RE-POST:
SALVATION ARMY – What happened to you?

By David Woodbury

This is a re-post of a previous article with some additional text pertinent to the global pandemic.

In a few months I will celebrate my 80^th birthday and I guess, like many before me, it has become a time of reflection, review and evaluation. The world of my boyhood is a vastly different world in which I exist today. For the first 25-30 years of my life there were not great cultural changes.  On any given Friday night or Saturday if you walked down the main street of most suburbs you would probably have to step off the footpath to get around the crowds gathered at the local pub. They were, in a sense, a place of community gathering and interaction, mainly for males.

RSL clubs overflowed with patrons and membership of a service club like Lions or Rotary were prized relationship only available to those who could be sponsored.  Suburban movie theatres drew crowds every weekend and the drive-in movies were a great family event. For The Salvation Army the Sunday night Salvation Meeting was a big event. In my home corps, the only people assured of a seat were the officers and band who sat on the platform. If you wanted your favourite seat you better come early.

By the mid ‘60s the impact of television saw families re-allocating free time at the expense of many of the social activities of the ‘50s.  In the decades that followed suburban movie theatres began to struggle and many simply closed. In the early ‘50s a family motor vehicle was somewhat rare but by the late ‘60s most families had a vehicle, sometimes more, as teenage children acquired driving status.

By the late ‘60s cultural change began to emerge with what was termed “the permissive 60s”. Social norms were challenged and feminism and the availability of the contraceptive pill saw women seeking equality and freedom. Although the cultural changes were relatively small and incremental, by the turn of the century they were seismic.  Some organisations were awake to the cultural change and were able to read them and adapt, others just simply plodded on with the old, blinkered mindset. RSL clubs were a prime example: some quickly saw the changes and adapted their operations, particularly catering for family dining. Other began to decline, some merged and others just simply faded away. 

In some ways, The Salvation Army was either indifferent or perplexed and perhaps unable to read the cultural changes and seemingly unable to adapt their operations and programs and a steady decline in interest and numbers began. Corps began to close or merge in what in some ways was a futile effort to arrest the decline.

In trying to comprehend today’s culture perhaps the telling question we ought to be asking is: where is place of community gathering and interaction today? Certainly not the local suburban, pub since many of these are long gone and most of the remaining ones no longer draw crowds that spill out onto the footpath. The reality is today that you may well have to step off the footpath to avoid the crowd waiting for a table at the local coffee shop.

In my lifetime I have seen the cultural change from the masses at the local pub, to the small intimate groups at coffee shops. Just in the last couple of decades, the number of coffee shops in many areas has skyrocketed. In 2000 we moved into a quarters in Sydney’s southern suburbs and there were two coffee shops within walking distance.  When we left there 16 years later there were at least 9 coffee shops within walking distance, all doing a significant trade.

What are to read about today’s culture from this phenomenon? Perhaps it is simply this: people want the intimacy, friendship and strong familial style bonds that a small group provides and no other group is better equipped in this area than members of the local Christian community. I am well aware that there are some Christians switched on enough to understand this and have moved outside the confines of their churches and commenced such groups based around an incarnational framework. Unfortunately, they are few in number and ministry of this style needs to be actively encouraged.

As good as these groups are they have their limitations. By their very nature, they are small groups and generally self-limiting unless they have the courage to divide and multiply. They have little impact on the public space unless they are willing to break out their circle to intentionality embrace the wider community.

If a number of these incarnational groups exist within an area they need a central hub to help them maintain focus and balance and provide whatever resources they need. A local Salvation Army mission centre needs to exist to provide resources and co-ordination for the overall mission of The Salvation Army. No other  Salvation Army group can provide these resources co-ordination as can a small corps.

As we have already discovered people are looking for small groups that offer intimacy, friendship and strong familial style bonds; that is today’s cultural landscape and the group best placed is the local  Salvation Army, small corps. Curiously, as we realised this cultural shift to small, intimate groups we were busy closing small corps, and effectively removing our presence from the public space.

Many will take the economic argument that we can no longer afford the expensive upkeep of a set of building designed when corps had large bands and other sections which required a building with many rooms, and I would quite agree. But to simply shut down a corps on basically economic grounds indicates a lack of vision. Perhaps all a small corps needs is an unused shop front, of which there are many today. From such a place the corps could run its usual programs, outreach programs such as community meals etc. and enable its incarnational groups a place to gather. Such a move would keep a Salvation Army presence in the public space.

Since posting the original article we have been impacted by a global pandemic of the Coronavirus. In many ways our world has changed and will never be the same again, and this includes the church and The Salvation Army. Consequently, we need to think seriously about what our Army will look like, and function, as we emerge from this pandemic. It may well be this will herald the end of the glitzy mega-church era and the people will be looking for the smaller, more community orientated church. 

It is my opinion that we may well have a unique opportunity to rebuild the Army using the concept of the shop front corps. In the next few weeks I will post an article presenting the concept of what a shop front corps will look like and how it will operate. 

Upcoming post: WHAT DOES A SHOPFRONT CORPS LOOK LIKE.