“I continue to dream and pray about a revival of holiness in our day that moves forth in mission and creates authentic community in which each person can be unleashed through the empowerment of the Spirit to fulfill God’s creational intentions.” John Wesley
Dear beloved Army,
This holiness movement used to be so much grander than it is today.
Are we a dying breed?
Is this movement more of a nod to a bygone era?
More and more, we find that Holiness is being preached less and less, and even more 
troubling is that holiness is not being lived out or made into something real and tangible for the world to see. The notion of being set-apart is both vital and necessary for the purpose of entire sanctification. Being set-apart means that we wash the feet of those who have only experienced religion with strings attached. For we are not a religion, we are a movement that preaches about this holy relationship we can have with the Almighty! We are a movement (or at least we used to be) that lived out holiness and preached it from our pulpits. If this is missing in our corps and in our witness then perhaps we have lost a step and are no longer a moving, passionate movement…but instead could it be that we are static and floundering about trying to define our identity apart from Holiness?
Have We Forgotten The Power Prayer?
General Frederick Coutts once said: “To pray together is to be shielded from evil, not only from the perils which beset the body, but also the dangers that assail the soul”
Coupled with this near extinction of the Holiness movement, have we lost sight of the power of prayer? Has prayer, and prayer meetings become a thing of the past in our corps? I am sure that some will write me and proclaim that their corps still holds prayer meetings, this is wonderful news to hear, but for every one corps that proclaims this, there are most likely three or four more that will admit to its vacancy. Have we stopped praying for one another? Have we relinquished this vital weapon of spiritual warfare? An Army no longer on its knees in prayer is an army who ill-equipped for the battles ahead. How can we march out into the streets and boldly proclaim “the world for God” when we have not been earnestly praying for each other in our corps buildings as we individually engage in spiritual battles no one is willing to talk about let alone confront?
I believe that if that we are to experience a revival again as a movement, it will only come when we begin to take our prayer lives more seriously. This spiritual discipline is vital to both the corporate worship setting as well as the personal one done in those private moments. Let me ask you this, how often to you pray for your fellow soldiers and officers? How often do we lift up our concerns before the Almighty and continue to wait on Him? In our fast paced lifestyles we have grown impatient and we lack attention to prayer. We need more prayer warriors in our Army and less prayer worriers. We need authentic, vulnerable moments in our pews as much as we need real, genuine times of solitude in our homes devoted to prayer.
The disciples, post ascension, waited on God…only when they waited and prayed and longed for His presence were they able receive His holy presence and go out and proclaim the resurrected and transformational Christ!
Somewhere along the line did we get ahead of Christ?
Did we leave Him in our upper rooms? Did we rush out to do good works and forget to bring Him with us? We can certainly fix the brokenness of physical needs through charity and social work, but we cannot bring the cure to sin-sick habitual living if we ourselves have forgotten about the need for entire sanctification in our corps and in our lives. The uniform means nothing if we do not first have this yearning to become the very image of Christ in our living and in our breathing. Apart from Him we can do nothing.
So let me ask you this: Is the Holiness movement dead?
Is it on life support in our army?
Or is it thriving in your “neck of the woods”?
If it is indeed thriving, please tell us about your experiences!
I would never presume anything about your corps, and I am not saying anything other than what the Lord is convicting me of in my own life right now.
It is my belief that if we are not continually laying our all on the altar in full-surrender to Christ, and if we are not giving ourselves continually to the discipline of prayer – we will in affect have sounded the death-knell of this Holiness movement.
Dear Salvation Army, if we have been asleep to these disciplines, I pray we wake up and shake off the polarizing agendas and the distractions and get on with being Holy…from this act we can then do this holiness through the mission of our movement.
Something more for our Army world to Ponder today!
To God be the glory!
*Disclaimer: These thoughts and opinions are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of The Salvation Army. Reader discretion is advised.*
Pastor's Ponderings 
Scott,
Thank you for yet another great blog post! I could not agree more than we need to be an army on our knees in prayer. We are in such need of another good Prophet of Holiness like Brengle. Maybe two or three! Holiness is vital to our relationship with God, and our holiness as Officers and as an Army is vital to our success. We have spent much time and much money trying to “figure out” how to grow. It is time we went back to the basics of the holiness tradition! Thank you Scott!
Thank you for the challenge. My analysis is that, being afraid of the old language of the holiness movement [ perfection, eradication, living above sin, ] we have watered the mesage down until we are left with nothing to seek. We are told to be Christlike, to grow in understanding and obedience, but when the message ends (or we read the last page of a book about holiness) we don’t understand what we should seek, so we have no “seekers.”
To me, a new call to holiness has to have a definite “this is what you need to do” part to the message. And, since hardly any agreement will come any more about what sanctification “does to us”, the call will have to emphasize the surrender part, the total commitment part, the yielding to ‘whatever God wants to do with me’ part. And let the “what happens inside” just happen; it will be recognized without defining. The crisis of sanctification always is signing a blank check for God to fill in and use the “funds” for His glory no matter what it means for our lives (or suffering, or death).
[I have not – and will not – comment on the call to prayer. I have long felt that ALL public prayer is second class prayer at best. First class prayer is always in secret.]
Peace, Larry
no prayer meeting at my corps, infact if you dare talk about Jesus a film passes over the eyes like it does on all the pagans I know