SAY Leadership Training

Today, a small group of Revolutionists traveled for several hours to join other people and learn all they could cram into their heads before heading home. Hope, Grace, Taghelor, Ariel and Captain Martha listened to Angel Webb talk bout the troops programs and how they could be an important part of our ministry.

We've done Sunbeams and Guards before but as corps officer, I couldn't keep up with the reporting and other factors - so we have been just having the girls come to the women's crafting nights and be part of the family that way.

Hope however got all excited about the possisbilities and took the fire home and gave some of it to Angie - whose fire turned into a huge bonfire. They have plans to revive the Sunbeam program at Pendleton Corps and can't wait until Thursday night.

Let's see how it works out!!

Speak Up and Live

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King Jr.


from armybarmyremix

The Old Guard vs. the New Recruit - or is the Old vs. the Young

Here is a blog that finds a similar conflict in the Bible. It's interesting - check it out. . .
http://mattdabbs.wordpress.com/category/post-modernism/

The gauntlet has been thrown . . .

We presented the Revolution 180 plan to a group of about 25 people last night. Probably 20 of them say they want to sign up for the Basic Training stint.

During the first initial two month stint, each participant will have obligations within each of the True North Principles that we are setting up. We probably should write a manifesto or something!

We base the True North principles on H.E.A.R.T. to God, H.A.N.D. to Man. Each letter stands for something - and that is what we use as our basis.

Each person will be committed to a specific community outreach (their choice), to participating in one of the weekly community meals (eating, cooking, and cleaning up), to a weekly time in the Prayer Room on Fridays or at 8:12prayer, to reading the Bible on a daily basis (saysoaps.com), to be in a weekly small group meeting, and to serve for two months in a specific area of church ministry (their choice). Church attendance is a given, as is being a soldier or an adherent of The Salvation Army. It sounds easy but it is not for the faint-hearted.

We will hand out Rev180 notebooks that they can keep their papers and notes and cool pics in - and at the end of the first two months, we might even give away cool T-shirts. (For now, we just tell everyone to go to SAYTUNES and win a free t-shirt . . .LOL).

This blog will be used as a progress report for what we are doing specifically in the Rev180 project. We also have a corps blog complete with podcasts, other blog sites for the pocket groups of the revolution, etc etc etc, yada yada yada

General Bramwell Tillsley

Early in the morning, 20 people loaded up on 15 passenger vans and made the 4-hour trip to hear General Tillsley (R) speak on Holiness and The Fullness of Love. They weren't disappointed. Many good insights.

The Salvation Army is a holiness church. What's that mean? Let me give my explanation and others are welcome to contribute. We get saved. We are excited - we want to live this new life, we want to change the world. After a while, though, we realize that we are still making the same mistakes we did before we got saved. We still struggle with ourselves, our thoughts, our desires, our behavior. What's up with that? Aren't we new creations?

Indeed, we are. But as we begin to realize that we can't do it on our own, we start turning things in our life over to God. One painful thing at a time. It becomes less about us and more about Him. Slowly but surely. Eventually, we reach a point (and everyone has a different point and a different "crisis" that brings them to this point) where we throw our hands up and say "NONE of us, Lord. ALL of you!"

God steps in here and, in a moment of grace and sanctification, he is able to have access to our heart, which we have held onto for so long. He takes the old dead heart, shriveled up but still kept in the jar by us and gets rid of it - replacing it with a heart of his own, one that has His Torah written on, one that enables us to love people through Him, one that walks in His strength and not our own.

We will still struggle with temptations - the temptations didn't die, we did - and now, instead of inclining towards them, we incline towards God. As my friend, fellow revolutionarie Captain Amy Reardon calls it, "habitual submission." We want what God wants more than what we want.

"We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be wholly sanctified, and that their whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Doctrine #12, The Salvation Army

As General Tillsley pointed out, this new heart shows itself by living out 1 Cor 13 - the Love Chapter. Each small aspect points to Jesus - and his love for each of us.

More to come . . .

I have a dream . . .

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

The Makings of a Revolution . . .

“Every generation needs a new revolution.” Thomas Jefferson

“Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply; those who want to deny the world must have once embraced what they now set on fire.” Kurt Tucholsky

“I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.” Fidel Castro

“Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary's life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.” Angela Davis