What is a Salvation Army pioneer?

Major Ian Haylett invites us to see the world differently.

Provocative writer Peter Rollins once described receiving Christ into his life by saying: ‘It’s not that I had a new thing in my life. Say I had 20 things before and then I had Jesus, which made it 21. I still had 20 things in my life, but I saw them all differently.’ As followers of Jesus, we see the world differently. We see the world as it is, but then catch God’s vision for what it could be, and we become agents of the transformation of human hearts, minds and spirits.

The Spirit gives this work to the Church, which takes this global task and makes it localised, incarnating it into our streets, our parks, our schools and our places of work. We engage with those we meet, we hear the cry of the community, we roll up our sleeves to get stuck in and then take those sacred moments when we can talk about Jesus. This is the Church. This is pioneering, the work of a pioneer.

All movements follow a pattern: an inspired beginning gives way to becoming established, settled and content. This can last years, generations, even centuries and, uninterrupted, it will breed complacency and decline will follow. Some of these movements do not survive, but those that do are stirred into a serious reality check – a corporate dark night of the soul. It is not only a time of introspective searching, but also outward-looking, to see the landscape as it is now and to see it differently. Without looking externally, movements in decline will try to recapture something of their past – an impossible task – but taking stock of new realities, seeing things differently, will allow new ideas and approaches to be adopted, making that movement fit for its present age.

The people who see things differently in these movements are the pioneers. Something stirs in them that provokes questions, a holy discontent that pushes them out of places of comfort to take them into spaces that are new, challenging and, perhaps, a little dark. They cross their Lake of Gennesaret, impelled to go to the other side.

I’ve met many pioneers over the years and realised that they come in all sorts of guises. Wacky, dull, old, young, some with pierced noses, others immaculately uniformed, male, female, musical, tone-deaf, officers, adherents, friends, a myriad of ethnic backgrounds… They are all there, drawn from the many strands of society!

So what defines them as a pioneer? Isaiah confessed: ‘I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’ (Isaiah 6:5). Yes, Isaiah! You get it! You are not perfect, but you have seen the Lord Almighty and now you see everything differently. You are no longer overwhelmed by fear, nor bound by your circumstances, but you have offered yourself to be sent into the world to bring light, hope and love. You are a pioneer and you didn’t know it!

We, as Salvationists, are not here to bring life to our organisation. We are here to bring life to our world, perhaps beginning in the small part of the world where we find ourselves. The pioneering spirit exists within us all and needs to be fanned into flames to encourage us to leave our comfortable places, to inhabit the places where have our being, to walk the world in white and to bring the good news of Christ – that the Kingdom of God is at hand.

See the world differently. Be a pioneer.