March 24, 2009

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Hello all my blog followers. It is good to be back in Chicago and once again able to update my blogs.

Some of you may know that for the past week I have been in Sioux Falls, SD on what is called a spring campaign. This is a week in which a group of cadets from the training college go to various corps around the territory and minister through programs, services, and generally helping out around the corps. I went to Sioux Falls as a part of the Sangre Y Fuego brigade.

The week went great and was very encouraging. I do not have the time to share all of what happened here but I intend to continue sharing throughout the week. I am still getting back into the grove of things but I wanted to address specifically my facebook status from the other day in which I said: Ryan Hulett-Hulett realizes today he has no clue what it means to be an officer in The Salvation Army.

This statement was not meant to be negative. As some of you know I am very concerned with how the Army sees soldiership and officership. Over the past few weeks I have been working on a project which has caused me to look more closely at these issues and have been unable to come to a clear understanding of what the current view is.

There are so many competing ideas and philosophies out there that no common thread has been seen. Getting frustrated over my inability to find a standard guideline for what an officer is I accepted the fact that a clear standard may not exist. The status which you read was my position for that moment. I concluded that the Army as a whole does not have definite expectations for its officers or at best does not know what that standard is. Realizing that my experience is not all encompassing I limit my expression of that from the Army does not know to Ryan does not know. My not knowing is not an expression of dislike. On the contrary. It has actually been a motivator for me to accept officership seeeing it as an opportunity to minister.

I do not want anyone to take a negative conotation from this. It was not intended to be such. What you should take from it is a recognized call for myself to be involved in helping shape and define Salvation Army officership as well as a need for those of you who do have opinions on this matter to let me know.

It is good to be back on a regular routine. I would love to share more of my experience in Sioux Falls now but I just do not have the energy. Stay tuned for more stories on that. If you have any thoughts on officership you would like to share please, please comment below. All comments are private until moderated so if you'd like to share with me alone start your comment with the word PRIVATE and I will delete it after reading. I will not publicly post any comments mark as PRIVATE. That goes for this and any other blog. See you again soon.

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1 comment:

Evie said...

It's good to be thinking and not leave it to someone else to define your calling. I think there are some broad characteristics which are common to all officers but having seen it in a number of countries, there is no single definitive answer and I don't think there should be. I know I'm rambling a bit and haven't been definite myself. But, keep thinking and trust me, this will be a continuous process in your journey as an officer.