The Salvation Army USA Southern Territory

The Salvation Army USA Southern Territory Answering God's call to Love inclusively, Serve helpfully, & Disciple effectively in our communities.

Labor Day sets aside a day for rest from work. It is also a good day to remember that the God we serve took up a trade.M...
09/07/2026

Labor Day sets aside a day for rest from work. It is also a good day to remember that the God we serve took up a trade.

Mark's Gospel calls Jesus the carpenter. Years of measuring, cutting, and handing finished work to neighbors who paid for it came long before any of the teaching did.

"He came to a life of obscurity, of poverty and of toil, and He who made the worlds and upheld them by the word of His power, learned to be a carpenter."

– Commissioner Samuel Logan Brengle, Heart Talks on Holiness, 1897

Brengle put the carpenter, the blacksmith, the clerk over the ledger, and the farmer in the field on the same ground as the preacher. The reward, he wrote, comes for the faithfulness with which the work was done.

That covers a lot of ground across this territory. Cooks and drivers. Case managers and thrift store associates. Corps officers and the volunteer who unlocks the building on Sunday morning.

Whatever is on your schedule this week, it can be done for Him.

What is the work you are going back to tomorrow? Share it in the comments and we will be praying over it.

On the Saturday evening of Commissioning weekend, Captain Shinyoung Kang started with three pictures: an expensive exerc...
09/06/2026

On the Saturday evening of Commissioning weekend, Captain Shinyoung Kang started with three pictures: an expensive exercise machine buried under hanging laundry, a stack of half-read books with the bookmarks still in them, and a diet plan that never made it through the month.

"They all tell the exact same story. Something was started, but it was never finished."

Then she opened John 13:1 – "having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end" – and showed that in the Greek, "to the end" is not about a calendar running out. It carries completion. Fulfillment. Reaching the goal. "It is a love that goes all the way through until its purpose is accomplished."

He knew Judas would betray him. He knew Peter would deny him. He knew every one of them would run. He wrapped a towel around his waist and washed their feet anyway, and then carried that same love from the water in the basin to the blood on the cross, where the word he cries out, "It is finished," comes from that same root.

And then he told us to love each other the way he did. Which is where most of us stall out. "Our patience is very thin and our kindness runs out. We get offended. We get tired. We even keep track of wrongs."

Her answer was to abide. "Apart from me, you can do nothing." Stay close enough to him that his love is the one moving through you, and the people around you start to look different. "They are precious souls that God has intentionally sent into our lives."

Think about who is actually in front of you this week. Not one of them is an accident.

"Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." – 1 John 4:11

Major Sandra Pawar spent time volunteering with The Salvation Army's ministry among refugees and asylum seekers in Athen...
09/05/2026

Major Sandra Pawar spent time volunteering with The Salvation Army's ministry among refugees and asylum seekers in Athens, Greece. What she found there changed how she understands the work of justice.

She met a mother from Afghanistan whose husband had been killed by the Taliban, and whose six children were smuggled into the city by traffickers in the hope of finding safety. In Omonia and Victoria Squares, she watched boys sell themselves so they could eat and find shelter. Case workers told her about children as young as nine sleeping on the steps outside their offices because there was no room inside, and about a three-year-old who lost both parents when they drowned at sea.

"These were not statistics or distant headlines; they were children, each with a name, a story, and a God-given dignity that had been violated by circumstances beyond their control."

— Major Sandra Pawar

Faced with all of it, she had no words and no easy answers. What she had was lament: the practice of bringing grief honestly to God and staying there.

Lament holds us close enough to be changed by what we see, and it prepares us for the slow, difficult work of healing and restoration.

Read the full article: https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/stories/the-justice-calling-lament/

What injustice is God asking you to sit with in prayer? Share in the comments. 🙏

09/04/2026

"People continue to come here because there is so much love that is also being given out as well. We're a family. We're a ministry."
Breana Southerland, Burlington Corps Business Manager

The food pantry at our Burlington Corps in Alamance County, North Carolina, began more than ten years ago serving ten to fifteen families a day, with a limited amount of food to give out. It now serves eighty to one hundred families every single day and puts more than 20,000 pounds of food into the community every month.

Alamance County built that alongside us. Neighbors began donating small amounts because they wanted to give back, and Food Pantry Coordinator Kelly Melgar says the community has been a massive help. Clients began giving too. Breana Southerland calls it the recipe for a successful program: people back on their feet and ready to pay it forward.

Bruce Thomas is one of them. His disability didn't come through in time and he was struggling to feed his family and his spouse, so he came here and they helped him out a whole lot. He packs the food now, showing up on even the days it hurts. "I still got to do what I think I was put here to do."

Jesus told us that whatever we do for the least of these, we do for Him. In Alamance County that looks like neighbors with a little to spare and volunteers who remember needing the line themselves. The food goes out the door and the love goes with it, and that is why people keep coming back. ❤️

There is room on the other side of that table. Contact your local Salvation Army to find out where they need volunteers.

09/03/2026

Save the date. 🗓️

On September 27 at 8 PM EST, join us for a Territory-Wide Virtual Prayer Gathering in recognition of the 2026 International Day of Prayer for Victims of Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.

Together, we will lift our voices for those who cannot speak for themselves; praying for freedom, justice, healing, and hope.

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed.” — Proverbs 31:8 NLT

Stay tuned // more information is coming soon!

The Alabama-Louisiana-Mississippi Division has passed the torch.ALM was the first division to carry the Southern Territo...
09/02/2026

The Alabama-Louisiana-Mississippi Division has passed the torch.

ALM was the first division to carry the Southern Territory's 24/7 Prayer initiative, the year-long commitment to unceasing prayer leading up to the Centennial Celebration in 2027. Each corps in the division was assigned a day. Some set out sign-up sheets with time slots so the hours were covered. Others gathered prayer requests to lift on their day. Facebook posts reminded the division who was carrying the flame.

Major Joshua Hinson writes that what came back were reports of encouragement and of people going deeper with the Lord.

"We may never know the outcome of all the prayers prayed, but we can be assured that we drew closer to God as a result."

ALM's final day was July 4, closing on the freedom prayer provides and the easy yoke Jesus offers to those never meant to carry the burden alone.

Read the full article: https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/stories/prayer-sweeps-through-alm/

How is your corps praying through this year? Share in the comments. ☝️

"I don't know what you know about rescue. Anybody here ever been a lifeguard? Anybody here ever served in the Coast Guar...
09/01/2026

"I don't know what you know about rescue. Anybody here ever been a lifeguard? Anybody here ever served in the Coast Guard? This, for my grandchildren, keeps them afloat. This, for most people, becomes something that saves a life."

- Commissioner Kelly Igleheart

Same ring, two completely different weights, depending on who is in the water.

"Unless somebody grabs a hold of it, it's useless." Read quickly, that sounds like it is about the person going under. His very next sentence settles it. "If you don't take action, somebody's going down."

The ring is waiting on you.

Colossians 1:13 says he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness. Already done, past tense, and it is why you are the one in a position to reach.

So who is within reach of you right now? And what would it cost you to move this week, rather than wait for someone else to reach first?

International Prayer Focus | September 2026Each week, Salvationists around the world lift up the same territories in pra...
08/31/2026

International Prayer Focus | September 2026

Each week, Salvationists around the world lift up the same territories in prayer. It's a simple practice that connects us across distance and time zones.

This month, we're praying for:
– Democratic Republic of Congo Territory (Aug 31 – Sep 6)
– Canada and Bermuda Territory (Sep 7–13)
– Switzerland, Austria and Hungary Territory (Sep 14–20)
– India South Western Territory (Sep 21–27)
– New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa Territory (Sep 28 – Oct 4)

Read through what they're asking for and you'll recognize most of it. Territories on opposite sides of the world are praying about cadets in training, young people weighing a call to officership, youth programs starting back after summer, and budgets that have to stretch further than they do.

When we pray for each other, we remember that no one serves alone.

Add these to your prayer time this month. Find specific prayer requests from each territory at https://www.salvationarmy.org/prayer-focus

On the Saturday morning of Commissioning weekend, Dr. Matt Ayars asked why redemption has to hurt. Why suffering. Why it...
08/30/2026

On the Saturday morning of Commissioning weekend, Dr. Matt Ayars asked why redemption has to hurt. Why suffering. Why it can't be easy.

His answer started back in Genesis 3, with the oldest lie there is. Not the one about the fruit. The one buried underneath it: God is keeping something from you. He doesn't really love you.

"And that lie – that God doesn't love you – is where death enters in. It says they realized they were naked and they were ashamed. Shame is the killer."

Which is why love that costs something is the only argument that ever answers it. "Suffering puts on display to the world: I don't care if you're shameful or not, I love you. Judas, I don't care if you're going to betray me or not, I love you."

He closed with a baptism he had gone to a few months before, at a high-security prison. Twenty-nine men, baptized outside, a few of them with family there watching. One man's name was called, and his mother stood up in front of everyone and said, "That's my boy. That's my son."

"This is what the gospel does. He takes the shame."

Whatever you are still ashamed of this morning, that is the thing he stepped into the world to carry away.

Who needs to hear that from you this week?

"He emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant." – Philippians 2:7

08/29/2026

The 24/7 prayer flag passes from the Texas Division to the Kentucky-Tennessee Division.

More than three hundred soldiers, officers and employees gathered at Paradise Valley to receive it, and Kentucky-Tennessee takes up the watch tomorrow morning. What Texas has carried these past weeks keeps going without a break, all the way to the Centennial.

Bring a request to the prayer wall, or pray for one that is already there: soldier.sauss.net/PrayerRequests

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