General Brian Peddle

Hi, this is General Brian Peddle and you are listening to Words of Life. Hi, I'm Chris Benjamin, the producer for The Salvation Army's Words of Life. A few weeks ago, Bernie Dake and Salvation Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Alan Satterly had the honor to sit down with the General of The Salvation Army, General Brian Peddle. He joined us to discuss some of The Salvation Army's current opportunities, challenges, and successes. To learn more about The Salvation Army's work worldwide, visit salvationarmy.org.

Welcome back to Words of Life, everybody. We are so excited to have the international leader of The Salvation Army here in the USA Southern Territory. General Peddle, welcome. Thank you very much. It's really great to be here. We're excited to introduce you to our editor and chief of the publications here. His name is Lieutenant Colonel Alan Satterly. Welcome, Alan.

Thank you. Well, General, it's our honor to have you with us today. And as Bernie has said, we do have some questions. The first question we want to ask you is, how has COVID impacted the worldwide work of The Salvation Army? I've got to start with what I refer to as a personal lament.

Impact is often borne out in the context of what you either gain or lose. And The Salvation Army has lost some things through COVID. But the most incredible one for me is that I've lost in excess of 120 active officers.

Wow. Many of your listeners will know that when an officer's commissioned, there's a silver star that's issued to mentors and parents. When an active officer dies, we replace that star with a gold star.

And we have never in the last decades had to replace so many silver stars. And that's still happening. And that does not acknowledge the impact on our soldiery and our employees during this time of COVID. So the first impact I would want to acknowledge is that we lament and grieve with the pain and suffering that COVID has caused. I think for the International Salvation Army, The Salvation Army has weathered this storm so far, so very, very well. And I put that down to the resilience of our people, quite frankly. Some people don't realize that we go home and our work goes home with us. We look after literally millions of people in institutional realities, in boarding schools for hundreds and thousands of children, homes for vulnerable children. We couldn't stop doing these things during COVID. So we have seen the resilience of our people.

We have seen our teachers teach when there's no guarantee of salary. We've seen people front up without all of the normal amenities of life available to them. And in that context, there was always the sense of personal risk. We are an army of salvation and right at the heart of loss and challenge and difficulty, we need God. Amen.

And the army has stood fast, I believe, around the world. Amen. I have a follow-up question with that. Is there any one lesson that we've learned from COVID? One lesson? That would be hard for me to articulate because I think the lessons have been very situational. What we have learned in the continent of India or Africa would vary. For instance, in India, we've found a new courage. We are not in India as the most favored of all peoples.

We are faith-based in a non-faith-based environment. And sometimes our governments there don't look at us with great value. But in this time, we have several hospitals across India, as many would know, and to have the government officials come to us and say, can we use a McRobert Hospital as a COVID hospital is like, thank you, Lord. There's silver lining in this whole situation. When the migrant workers were just filling the train stations in Mumbai, no food.

And the only vehicles allowed in were our little white four-by-fours with the red shield on it. And we get to feed the migrant workers who are literally hungry. So my hope is that we find favor and we build on that, just as we do here in the United States. It's been wonderful to see the public favor towards the Salvation Army. And we keep building up.

These are good stories for our future. And we want to be faithful in how we manage that trust in us. What is the greatest challenge facing the Salvation Army in 2022? I think there are several dimensions to that question for me. And they play out differently as I look through some lenses.

The first one is the same question that William Booth was concerned about. How do we minister in the age in which we are living? How does the Salvation Army in the US Southern Territory remain faithful in the time that we are living and serving? So that's about the Salvation Army. It's about the army of salvation.

It is about the main thing, remaining the main thing. That's why, as General, I'm tripping around the world talking about God's call to mission. A call, I feel, is on the Salvation Army. Our world is becoming so secularized and becoming so anti-biblical view that it concerns me that there is less and less space for the value-added reality of faith. We have legislators and legislation all created without any context of a biblical view and often with extreme biblical illiteracy. So how does the Salvation Army live in a secularized context and still be the army of salvation? These are just some of the challenges that we face in these days.

But God continues to be faithful. I think that's the key element that emboldens me and countless others around the world. Well, sort of flipping that, what are the greatest opportunities that the Salvation Army has at the present time? Oh, goodness me.

Well, these are just bursting wherever I look now. Some people might think I have my head in the sand, but I do get a panoramic view of the International Salvation Army. God encourages and inspires me through that. But I think the opportunity is we still work in God's will and way out of an incredible position of strength. We are financially sound. We are biblically sound. We have mission frameworks that stand the test of time, and we still have this very beautiful ability to just acknowledge need and turn all our resources toward it.