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Our Army Calling
What does it mean to be called?
by Danielle Strickland

WARNING: this article is idealistic and primitive. It is intended to provoke thought, entice hearts and move bodies to some sort of aggressive action.

We are presently in the midst of hosting a March break conference for young people call RAW (Ready And Willing). It’s a conference that boasts of actually ‘doing’ more than we speak. It’s a hard thing to accomplish but we desire to equip a generation to make a difference. We have called it RAW because it is a cool name. But it is also the essentials of a ‘called’ generation. There must be readiness and a willingness to respond to the great need in the world and the great call of God on us to make a difference.

What does it mean to be called? It means to be ready and willing to respond to God’s great invitation to advance the Kingdom of God into the whole world.

Who is called to this? Every believer is called and commissioned to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Every church is ‘called’ to evangelism and discipleship, to community and social justice. Every believer is ‘called’ to love the Lord their God with all their hearts and minds, soul and strength and to love their neighbor as themselves’. This is not a specific call to any ONE denomination – it is a call to the whole church. This is important to recognize, especially when we are within an aggressive and frontline part of the church. Often our rhetoric would suggest that we are the only ones called to do the ‘daring’ work but this is not the case in Scripture. SO if we are not ‘special’ from the rest of the Body than what is different or unique about our (Salvationist) calling?

I liken it to the US military analogy. The Marine Corps is a distinct part of the US Military. To be a Marine is to be a soldier in the US military. It is to fight for your country along with many other units and specialty groups within the Armed Forces. They are all fighting the same war and are called to the same outcome but are distinct in their training, function and have specific standards of membership. They are part of the larger US Military and called to the same end – but have a distinct call within the larger call. The Salvation Army is like the Marine corps of the body of Christ.

We are distinct in our training.

Our training is to be an active and aggressive thing. We want to be the frontline of the body. My husband likes to describe The Salvation Army as the ‘fist of the body of Christ’. Just like the Marines train aggressively as a ‘distinct’ force within the Armed Forces, so Salvationists are called to specific standards of membership and training. To give more money, time, talents, sacrifice, be willing to associate with people of low position, humility, and abandon are things that should be distinguishing us in our unique call. When William Booth instructed early officers to ‘go for souls and go for the worst’ it wasn’t a clever PR scheme… it was a training system. We are aggressive in our training on purpose in order to fight in a specific way to advance the war.

We are distinct in our function.

Our Function is to be at the ‘frontline’ of the fight. We should be identifying the hardest fronts, where people are frightened to go, and then take those assignments as ours. Where does darkness linger… let’s go there. Where is there great suffering and need – let’s go there. Where is the going tough and hard, and standard approaches just won’t work to advance the Gospel? Send us there. That is our assignment. To go where others won’t, to answer when others aren’t ready – we are a frontline people. We go for the worst neighborhoods, the worst fighting grounds, where the statistics looks grim – we are attackers not reactors… that is our calling as Salvationists.

Another important function The Salvation Army has is to help introduce other members of the Church into frontline warfare. We can take a beachhead and then help introduce and train other ‘units’ in the body to hold it and advance it. We are not fighting alone. Recognizing our function as unique but essential to other functions is important.

We have specific standards of membership.

Standards of membership. Given the extreme nature of Marine assignments – their standards are different from other Military units. So are ours. Covenanted Warriors is our entry level. We want to enlist people who are willing to embrace sacrifice and hard-living and consider all suffering for the advance of the War a privilege and not a burden. We need people who love the fight, love the thickest of the fight and will go down fighting. We need fewer numbers and more heart.

We want a Spartan looking army who runs to the battle, drumming and yelling – born to fight NOT a Roman army whose officers are ‘paid’ to fight and the sound of their approach is the whip on the backs of their soldiers, trying to drive them forward.

What are some of our specific standards of membership?

Giving – our standard is sacrificial giving (extravagant). Why? Because we need our soldiers lean and ready to embrace the battle.

Abstaining – alcohol, drugs, smoking, and unhealthy substances. Why? Because we need our soldiers free from the vices that we fight against.

Holiness – living free from sin. Why? Because sin is our number one enemy. If we sleep with the enemy, we die with the enemy.

Covenant – lifelong promises to God. Why? Because we need people who ARE The Army not who join it for a while. We need committed warriors who are born to fight until the end.

There are more – this is not exhaustive – but it does give an idea of what the standards are for. If we are called to the specific frontline fight of Salvationists, it would be wise to be ready and willing.

The dangers in the ‘calling’:

Danger #1. Making it individualistic.

The largest danger is in making the call into some ‘mystical’ reality that only the person who ‘feels’ called is able to confirm. This goes hand in hand with a North American version of an ‘individual’ salvation. I do not believe this is Biblical, healthy or wise.

Danger #2. Divorcing Calling from Need.

Another danger is divorcing ‘the call’ from ‘the need’. William Booth is famous for saying that the ‘need itself is the call’. He suggested that if you don’t get warm fuzzies when you think of mission – that you should put your ear to the ground and hear the loud call of the masses of un-reached people calling for some help – some direction, some light. He may just be on to something. I was reading the life story of Mike from Metro Ministries International who runs the largest Sunday School that I know of… 22,000 members at last count in the Bronx of New York city. He has a whole chapter entitled, ‘What to do while you are waiting for the burning bush’- he echoes William Booth’s sentiments years earlier. For too long we have bought in to the idea that ‘the call’ is a mystical ‘feeling’ without any tangible measurements. We have separated the call from the need.

Danger #3. Arrogance and Pride of our call.

A lot of recent response from our own movement to downplay our ‘unique’ calling I believe is a reaction to the stink of pride. Unity is not ‘sameness’ it is a celebration of diversity. It is not wrong to celebrate our uniqueness but it is wrong to use it as a measurement for someone’s else’s specific calling. Let’s recognize our call as a part of the larger call for the whole church.

Danger #4. Politically correct sameness.

This is the other extreme of Danger three. It is to water down our calling so that it doesn’t offend anyone else. And it is to become like everyone else in the guise of ‘unity’ when clearly God doesn’t call us all to look the same. This is a great danger to the North American church who has bought into a worldview that tolerance is sameness and not a celebration of our differences.

Danger #5. Forgetting the call.

Our call did not start with our generation. We are a movement that began over a hundred years ago. Forgetting our call is something unique to every movement that ages. We must not forget what God called William and Catherine Booth to do. It is essentially a part of who we are and where we get our calling from. Our CONTEXT will always change but our CALLING will not. We are a SALVATION army… let’s act like it.

Let’s embrace the CALL.

Most calls are connected to a Divine Revelation (starting with Abraham and extending through the old Testament right up to the 12 apostles and Paul the Apostle). Some of them include the inevitable reality of sin being revealed to the prophetic types and then the following question, “Who will go?” or even in the New Testament, ‘Who will we send?’ The answer of course is a combination of Readiness and Willingness. This is the call. Divine revelation that matches a readiness and willingness.

In a Be A Hero pitch that my husband and I preach around the globe whenever we have opportunity we recognize that the first step in becoming more than a ‘normal’ person is to get a ‘Divine revelation’ of God’ heart for the world. This will propel us beyond our own feelings, sentiments and the mere hype of a commissioning meeting. If humilty is ‘agreeing with God about who we are’, than let’s agree with God that He raised us up to be an Army and then let’s act like it. In training, function and in standards. Then let us run toward the battle with reckless abandon.