Holy Hunger: A Table Conversation on Holiness

Here's the introduction to Holy Hunger: A Table Conversation on Holiness.  Available through Amazon, Kindle and Nook. 

I see something else going on in the world where I live.

While some of the old terms have lost their luster, I perceive there is a growing, deep-heart hunger to be holy!

I believe that with all my soul!

Maybe this is the hunger to which all other hungers are related.

Maybe this fundamental hunger to be holy is that God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person.

And oddly enough, though that hunger persists, it is seldom expressed.

I don’t know if we can find new terms, new language,

new lingo that would help us,

but I know that there is within us a hunger to be holy.

Reuben Welch

Sharing a Sunday meal with people after church has long been a part of our family’s weekly rhythm. As we lean back in our chairs, satisfied by the food we’ve eaten, we sometimes spend time further digesting the words of the morning sermon, moving that monologue into a spirited conversation around the table, perhaps reminiscent of conversations shared around the table in the earliest days of Christianity.

The image of a spiritual conversation around the table is the guiding metaphor of these pages, as a group of Salvationists (those who identify with the Salvation Army as their church) gather with their corps officers (pastors) in a desire to further explore the subject of holiness. It’s a topic on the hearts and minds of Salvation Army leaders these days, as well as those who worship in our chapels. It is of particular interest to the young adults in our midst, who desire to translate the holiness teachings of their parents and grandparents into accessible language and image for their generation of believers, not an easy task. 

In her paper on the life of holiness within the Salvation Army, then Commissioner Linda Bond quoted an unnamed officer colleague: “It’s not just that our teaching failed but that for too many people their experience did not line up with our theology even when they desperately wanted it to.” For some time now, the Salvation Army has been concerned about its holiness teaching and experience, as have other denominations traditionally known to be a part of the Holiness Movement. Bond expressed the concern of many with these passionate words:

We should desire to be known as holy people, not stuck or dead or dreaming but a holy people of God, relevant in the best sense of the word, alive at the center, not clinging to the past while ignoring the present or because we are fearful of our future, but a progressive, radical growing movement with a burning passion to be the people He called us to be and to do what He called us to do. Can we incarnate holiness, moving into the cesspools of life with a redemptive, restorative message for the whole of humanity, for the whole person? There has never been a better time for The Salvation Army to witness to this hurting world that holiness practiced is not isolation or escapism but involvement and engagement.

It is with this corporate, missional challenge in mind, as well as the hunger in the hearts of those I’ve ministered among over thirty-five years of Salvation Army service, that I offer this imagined search for the presence of holiness “in the flesh.”  

Unlike the common disclaimer at the start of a typical work of fiction, I cannot truthfully say that all characters appearing in this work are fictitious, or that any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Those portrayed are certainly composite characters, but they have been created from people whose lives have shown me Jesus, as well as those who have been seeking after Jesus. I make no apologies for their influence on my life, for I am eternally grateful for their holy presence.

This is not a Salvation Army doctrine book. Instead, it is the heartfelt effort of one Salvationist to explore the teachings of the Bible and our faith tradition, and to recognize living examples of God’s sanctifying grace in the midst of us. I pray that these pages provide food for thought for God’s people, as we join Abby and Joe, Derek, Rob, Melissa, Caroline, Patrick and Kelly in their table conversation in search of holiness.

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