Hand them the razor: Apprenticeship, trust and The Salvation Army’s future

If apprenticeship and leadership development means anything, it means taking risks, writes Captain Dr John Clifton. Image: Getty

CAPTAIN DR JOHN CLIFTON*

My youngest nephew has been cutting hair for four weeks. Sixteen years old, an apprentice. Still learning how to hold his shoulders, how to angle the blade, how to breathe. He’s been practising on a skeleton … and on my brother. But now it was my turn to sit back in the chair at Noor Barbers, cape around my neck, and watch him get to work with a seriousness that belonged to someone older.

There’s a moment in a barbershop when trust becomes physical. A sharpened blade sits inches from your face and you do your best not to flinch, something I’ve written about before. On this occasion, I was letting someone untested try. I stayed still long enough for him to keep learning.

I saw his hand shake slightly as he loaded the disposable blade into the straight razor, before he settled and began the line of the fade. At a couple of other points, the owner had stepped in with instruction, but not this time. Not for this bit. Focus, not intervention, was what mattered.

Of course, the boy, although he is a man, is still a boy. When he paused to ask if I was happy with the line, I asked if he was happy with it. He shrugged and grinned: he said he didn’t know yet as he still can’t grow a beard himself to check.

He made some adjustments. The line sharpened. The blade moved with more confidence. Skill was being forged in real time with real stakes. A haircut can be fixed, but a craftsman cannot be formed without risk.

And I found myself thinking about my church – The Salvation Army – because we struggle with this, despite having started out with innovation driven by the ambitious audacity of people in their late teens and young adulthood. We have teenagers ready to be trained into local officer responsibilities; cadets, envoys, young adult officers hovering at the edges of leadership … but when do we actually let them hold the razor?

By this, I mean moving beyond youth groups, AV desks or running social media accounts, and into platforms, budgets, buildings, responsibility, decisions, mistakes.

When do we allow a younger leader to shape the line of the fade, knowing it might look uneven before it looks excellent?

This is what apprenticeship, and leadership development, looks like: someone places the blade in your hand, stands close enough to correct you, and trusts you not to ruin everything. Sometimes they even offer their ‘face’ to let you practise.

The only way to learn a craft is to be allowed to cut, and to be put in a position where failure can cause some damage.

As we come to the end of 2025, ready for a brand new 2026, here are the resolutions I’m making from where I am:

1. Have something worth apprenticing people into

If the movement has no clear craft – mission, holiness, social doctrine and practice – there is nothing to hand on. An apprenticeship assumes a trade. So, the resolution here is to make my contribution to articulating the craft of Salvationism and encourage others to do the same.

I’ll keep using this platform to explain this is what we do; this is how we do it; this is why it matters. You can check out an early effort at this from an old pamphlet I co-authored called Marching Towards Justice.

2. Allow people to make real decisions with real consequences

Responsibility has to be real to be transformative.

At the North East of England Divisional Headquarters, we will identify at least one domain (something like a project, budget line, or ministry area) led by those under a set age – 18 or 25 – without senior override unless doctrine, safety, or legality is genuinely at risk. I need to confirm the details with our DHQ team, but the principle stands.

We’ll invite our corps to do the same.

3. Offer correction without condescension

Affirmation without standards is cruelty; correction is an offering of respect.

The owner of the barbershop corrected my nephew plainly – grip, angle, clippers, pace. He didn’t applaud mistakes; he shaped the skill. There are consequences if your skills fall short. In too many churches, we’ve replaced feedback with flattery and called it kindness. I’ve heard some younger people say they feel patronised, as if their presence alone is the achievement.

My resolution is to normalise clear, honest, non-punitive correction. If something’s wrong, we’ll say so. If something’s excellent, we’ll say so with equal clarity.

4. Refuse and correct the label of ‘young officer’ when it is applied to me

I’m turning 40 this year and, strangely, I’m still referred to as a young officer. I even know of colleagues in their 50s who are described that way. But look at the world beyond our walls: national leaders like Obama, Blair, Cameron, Sanna Marin and Jacinda Ardern were trusted to lead nations in their thirties and forties; in business, people like Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman are 41 and 40. In most sectors, the 30s and 40s aren’t ‘young’ – they’re the moment when people are tested, trusted and asked to carry weight.

So here is another resolution: I will gently refuse the label of young officer when it’s applied to me, and I’ll correct it when I hear it used for others who are already building, leading, and carrying responsibility. Language shapes expectations. Let’s avoid labels that keep people in the foyer of leadership long after they should have been invited into the room.

If apprenticeship and leadership development means anything, it means taking risks. It means handing someone the razor before they think they’re ready, and possibly even before you think they’re ready, and then staying close enough to speak and shape them.

“Angle. Slow. You’ve got it.”

There’s no future, or even a present, without that kind of trust.

*Captain Dr John Clifton is Divisional Commander for the North East Division of The Salvation Army UK. He writes on Substack about Salvationism and faith. This article first appeared here and has been reprinted with permission.