ALOVEly time at William Booth College!

Goodness, how can I even begin to describe the past week of training? Utterly exhausting, exciting, moving, inspiring, reaffirming... the list goes on! We stayed at the William Booth College in Denmark Hill, London, and we focused on discipleship and mission within the Church, particularly within the Salvation Army; identifying what distinguishing features our expression of Christian mission and discipleship has by looking at our heritage. We also looking at different interpretations of that mission now, which included a lovely visit to Stepney to speak to Nick and a great seminar on the founding of ALOVE. As well as that, we enjoyed a lovely evening with the TYS' and their lovely family and got to go rock climbing too! (We've worn a lot of harnesses and helmets in our training... Essential is a very dangerous venture, it seems...)

Being relatively new to the Army, I found elements like the visit to the Heritage centre, the trail through East London, and the visit to the Founder's grave really quite fascinating, but one thing that really struck me was something that Lt. Colonel Sandy had said before the trail. He had said that to really know where you are going, you have to know where you come from, and it's true. Within the context of last week's training, and our chats with ALOVE and Nick, I realised that actually a lot of our "new" ways of approaching Christian mission are actually quite old. Certainly, Booth was unconventional and incredibly creative in his ministry, and as a result of his attentiveness to meeting the needs of his community he reached out to many people through the services that The Salvation Army provided. Something I encountered this week, for which I cannot remember where I read it or heard it (there's been a lot to process this week, I'm sorry!), said that if it is true, i.e it works, it probably isn't new - and I cannot seem to shake it from my head, I'm still sort of figuring it out what I think it really could mean to my idea of mission. In one sense I felt really inspired by the history of The Salvation Army and the incredible figure of William Booth, but in another, I kind of felt like we had maybe lost our focus, our reason for being here right now, and that isn't found in the way the chairs face, or making sure all the Songsters have the same bags, but in the people that God has called us to serve in the communities we live in. Much like Booth did in the founding of The Salvation Army, we need to be attentive and creative in the way that we respond to people's needs - and note that I say "respond", because we need open ears and open minds too.

This past week been instrumental in my understanding of mission and discipleship, and has been quite thought provoking too, and for that I'm incredibly thankful. We have been blessed to encounter each and every person that we have this past week, and I am full of hope and excitement for our Army and it's future because of them, and what God is doing through their lives.

And now we embark on the last week of training, and we are up in Yorkshire, hurray!