Three Sundays ago I gave the message at my Corps, just before which Lt. Josh Polanco introduced what the new sermon theme was going to be for the next few months: Come Join Our Army. A great part of the reasoning behind this is that we want to make soldiers, right? In his presentation, Lt. Polanco said that one of the reasons why we aren’t enrolling many soldiers may be because many are leaving the traditional churches for the more “spontaneous” non-denominational ones.
More spontaneous?!
That to me is outright ridiculous and extremely ironic.
Why? Because if we look back at early Army history we find innovation, not meaningless traditionalism. We find the first salvos literally inventing ways to reach people with the Gospel, so as to “speak their language”, specifically with music.
I read this in a book called INSANE:
“In his first press interview as General of The Salvation Army, Frederick Coutts mentioned the Army’s need to ‘keep in touch with people, go where they are, and speak their language’. A young reporter pressed the General for specifics. ‘You mean going into coffee bars?’ ‘If the people are there, of course!’
‘To use coffee bar music?’ (The idea was scandalous in 1963)
‘Why not?’ Coutts responded. And, perhaps to placate traditionalists, he added: ‘That’s our tratdition – we employ the language and music of the people.'”(INSANE, Nealson Munn and David Collinson, The Salvation Army Australia Southern Territory, pg 168).
Of course, most know that the red song book songs were adaptations of bar songs. Tunes like Bless His Name He Sets Me Free and Storm The Forts of Darkness were first sung by drunkards in bars with different words. They were changed by Salvationists in order to reach those that were singing the originals.
Nealson and Munn point out that shortly after the pub era (an era that was dubbed “employing the music and language of the people”), hymns started to come alive, and then in many places brass banding became extremely popular (pg. 169).
But then we reach the 1960s. When the Army was ministering in saloons, singing their songs, and that whole bit, they were connected with the time. But in the ’60s, was brass bands connecting with the masses? Nealson and Munn write:
“The only problem with all this was tha by the 1960s brass banding, while still greatly popular, could no longer claim to be ‘the music of the people’. In the early twentieth century this role was usurped by jazz and the blues, and by the ’60s, of course rock’n’roll was ascendant” (pg 170).
So then an Army rock band, called the Joystrings, stepped on to the scene (as picture above). They began ministering in a way that was speaking the language of the time. They were merely walking in the tradition of the early Army. As a headline in the same chapter as the above quotation, Nealson and Munn thought it good to fixate these words of the Founder:
“If standing on my head and beating a tambourine with my toes will win a soul for Jesus, I will do it.” (pg. 168)
As a people of God hoping to reconcile as many as possible to Christ, we need to re-adopt this attitude of “speaking their language”. We need to make sure that we are engaging the masses with holiness.
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Research largely taken from Nealson and Munn’s new book INSANE:the story of crazy salvos who changed the world. Be sure to order a copy for yourself. It’s awesome!
Also, check out more of the Joystrings to see videos and listen to some of their stuff.