Ideas from the Salvation Army

[Russell Kanning]

After reading a good article about Willam Booth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Booth
I was inspired by 2 aspects of his work.

One is that he had good goals of street preaching, but also helping people out with housing, jobs, and finding lost relatives. I have always thought that I can't think of a better thing to do with my time then help people with cheap food, housing, and work and along with it hope and purpose for life here on earth.

Another is the idea of "branding" his movement. He wanted to call his group the "volunteer army", but threw in "salvation" to let people know the army was not about killing people and breaking things.

I wanted to throw out these ideas to this group, partly to give John ideas for the Peaceful Assembly Church (which has good goals, but sometimes has trouble describing them to the general population), and partly to give the whole freedom movement in the Shire ideas (I know guys like me, Tally, Ian, and Roger) like to spend a lot of time trying to brand our movement).

I have never liked the "army" lable or idea, since to me and so many others it means death and destruction, but some of the same ideas can help outsiders know what we are doing.

Just like some of the churches I have been involved with have trouble appealing to those that don't like the term "church" while on the other hand sometimes getting stuck playing "church" which might be the kind of meetings that Jesus Christ would have broken up with a whip.

Anyway another long winded post that won't make any sense to Lauren, but I did enjoy reading stories about the Salvation Army and how they have done stuph. I am reading "The Most Effective Organization in the US".

[Lloyd Danforth]

And.....Cool Uniforms!

[Russell Kanning]

yea I guess that was a factor in their beginning .... they put on uniforms and had bands

[John]

Thanks...

[Russell Kanning]

I am still enjoying the book. Lots of good ideas