'We Are Here To Save Souls, To Grow Saints And To Serve Suffering Humanity' General John Gowans

'We Are Here To Save Souls, To Grow Saints And To Serve Suffering Humanity'

 

 

General John Gowans

 

I’m completely stunned, surprised honoured, moved, delighted, frightened – all those things [to be elected General]. I just hope I am going to survive it!

 

Principally I am stunned that the responsibility has come. I thought I had passed my ‘use-by-date’ and yet the High Council felt it was the right thing to do and I am very humbled by that. I am excited about it because it is a huge challenge and a heavy responsibility. I’m frightened about it, too, because of the expectations people have, which are quite unrealistic. You know, Hercules and the archangel Gabriel rolled into one wouldn’t really do for General of The Salvation Army!

 

My plans [for the future of The Salvation Army] are not as important as the plans corps have for reaching out into the districts where they are situated. I can have some grandiose international plans but it’s the people in the corps, at the ‘coalface’ where the real work is done, who are most important. I will encourage them and give some general idea of the direction the Army should take, but what’s going to happen has to be decided by the people who are going to make it happen.

 

it’s the people in the corps, at the ‘coalface’ where the real work is done

What kind of challenges are facing The Salvation Army? I think the Army is going to change. It’s already changing. Compared to 10 years ago it already has changed quite dramatically. It’s become more free, more explosive, more effervescent, more varied.

 

At one time any two corps looked like any two corps, That’s not true any more. Corps these days have individuality about them, which I think is of the Spirit. No corps should be like the neighbouring corps. Each should adopt whatever character it needs to be effective where it is.

 

So I think one of the challenges for the next millennium is for The Army to loosen up, to be relaxed about its mission but to say that in the area of mission anything is possible, anything goes. As long as it save souls and brings people nearer to Christ then let’s have a go at it, see if it works. If it doesn’t work, too bad — let’s try something else. That flexibility is what’s going to be right from the beginning of the new millennium. In fact, I see it already starting and it’s hugely encouraging.

 

I’ve had about half and hour to think about what my priority as General will be, but if you want it from the top of my head it’s to refocus The Salvation Army on its primary mission. We are going to have to mobilise the total Salvation Army. In the next three years you will hear me say that at least a thousand times!

 

I do believe that at the moment there are too many people associated with the Army who are only semi-mobilised. They have huge capabilities which they are not yet fully investing in the programmes of the Army — the outreach programmes, the mission programmes, in particular. Also — and this is the sadness of the whole thing in my eyes — there are some Salvationists who are still around but are demobilised. They are no longer involved. They no longer have any investment in the outreach programmes of the Army. I think one of the challenges for the Army is to mobilise all of our resources. Everybody should have a job to do in the great salvation war.

 

[To make that happen] I’m going to travel quite a bit, to sound the same message — beat the drum — in a variety of places. But the General can’t do the whole thing himself. He needs to influence his territorial commanders and officers commanding in every part of the world to pick up this idea and carry it everywhere they go throughout their own territory or command, until the whole Army is talking about the phrase ‘total mobilisation’. We’ve got a war on!

 

We have more than 50 territories and commands. Each has a leader who occasionally gets fed up, who needs encouragement, who needs a little correction sometimes, a little direction sometimes — it’s through them that I will make any difference.

 

 

 

During the High Council, as part of the selection process, I was asked a number of questions. one area of questioning concerned the ‘non-negotiables’ of the Army. What can The Salvation Army quietly and cheerfully discard and what must we keep at any price? My answer was that The Salvation Army was created to achieve three very definite things. It was created to save souls, to grow saints, and to serve suffering humanity. If we stop doing any one of those three The Salvation Army will cease to be The Salvation Army.

 

It was created to save souls. If a corps is not saving souls you wonder what it is doing, because that is what it’s supposed to do. If a Salvation Army corps doesn’t have a good holiness teaching programme which encourages the soldiers to become like Jesus, which is what holiness is all about, then it isn’t really fulfilling its mission. If a corps has no community service of any kind then it’s not really The Salvation Army. It might be something else but it’s not The Salvation Army. So my answer is that we are not going to give up those three things anywhere. We are here to save souls, we are here to see spiritual growth and encourage people to become like Jesus, and we are here to serve suffering humanity — particularly in the locality of our corps and centres.

 

I would simply remind Salvationists that salvation is like a step on the way to becoming like Jesus. It is the commencement of a process which involves daily developing Christlikeness. It’s a call to holiness, for which the modern word is Christlikeness. It’s a good word!

 

Highlights from an interview with Commissioner John Gowans published 05 June 1999 in Salvationist. During his first published interview as General-elect of the international Salvation Army, Commission John Gowans shared his vision of a Salvation Army created to save souls, to grow saints and to serve suffering humanity.

 

 

23 September 2013

 

http://fitformission.salvationarmy.org.uk/general-john-gowans-we-are-here-save-souls-grow-saints-and-serve-suffering-humanity

http://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/