Stitching SINEWS into young lives
Each month on Salvos Online, Rosy, the Territorial Secretary for Spiritual Life Development, shares her thoughts and reflections on the spiritual issues that shape our lives as Christians, exploring how our faith intersects with our everyday experiences and how we can deepen our relationship with God. Today, writing on the eve of a youth and kids camp, Rosy introduces an initiative (SINEWS) that she hopes young people will build into their lives as they embark on a Jesus-centred life.
As I write this, we are in the calm before the storm of the Victoria Youth and Kids Camp; campers will arrive in just over an hour, with around 300-something people on the Phillip Island site, including our leaders.
I remember four years ago, when my husband Scott and I first moved to Australia, and he took up his role as Youth Secretary, and only around 30 youth came to the first Victorian camp post-COVID.
Although small, it was a really special time. As the years have passed, with growing connections and community, local expressions of mission and corps, consistent leadership investment, and our Salvos showing up daily for youth and children, we’ve continued to see greater trust, groups, and input as young people’s lives are touched and changed for the Gospel.
This year’s camp, I will be preaching alongside a young friend of mine named Ella. Ella’s mother is an officer in Victoria, and Ella is a committed soldier and lover of Jesus, with a heart for mission and serving overseas.
Ella and I will be leading the morning sessions at camp, and we’ve been spending the last few weeks checking in with one another, giving feedback on our sermons, messaging and praying for one another.
Ella’s testimony that she’ll be sharing expands on the Scripture of Jesus calming the storm, when the disciples feared the boat would be overcome while Jesus slept.
Ella shares her story of Jesus meeting her in the middle of one of life’s largest storms, and feeling God's peace as the waves came near and she cried out.
Her story reminds me of Samuel Logan Brengle, The Salvation Army’s foremost holiness theologian, who wrote that pain, sorrow and bereavement had “thrown me back upon God” and deepened and purified his joy in God.
I will be preaching on the calling of Levi.
The Youth and Young Adults team and the Children’s team have speaker briefs that they give to speakers for their camps around the country, which means that every year, across every division that runs them (Tasmania’s camp has just been, with some of the leaders from there coming to this one, and some will be continuing on to Western Australia’s next week!), there is consistency in the teaching.
We are centring on the territory’s rallying cry: Jesus-centred, Spirit-led, hope revealed. The children have tied into the theme ‘The Way Maker’, which is part of The Way series that The Salvation Army has been running over the last year or so (focusing on the five themes of prayer, evangelism, discipleship, spiritual warfare and all Salvos on mission).
My sermon on the calling of Levi explains that when Levi was in the tax collector’s booth, which represented an audacious treachery against his own people, as the Roman colonists were forcing them to pay tax on the land the colonists had taken from them, Jesus called him right then and there.
He didn’t ask him about his beliefs or personal lineage. He simply said, “Come, follow me” ... and Levi did.
I reflected on my own experience in the church and on the many times I, as a radical-looking wild young person, had been included or excluded from various things in the Christian church. But while sometimes followers of Jesus get it wrong, Jesus never does. Jesus always says, “Come and follow me”, and he never runs out of patience, and his grace never runs out of credit.
A couple of months ago, I was at the What’s Next gathering in Queensland, a nationally run gathering, with every division inviting delegates who were faithful leaders where they were, to come away for a few days’ retreat to think about what’s next for them in terms of leadership potential in The Salvation Army.
Traditionally, it has been a way to invite people into officership, which it still is, but it’s also expanding our view of vocational ministry, perhaps to include ministry or mission leaders locally.
In all these gatherings across the territory, I keep coming back to the essential point that people come away from every meeting with us, every camp, every gathering, every conference, thrown back on God.
I love fostering a love of Scripture that comes alive within them. Truly, it is the bread that gives life. It is the Gospel truth of old. It is Christ, the bread, that we must ‘eat’ daily.
Something you may notice at a Salvation Army conference is an endless supply of food: breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper, dessert. I imagine that, in those same intervals, if we shared Scripture every time we ate, memorising a new word together, we might not feel so spiritually starved, malnourished, or anxious if we ate the bread that gives life.
This isn’t said to incite shame or to enforce disciplines that crush or repress, but we, as a church, are sometimes prayerless and wordless.
When I was reflecting with my reverse mentor (a young person mentoring an older person), they said that prayer, in and of itself, is not the endgame. It’s talking to God.
I had this idea or metaphor: imagine if I thought I had a best friend, but it turned out they were just using me to practise their English? I would be so gutted. And I just realised that sometimes we might look at or treat our talk or teaching about prayer the same way.
Prayer should be a conversation that leads to greater understanding and a relationship with God, not just getting better at prayer or checking off that we have ‘talked’! I have been guilty of this many times.
Maybe our Christian walk is like a watch. Watches need to run, not just for the sake of activity, but to tell the right time.
There is an objective ‘right’ way to be in the ‘timezone’ you’re in, based on a shared agreement about the land you’re on, dictated by something higher than our own feelings or ideals (I wonder what the spiritual equivalent of ‘daylight savings’ is?!)
Our Christian community, embedded in our local ministry and mission and part of the evangelical Christian Body of the Church internationally, should help us discern the right time spiritually, communally and personally.
We need to tune up, check in, and make sure we’re on track: being discipled and discipling others, maintaining accountable relationships in life groups, and cultivating an intimate prayer life with God.
Introducing SINEWS
Something I’m looking to introduce in the coming days, weeks, months, or years, when I find the right landing for it, is SINEWS, which stands for Scripture, Intimacy, Neighbours, Eating, Witness and Sabbath.
Scripture: Reading the Scripture daily, eating it.
Intimacy: The intimate knowledge of God and other believers, where we are truly seen and truly known.
Neighbours: Being involved in our community and wherever we are or serve, genuinely knowing our neighbours beside us.
Eating: Sharing one meal with others once a week, if possible.
Witness: Looking for opportunities to speak about God, see God in others and be witnessed to ourselves.
Sabbath: Finding days, practices, and rhythms of daily and weekly rest.
“Thus, saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: and I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army” (Ezekiel 37:5-6, 10 KJV)
All of this is to say that, as I know the approaches of hundreds of children and young people to descend on the camp, my prayer is that they would find the sinews we see in the calling of the valley of dry bones: the prophetic utterance that the bones would form a mighty army, and that the word of God to them would be sinews wrapped around them, together, so that they can stand and fight.
I’m sure that if you’re reading this, you would want this for yourself too. Leave a comment below with what you’re thinking as you read this, especially how you keep your spiritual watch and spiritual time, so we can be encouraged.
And if you have any other ideas on how SINEWS could be lived out, I’m all ears!
READ MORE: Find all Rosy’s Spiritual Life columns here.
