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As excitement builds for this week’s 140-year celebration of The Salvation Army’s Social Services, Salvos Online writer LERISSE SMITH spoke with Major Jenny Begent, Assistant Secretary for Mission, about the driving forces behind the Social Services work in the community, her passion for hope, change and living out the gospel – and a love of piccolo coffee. Organising a five-day major international conference to celebrate a special and unique birthday with more than 30 speakers attending the event is no mean feat – just ask Jenny. Late nights on her computer, early messages pinging on the mobile, and the consumption of way too many cups of coffee – piccolo being a favourite – have dominated her waking hours for many months in preparation for the national conference this week to celebrate The Salvation Army’s 140 years of Social Services. But as Assistant Secretary for Mission with the Social Services team with an annual budget of around $500 million, thousands of employees and volunteers, and services across all community spheres, Jenny wouldn’t have it any other way. Meet Jenny in person and she radiates a kind, down-to-earth, friendly, warm, and honest persona coupled with a great sense of humour. It’s also clear she’s passionate about what she does, why she does it and how she does it. And with the special anniversary coming to fruition next week, Jenny reflected on the “amazingness” of the Army’s Social Services role in the community spanning more than a century – starting with Major James Barker in the 1880s. “When he [James Barker] decided he was going to run a Prison Gate Brigade, the Governor of the day thought that was a great thing and gave him £500. Now, half a billion dollars is Social Mission’s national budget. That’s amazing to me!” Jenny said. “It says to me that not only governments but the people of Australia are confident that we can do what they pay us to do, and over 140 years, that confidence has grown. This is despite the Royal Commission, despite the fact that occasionally we get it wrong. They (the people of Australia) continue to trust us to get the job done. And I’m humbled by that because I’ve been a part of it. “I’m also incredibly proud that a ragtag group of scruffy officers in the late 1800s actually had a vision that people could be supported to live really good lives in the world. Even people like prisoners, who were often considered the worst and lowest in society, could be more than they were. Everybody had the chance to change, and we were able to be part of that, so thinking about it like that makes me go ‘Wow ... we haven’t done that bad!” Jenny said another key aspect of the Social Services’ amazing work was being in society from the get-go. “We’ve been in every major disaster and every major war and on the frontlines of all those kinds of major events in Australian history. We’ve been in all of those kinds of environments and were the first agency on the ground in Darwin when the cyclone hit [in 1974]. We are there whenever there’s a major disaster,” she said. “The point I’m trying to make is that we’ve grown up with the country. I think we, The Salvation Army, are in a privileged position and firmly locked into the psyche of the Australian community. The Salvation Army is part of our national identity. And I think that is such a privileged position that this national conference gives us the chance to say – how do we stay in that privileged position and what do we need to do to ensure that we continue to be who we say we are in the 21st and the 22nd centuries?” A snapshot of the last financial year reveals that Social Services provided more than 1.86 million sessions of care across all social programs, one million nights of accommodation for those in need, 1.5 million meals for those experiencing homelessness and 86,420 sessions of care for young people. Additionally, more than 11,300 people received assistance with addiction through alcohol and other drugs and gambling rehabilitation services, and almost 12,700 received free financial counselling. “It’s amazing to think how many people we’ve helped, how many meals we’ve served, how many beds we’ve provided to the most vulnerable in our community over the last 140 years,” Jenny said. “During our history, we have had the support of more than five million volunteers who have given their time so generously to help those in need through our programs. “This anniversary is a proud moment to reflect on all we have achieved, together, for our most vulnerable. So, we encourage people to come to the conference and tell us what you think. The conference is as much a listening exercise as it is a getting-stuff-done exercise.” Ask Jenny about the driving force behind her passion for Social Services and 30-year commitment to The Salvation Army, and her response is instant. “I love participating in people’s change,” she explained. “Every human being is worthy of love and belonging. I love seeing people walk through the door of a service, any old service, looking pretty sad and desperate, and seeing the change. To see them actually get what they thought they might not get, to discover hope again, and actually get a sense that they can actually do better than they are because someone’s prepared to walk alongside them. “People tell me every day about how The Salvation Army impacts their lives, to give people a sense of hope and also a sense that they can do it themselves. People are not useless, they are not hopeless, and being homeless or being poor does not mean you don’t have reserves you can draw on. The resilience of people is amazing.” Jenny’s strong Christian faith undergirds her passion for Social Services and helping countless people experiencing great pain. “You have to find a way to live the gospel rather than talk it. That’s where you make decisions around how you respond to people, even angry people who might be angry at you. Jesus says in the book of Matthew, if you open the door to a homeless person, if you give a cup of cold water in my name, then I am present,” she said. “So, for me, it’s about how I am in the world and how I strive to be God in the world – to be a representation of who Christ was in the world. And so, I try not always successfully, and more often than not, not successful at all, to bring Christ into every interaction I have with people ... always with kindness, always trying to give people hope for the future.” Looking to the future, Jenny’s professional goals for Social Services are that the Army will be a recognised advocate and bolder in its advocacy and better in the way it delivers our services. She also hopes anybody who “dares to put on The Salvation Army uniform” will actually participate in helping someone’s life be better – a theme highlighted in next week’s event. “I don’t want people to just say, ‘I’m a Salvo, and I go to the local church on Sunday’, but to say ‘I’m a Salvo, and on Tuesdays I go down and run the kids club’ so that they every Salvo knows that if you are a Salvationist, you’ve got a job to do,” Jenny said. “There’s work to do in the community.” Registrations are still open for the conference. Contact Major Jenny Begent at jenny.begent@salvationarmy.org.au or Linda Pollard: Linda.pollard@salvationarmy.org.au

I thought it was timely to just have a word or two about a small matter that just drives me a bit nuts and is just a bit frustrating. It’s the word just. It’s a lovely word, don’t get me wrong. I have no issue with talking about what is morally right (‘it was a just outcome for all concerned’) or what is deserved or appropriate (‘he got his just desserts’), or even in relation to something being valid or sound (‘the subject of just criticism’). Where I struggle is where just is used as a filler word, similar to when many people would use ‘um’ or ‘ah’, and especially during prayers. “Lord, we just want to praise your name today because you’re just so wonderful and caring and loving that, at times, we just don’t even know how to express our gratitude and love for you. So, this morning, we just want to dive into your Word and just seek your truth and your voice for what you want to say to us today, and we pray that you will just bless us in a powerful way. Amen.” Now read that prayer again and skip over each ‘just’. See ... you lose nothing! If anything, it makes the prayer feel stronger and more confident by not saying ‘just’ every few seconds. This is because the word ‘just’ is commonly used to mean barely or narrowly: “He just made it over the fence.” Similarly, we use it to mean only or simply: “There’s just a few left in the bag.” So, when we use it in a prayer, it can act in a way that weakens or diminishes what we’re asking for. To pray that God will ‘just bless us’ can mean we want God to ‘barely bless us’ or ‘only bless us’. It’s weaker than simply saying: “We pray that you will bless us.” I’ve listened to prayers where I’ve grown increasingly distracted by each ‘just’ uttered. Yes, I’m aware that’s probably my issue, and I shouldn’t let something so trivial distract me from the intent of the prayer, but sometimes it’s hard to ignore: “Dear God, we seek your will for our lives and pray that you will just empower and fill us with your Spirit today. We’re just so mindful of your wisdom and your leading when it comes to just living day to day in our troubled times. You’re just so discerning when it comes to what is morally right and wrong, and we pray that people will just act in a fair and just just way. And, well, um … just amen.” So, here’s a cute game to play: next time people pray in your meeting, keep score of the number of times ‘just’ is used. And if you want to play the game at an advanced level, do a little cough every time someone prays a ‘just’. To listen out for each ‘just’ will actually help you listen more intently to the prayer – which is a good thing – and the coughing might annoy the pray-er enough to just stop doing it! – Major Mal Davies and his wife Major Tracey are the Corps Officers at Adelaide City Salvos

To read the tribute for Loretta, click here

To read the tribute for Marjorie, click here

To read the tribute for Mae, click here

Chief Secretary Colonel Winsome Merrett reflects on God’s presence, protection and provision and reminds us that our wellbeing is met by God’s provision for our souls regardless of our outward circumstances. May we all rest in the assurance that God is both with us and leading us.

BY LAUREN MARTIN The Salvation Army’s Serenity House in Mount Isa, north-west Queensland, has received the ‘Excellence in Community Homelessness Services Delivery’ award at the city’s 2023 Community Services Ball. Serenity House Manager Melissa Warhurst says it is great recognition for the hard work that the small team is doing within the community. “We like to pride ourselves on going above and beyond and being quite flexible in service delivery, so it was great to be recognised.” Serenity House is a residential homelessness support service in Mt Isa, offering five units for women and children experiencing homelessness. This year, the service began mobile community support to assist more women in need who are unable to access accommodation at Serenity House due to the service being in such high demand. “We can provide women in the community with support in working towards a housing outcome, such as helping them with a housing application,” Melissa says. “We meet the women where they feel comfortable in the community and work towards ensuring they have somewhere safe to stay.” Life Matters group Recently, the service also gained a grant to continue running a successful pilot program of a weekly women’s group called ‘Life Matters’. The group is a joint project between Mt Isa Corps and Serenity House, which are co-located on one property. “The group aims to reduce social isolation for women in our remote community,” Melissa says. All women from the community are welcome, and the service strongly encourages women who are being supported by Serenity House, Mount Isa Recovery service and the local corps to attend. “We have a spiritual devotion provided by the corps members, then we have a morning tea and a craft activity or a cooking activity. At the moment, we are running a parenting course with the group.” Area Officer Major Michelle Oliver says the award is a beautiful community recognition of the team’s great work in partnering with others, like Mt Isa Corps, and reaching out to vulnerable women in the Mt Isa Community.

BY LERISSE SMITH A major birthday celebration like no other will take place next week when The Salvation Army celebrates its remarkable 140 years of Social Services in Australia with an international conference to be held in Melbourne. The five-day event at the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Project 614 venues from 8-12 November will shine a bright light on the significant milestone of Social Services, delivered by an Army raised to serve the world, with the theme ‘Everyone has a work to do’. The conference program will feature an array of local and international practitioners in the social services field to reflect, share and celebrate the rich history of helping Australians in need. A myriad of workshops will run throughout the event, plus presentations of research and discussion papers from community sector representatives, with a special celebration and thanksgiving service on the fifth and final day. And the overarching vision for the significant occasion has been simple for the organiser, Major Jenny Begent, Assistant Secretary for Mission. “I wanted everybody in the room,” said Jenny. “I’m a big-picture person. When I thought about the conference, it was not just about celebrating that we have come 140 years and that we’ve actually done some amazing stuff in there. I also wanted to see a Salvation Army that was a really vibrant part of its community, and that if we weren’t here, we just wouldn’t be missed, it would be catastrophic. That’s what I wanted to say.” Proud history The humble beginnings of the Army’s Social Services date back to 1883 when the ‘Prison Gate Brigade’ was established to provide an outreach service for men released from Melbourne Gaol. Major James Barker established the program that was the first Salvation Army social program anywhere in the world, and from that time onwards, it grew rapidly. Today, our Social Services support those in need in Australia and around the world as strongly and passionately as ever in four major streams – Homelessness, AOD (alcohol and other drug) Services, Youth Services, and Family Violence. Additional arms include Community Engagement Services, including emergency relief and chaplaincy, Aged Care, Moneycare, Strategic Disaster Management, and the Red Shield Defence Services within the Australia Defence Force. “It is incalculable to put a number to how many people have been supported by The Salvation Army’s Social Services over all the years,” Jenny said. “It started with a 500-pound grant from the government. That’s about $955. Today, we invest more than half a billion dollars into our services annually. “Our ability to provide vital support right across Australia is possible thanks to the support of government and the generosity of our donors, volunteers and corporate partners. The confidence these dedicated supporters have to invest in us is a testament to the trust the Australian community has in The Salvation Army to always be there and make a difference when it’s needed most.” Conference line-up The international conference celebration will showcase a huge line-up of 10 keynote speakers, 28 speakers and four moderators. The decision-making process behind how the event would be shaped and presented and determining the myriad of workshop topics has been a major project for Jenny and her team. “It has been a mammoth task,” Jenny explained. “We started off with the notion that both myself and our conference team wanted to ensure that people understood who The Salvation Army was and that we were faith-based, and that’s an important element of who we are. We also wanted people to understand our roots and where we came from. “I wanted to ensure The Salvation Army understood its place in the world, that we actually have an important place in the world, and from the get-go, we were about the poor and the marginalised, the people on the fringes.” Jenny added: “We want to say we are not just about the local community. We are actually also about a global context and working towards ensuring that we have a voice to say where systems don’t work for people and keep people poor. We are asking people like guest speaker Nick Bryant (a former BBC foreign correspondent and now columnist) and the politicians, how do we do that, and how do we partner with you to get that done?” “So, from that, we progressed from the start of the conference down to the last day, which is really intimate, which is about how do you and I, the social mission, and the church, actually do this well?” Making a difference The first two days of the international conference will look at the community and the world people live in and how The Salvation Army can continue to make a difference in the world. From a global perspective, the second day will be more intentional about an Australian context and what it means to be a faith-based agency in the world today. It will feature Cassandra Goldie (CEO ACOSS); the Honourable Bill Shorten; Michael Sukkar; Michael Lennon; Stephen Crittendon; Julie McCrossin; Andrew West (ABC religion report); Adam Bandt MP; Patricia Faulker (Jesuit Social Services); Bronwyn Pike (CEO Uniting Vic. Tas.). Jenny said there were many people who thought the time of faith-based agencies was long gone, so the first few days of the conference would look at how relevant The Salvation Army was and what the faith-based agency brought to local communities that others did not. “Is there something special about what we do?” said Jenny. “We are going to argue that yes, there is.” On the third and fourth days, the focus will be on being more intentional about how The Salvation Army connects internally with the church side of the organisation. “There’s a lot of work to do,” Jenny said. “We’re going to try and have conversations around how we can help each other and how people who might sit in the pew on Sunday could find a meaningful service space in one of our services. It might just be picking up kids from school twice a week or looking for ways in which we can engage and integrate. How we can be more of a matched set rather than separate entities?” A celebratory youth event will be held on Thursday night, with the conference’s last day being a celebration and thanksgiving service of the Salvos’ social and spiritual service to the community, incorporating music, worship, plus a time of lament. “There will be a time of reflection and lament because there are times when we got it badly wrong, such as the findings of the Royal Commission, the way we managed Indigenous people in the early days, and our treatment of the LGBTIQ community,” Jenny explained. “There are things we need to say such as look, we’re sorry we got it wrong, and we do pledge ourselves to do it better and to be totally inclusive, so what we heard on day one of the conference has a reverberating effect in the community. “And that one small act of kindness actually ripples – and can ripple globally.” Registrations are still open for the conference. Contact Major Jenny Begent at jenny.begent@salvationarmy.org.au or Linda Pollard: Linda.pollard@salvationarmy.org.au

The Salvation Army’s Moneycare service in Cairns, Far North Queensland, has delivered a financial literacy training program through an interpreter to assist members of the local African population. Moneycare Queensland Team Leader Amanda Rees said the Cairns Corps has an African congregation and its pastor identified that some financial literacy training would benefit members of the congregation. Local Moneycare Financial Counsellor Kevin van Kuijk jumped at the opportunity to reach more members of the local community and organised training with an interpreter. About 20 people attended the day, held during Anti-Poverty Week in October, which included a free sausage sizzle and stalls from other local organisations. “We had representatives there from Centrelink, the Women’s Legal Service, Moneycare, The Salvation Army’s Cairns Street Chaplains and Rent Connect,” said Amanda. “After the training, each service representative spoke through the interpreter about their service and how it can help.” “The community was really engaged.”

BY LAUREN MARTIN Summer has not yet hit Australia and The Salvation Army is already working in emergency and recovery operations for bushfires at the beginning of what is expected to be a busy fire season. At the Kempsey Recovery Centre in Willawarrin, north New South Wales, Major Bev Kingston and her team have been handing out recovery grants for people affected by a bushfire in the area. “The sad thing is that it’s a lot of the same people who were impacted by the 2019-20 bushfires,” she said. “People are better prepared this time around, but they are still traumatised.” She said her faith was strengthened when a Christian couple visited the recovery centre and talked about an answer to prayer that they had received as the bushfire raced towards their home. “When she saw the fire coming, she rang her church family and got them to pray,” remembered Bev. “It was the middle of the night. Afterwards, one couple said to her that between midnight and 2am, they were praying that the wind would change direction. “She showed us a photo of the fire heading straight for her house at that exact time. When it got to her fence line, it turned away. A true testimony to the power of prayer!” Bev said the recovery team is ready for what’s expected to be a busy fire season in the area, but she has encouraged more Salvos to get trained so they can assist in recovery and evacuation centres if needed. “I would encourage people to get involved. There is training, so get prepared now.” The Salvation Army Emergency Services (SAES) is also ready and on standby to assist at evacuation centres or in feeding emergency services at bushfire locations. “All of the indicators and information says this will be a significant summer,” said Norm Archer, NSW/ACT SAES Response Coordinator. “Our teams are prepared and ready to escalate their involvement. We have been working alongside fire and emergency services as they prepare for the season.” The SAES recently brought online two new large emergency catering units that are based in Sydney and Canberra, ready to be deployed across the state as needed. “Our volunteer numbers have increased since the 2019-20 Black Summer season,” said Norm. “We are very aware that communities this season will still be sensitive to recent history, and that’s where The Salvation Army as a whole – both from emergency services and the local mission level – can provide support and assistance to those people in affected communities.”

Eva Burrows College has announced that the 2023 recipient of the Eva Burrows Australian Leadership Scholarship for Women is Robyn Bust. Robyn is the Program Manager of Oasis Youth Services across the NSW Central Coast and Hunter regions. As part of her scholarship, Robyn will be undertaking a Graduate Certificate of Leadership, where she plans to build on and deepen her leadership giftings and knowledge. She will embed the learnings and knowledge around the theories and concepts of leadership to be confident and equipped to provide valuable and tangible input within the state and national Youth Services teams, with both strategies and planning. Robyn says her goal is to “model, coach, influence and develop upcoming leaders within The Salvation Army.” Congratulations, Robyn and all the very best with your upcoming studies.

Salvation Army response teams were among the first on the scene after Hurricane Otis made landfall near Acapulco, Mexico, as a Category 5 tropical cyclone last week (25 October), causing widespread destruction. The teams offered meals, emotional support and spiritual care. Salvation Army officers and volunteers also began cleaning up fallen trees and collecting debris at the Children’s Home in Acapulco. Thousands of people are still without shelter, safe drinking water, and no way to communicate. Close to 50 people have lost their lives, and another 47 people are missing. Salvation Army assistance to those impacted by the hurricane continues, with the assistance of the Salvation Army World Service Office. Slideshow of relief work: