I am always baffled when people come up to people like my wife and I or other people like us and ask, “Are you guys thinking about joining the ministry?” 

What kind of question is this really?  I mean, at 15 I signed the Articles of War (yes, back when they were called Articles of War).  At 16 I sold out to fulltime ministry in The Army.  At 25, I re-enrolled under an original version of the Articles of War.  I have assisted in starting 2 Corps and I am currently the only person, save one, that is not the rank of Major in the appointment that I have in The Army.  Don’t get me wrong, all of this is by the grace of God through The Army.    

So when I am asked, “Are you and your wife going to join the ministry” it comes across as an insult.  I mean if I am not “in the ministry,” then what am I in? 

Now it may seem as if I am over reacting because I am sure that everyone reading this knows that what they are really asking is, “When are you going to Training? When are you becoming an Officer?  When will you answer the calling?”  

Thus we have the idea of “the calling.”  And how could we write an article about calling without first using the most used and abused quote in The Salvation Army's history? 

William Booth, “Not called,” did you say?  Not heart the call, I think you should say.  He has been calling loudly ever since He spoke your sins forgiven—if you are forgiven at all—entreating and beseeching you to be His ambassador.  Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull poor sinners out of the fire of sin.  Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitying wail for help.  Go and stand by the gates of Hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house, and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there.  And then look the Christ in the face, whose mercy you profess to have got, and whose words you have promised to obey, and tell Him whether you will join us heart and should and body and circumstances in this march to publish His mercy to all the world.

And here people have used this as their main defense for the call to Officership.  And a good one it is by the way.  Except it is not a call to Officership that the Founder is evoking.  It is a call to Soldiership.  You see everything listed here is about the Articles of War that we have signed.  Unfortunately, what we have done is turned it into a call to ordination or commissioning.  It is not that; because we are already ordained by God to do the work of the ministry.  We are already called “saints and high priest.” 

The Founder, as he was speaking in 1898, hoped that soldiers would not shirk their duty “by any talk of not being an officer.”  He said, “You cannot say you are not ordained. You were ordained when you signed Articles of War under the Blessed Flag. If not, I ordain every man, woman, and child here present that has received the new life. I ordain you now. I cannot get at you to lay my hands upon you. I ordain you with the breath of my mouth. I tell you what you true business in the world is, and in the name of the living God I authorise you to go and do it. Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."

We have been authorized by God and The Army to go.  Perhaps this is why Catherine Booth said, “You need no human ordination, no long and tedious preparation, no high-flown language, no towering eloquence: all you want is the full baptism of the Holy Spirit in your heart, the Bible in your hand, and humility and simplicity in your manner.”

As I look today in our Army, we have human ordination, long and tedious preparation, high-flown language, towering eloquence, partial - not full - baptism of the Holy Spirit as we deny some of His gifts as relevant or active, lack of true Bible knowledge, humility and simplicity in our manner.  You can include me in this criticism.  We have become the antithesis of what we were to be.  God forgive us. 

What we have done with this language of “the calling” is to create an exclusive order of leaders or preachers.  The Founder wanted to debunk this by saying that ministry is not “confined to a particular class of individuals who constitute a sacred order specially raised up and qualified…on the ground of their ancestors having been specially set apart for it, and authorised to communicate the same power to their successors, who are, they again contend, empowered to pass on some special virtues to those who listen to their teaching…he existence of any order exclusively possessing the right to publish the salvation of God… I honour the Order of Preachers; I belong to it myself…but as to his possessing any particular grace because of his having gone through any form of Ordination, or any other ceremonial whatever, I think that idea is a great mistake. 

And I want to say here, once and for all, that no such notion is taught in any authorized statement of Salvation Army doctrine affirmed by any responsible officer in the organization…the duty in which I glory is no more sacred, and only a few degrees removed in importance, from that of the brother who opens the doors of the Hall in which the preacher holds forth…As Soldiers of Christ, the same duty places us all on one level.”   

This is why the early editions of the Orders and Regulations for Soldiers said, “Our plan, moreover, makes every soldier and officer, charged with the responsibility of so many of his townfolk, and expected to carry on the war against the streets, street, or part of a street allotted to his case..” 

“EVERY SOLDIER IS AN OFFICER!” 

This thought continued to Bramwell Booth when he said, “the idea that Jesus Christ in some way instituted a society with set orders of worship, and appointed the times and manner of sacred things, such as sacraments and sacrifices, or settled an order of ministers who should be the exclusive channel of grace, has not particle of authority in the New Testament. 
 
Florence Booth, his wife, backed him up by saying, “The kingdom of Satan and sin will never be overthrown by a body of officers, as officers only.  Our Founders raised The Salvation Army because they saw clearly there should be an army of fighting men and women.  The churches have erred by shutting out the laity and making God’s work depend on the leaders only; and the Army was raised up as a protest against this very mistake. Do not ape the parson.  Do not imitate the Church.  Let your great aim be to raise an Army that shall glorify God by fighting His battles.”  

So I choose not to imitate the church and raise up a protest against that which we have fallen into by making some idea of a special class of leader called “Officers.”  I have been ordained by the first General of The Salvation Army, William Booth.  I guess I could jump through all the hoops to get ordained a second time but is that necessary?  Some friends tell me that the rank brings credibility.  OK then, I'll take it. Someone reading this can pull some strings to get it for me, right?  I have been called by God and ordained by the Founder.  Just call me Captain Cory Harrison.

                                                                                    Cory Harrison
                                                                                    Charlotte, NC
                                                                                    March 2006

Comments to cory.harrison@uss.salvationarmy.org
All quotes taken from Major Harold Hill’s thesis on entitled ‘Claricalization’.