Some months back my wife, Alison, and I became officers in one of the largest armies in the world─The Salvation Army. Think about it for a moment: both in terms of numbers and in terms of countries (we operate in over 110 at this moment), we are one of the biggest armies. But as much as we operate as an army with officers, soldiers, missions, strategies and corps, we carry no weapons and exist only to save lives.

The Early Church used Roman government language like kingdom, ecclesia, faith, gospel and subverted it to speak out against the political regimes at the time. So, too, did The Salvation Army take the word army and subvert it for the purposes of peace and salvation. (To read more about the subversion of power, check out Shane Claiborne’s Jesus for President.)

I’ve always thought that subverting the use of the word ‘army’ was an asset to us as a Movement. But in recent years I’ve heard some people suggest that the term ‘army’ was only ever a metaphor. Well, as an officer in this great army of salvation, I say that I am not a metaphor. Being ‘Army,’ from what I can see of our movement (ie terms, training, missional orientation, strategic thinking), is our chosen methodology and not our metaphor. We may not have guns and tanks, but we fight injustice with the same determination and resolve that any other army in the world fights with.

I have often concluded my emails with the following quote:

“We're in God's Army and we fight wherever wrong is found; A lowly cot or stately home may be our battle ground. We own no man as enemy, sin is our challenged foe; we follow Jesus, Son of God, as to the war we go. When invading forces march in every tongue we sing; WE ARE OF EVERY CLASS AND RACE, YET ONE IN CHRIST, THE KING” (Catherine Baird).

This sums up methodologically─not metaphorically─who we are as an Army of salvation.