inclined to risk giving offence by trying to save him from it....

...We naturally idealise the early Army as a time of exponential growth, but statistically, the Australasian flood tide had peaked by 1900. In barely a generation the initial energy had begun to dissipate, the vision begun to fade. Reinhold Niebuhr echoed Luther in writing that, “By its very nature the sectarian type of organisation is valid for only one generation… 

Rarely does a second generation hold the convictions it has inherited with a fervour equal to that of its fathers, who fashioned these convictions in the heat of conflict and at the risk of martyrdom.” The children and grandchildren of those who had experienced the miracle of the changing of beer into furniture did not necessarily enjoy the same kind of vital conversion experience of their own. They grew up within the world of the Salvation Army and it was their familiar sub-culture, but they did not necessarily inherit the evangelical imperative. Many found the sub-culture restrictive and they began to slip away."

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