Salvation Army Center for Holiness Studies

12/14/2020

Darkness has enshrouded our land, and the people of the shadows do not recognize or understand or receive the true light that shaped all the creative beauty and majesty that surrounds and draws us.

Nor can they extinguish the flaming glory of the humble One who grew up in a tiny town known only for bad outcomes.

Jesus embodied the heart and words and designs of God. He displayed the Lord’s splendor in his obedience and spoke life and healing and new creation into the formless void of people and systems and kingdoms. His teaching was unwelcome for many. It lit up places that were supposed to be left alone.

And he got crucified for it.

But there were some who received and believed. Witnesses to the true light. The very least in the kingdom, ready to traverse deserts and cities with news of his dying and rising. Little tender plants of the Lord maturing into oaks of righteousness. Sanctified through and through, a unique contrast hidden within the despair and grief of a lost world. Hardy servants who together became the Lord’s restoration project amidst the ruins, a striking preview of all things becoming new.

What are the contours of that plant? How do we discern such holiness sprouting up in the rubble of pagan playgrounds and dead religion?

Look for joy! These are people who celebrate at all times. This is way more than a Sunday-morning moshing. This is a community that stands in the bone-dry riverbed and thirsts for God. They dream. They laugh and delight. They sing the stories of released captives. Their souls are becoming well and rejuvenated. Their heads are adorned with crowns of beauty, their faces shining with the oil of gladness, their frames festooned with garments of praise. They endure and flourish in the comfort and fruit that secretly sustain those who mourn with Christ.

Look for prayerfulness! A never-ending dialogue through every experience and season with the Stranger who opens foolish minds to understand the Scriptures. A growing friendship and intimacy into the rest of being still and knowing that he is God. A conversation that forges true selves and beats the devil. A wisdom birthed in silence that refutes the intelligence of the cosmos. A vocabulary that disturbs public discourse and awakens the sighs and coos of love in the human heart.

Look for gratitude! An attentive appreciation in all circumstances for the generous goodness and provision of God. A discernment of good news in the daily grind that is re-gifted for neighbors weighed down with broken spirits. A constant meal of bread and wine in the glowing presence of a scarred Lord who specializes in surprise visits. This Eucharistic rhythm feeds the world.

And look for fire! A church that breathes deeply, that inhabits its Scriptures and is continually sustained and renewed and led by the Holy Spirit. Daring to keep the windswept fiery prophets at the roundtable. Honing the arts of discerning between true good and masquerading evil. Dwelling in and enacting the timely counsels of God. Proclaiming the wild and free movements and purposes of the Lord in the here and now. Glorying in the treasures of the unsearchable wisdom of Christ. And maintaining vigilance toward and calling out the sacrosanct substitutes that subtly quench the Spirit.

Family of Jesus, we participate in and bear his experience of misunderstanding and rejection as we follow him into dark haunts. But just as many this week will brave the stinging winds of winter to immerse themselves in downtown holiday lights, so many in our towns and cities yearn for the true light displayed in a people of joy, prayerfulness, gratitude and fire!

12/04/2020

When I returned to corps officer work nearly four years ago, I was determined to follow a more contemplative path than I had in my earlier years in ministry.

The fact that I am writing these few words in the middle of an insanely busy day with Christmas kettles and hundreds of Angel Tree toys streaming in tells me that I am at least still trying to move in that direction.

The “contemplative life” is one beautiful way to think and talk about holiness.

Pete and Geri Scazzero, whose “emotionally healthy discipleship” curriculum I recommend as transformative for growth in holiness, speak of contemplation as “slowing down to be with God.” They offer us a very helpful interview here with a Trappist monk about the four levels of prayer. Some really good teaching on contemplation.

(By the way, you may recall that the more renowned Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk. In fact, Asbury Seminary students have taken retreats at his monastery in Kentucky for decades.)

I like the discussion in this podcast because it characterizes the four classic stages of spiritual transformation as different depths and experiences in prayer. I myself have tended to think of the latter stages only as primarily characterized by deeper/listening prayer, but it helps me to think of every stage as a season of prayer. I wonder what you think?

I have decided to listen to podcasts like this in spurts this season while I am driving to bell ringers and dropping off toys. This is a contemplative move for me this year. I have remembered an Ignatian prayer podcast that is typically about 12 minutes each day – perfect for a trip from our corps to our toy shop.

You may not be a corps officer, but you may be in a pretty intense daily rhythm at work and at home. How are you slowing down to be with God? That sort of daily and weekly rhythm has always been important in the Wesleyan stream of Christian discipleship.

Shalom in Jesus to you!

HERE'S THE LINK TO THE PODCAST:
https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/podcast/?v=4096ee8eef7d

11/30/2020

Dear friends,

My name is Bob. I served as the first and last “resident director” of the Center for Holiness Studies in The Salvation Army’s Florida Division from 2014 to 2017. I was energized in this ministry and quite mystified when my wife Anita and I sensed the Lord was moving us back into officer work. We are both from the New York area and moved back north in June of 2017 for an assignment as corps officers in Springfield, Ohio. We remain in the thick of that mission as I write these words on a snowy morning, finding our way through a strange, COVID-shaped Christmas kettle season.

I believe there are lessons to be learned in the founding, managing and closing of the Center by three different divisional leaders in its brief history. I hope to reflect more deeply on that as I believe this experience could bring some light to the organization’s contemplation of various new ventures. But that is for another time.

For now, I simply want to notice with you that Salvationists from around the world continue to discover, “like” and share the Center’s page, though the doors basically closed nearly four years ago and all posting ceased. In some ways, engagement has increased, although I myself have not spoken a word on the page. I also readily confess to limited knowledge while I was in the job about how to create social media space that is highly participatory. Much of the page simply contains provocative quotes relating to holiness and references to some of the gatherings we had together around such themes. And yet, there is something here that continues to resonate with many.

Could this page even now become a “new room” for Salvationists growing in holiness together?

I have had to work through some grieving since leaving Florida. I left work and people I loved. Teaming up with Commissioner Bill Francis and our librarian Jan McMahon was a delightful adventure. The physical space overlooking the lake and eagles at Camp Keystone was ideal for spiritual retreat. The Holy Spirit came among us in surprising and creative ways there, transforming and renewing us. We were not “officers” and “soldiers” in that place; we were brothers and sisters, fellow disciples on the Emmaus road.

And I have yearned for the focused ministry I enjoyed at the Center in my daily journey as a corps officer with so many roles and tasks.

Yes, the building at Keystone, as I’ve heard here and there, has now been re-purposed. But the “holiness center”, I think, lives. Jesus, after all, is our true holiness center. You and I and the little disciple communities that surround us are holiness centers. I understand the dynamic model of the old Wesleyan “class meeting” is being reinvented and embraced in some local Salvationist settings around Florida, and that alone brings deep joy and contentment to my soul. And yes, my particular corps, with all its groanings too deep for words, can yet become a holiness center.

That may be the grand outcome: holiness of heart and life ignited and deepening and flourishing in me and us, in every little local situation, as we live and move and have our being in Christ.

And yet I wonder: can this reality of Spirit-filled new creation - this "privilege of all believers" - be nurtured in trans-local networks, in regional and intercultural and global connections in this time? Could we learn from one another and encourage each other in spaces like this that don’t want to die? Might a few from Ohio, from Norway, Kenya, Costa Rica, India and Melbourne discover a class meeting bond with one another?

05/23/2017