What is PreSalvationism?
Salvationism is a brand, a concept, a community, a way of doing, a way of being a Christian. Its forms are queer to modern society. Its people are outcasts. Its place is unsure and unique in the world, in the Christian church, in the business arena, in schools, and in modern philosophical discourse on imperialism. Its nature is revivalist; its function social. Salvationism is a unique Christian religion.
Early, its practices were peculiar. People jumped out of caskets to illustrate new life. Sixteen year old girls started new mission plants in foreign countries. Uniforms witnessed to disciplined lives. Intoxicated people were taken off streets and nurtured. Women preached. Love feasts replaced token reflections on a broken body. The Spirit baptized.
Other churches formalized. Identity was found in membership instead of faith alone. Membership was made through ritual. Ritual modernized sacraments. Like machinery mass producing for the market, modernization simplified, shortened and mass produced the church without soul. The church became a well soiled machine. This machine had no time for homeless with soiled clothing. Cultural gaps widened between church members and Salvationists.
Salvationism was new wine in new skins. It brought life. But the skins aged. The organization institutionalized best practices which monopolized the energies of Salvationists. The peculiar became familiar. The familiar was set apart. The set apart became the sacred cow. Innovation died. The world changed and the army stayed the same. This created walls of misunderstanding between the Salvationists and what William Booth referred to as “others.”
These walls proved too tough for evangelism which simply is defined as telling the story of the gospel without regard to cultural barriers. One group of Salvationist was labeled as Mormons simply for wearing their uniforms in the neighborhood. Another corps was called a cult because they did not practice the sacraments. A first time attendee couple at a recent Sunday morning Holiness meeting left because they didn’t have uniforms. A Catholic father wouldn’t let his son go the protestant corps building.
These walls are not formidable. Throughout history missionaries have scaled higher and sketchier surfaces the world wide. Mission is the ability to cross cultural barriers to ensure the message is understood by the listener. If the founder were alive today he would say, "Meet them where they are!" If Jesus were present on earth today that's what He would have done.
These presalvationists don't break the threshold of corps buildings. One sits on a park bench, one hundred feet from a Salvation Army corps, wrapped in swaddling clothes because there is no room for him in an inn. Another sits trapped behind classroom walls at a local Chrisitian college; with desire to serve, warming like a kettle before boiling point. Still another there at home, nose bloody, dried traces of tears down the cheeks waiting for an opportunity for someone to give them parental love.
Presalvationism recognizes the need to communicate on a person to person basis. Renewed Salvationism must close the emotional distance between Salvationists and presalvationists. Salvationists must take every effort to be friends and truly share life with presalvationists.
Psalms 139 states, “For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
If the creator was intimate with the created before the sanctifying moment; shouldn’t his bride exhibit the same love for presalvationists?
