Does anyone else have one of these? It was created for The Salvation Army’s 100th Anniversary in Canada and was available through Trade, officially named Supplies and Purchasing. I have NO idea what it cost in the day, but a look on the internet shows that someone did try and sell one, and no one bid on it. So, perhaps the value really is in the eye of the beholder.

Unfortunately that is not REAL gold! These were available in 1982 and probably at the Congress in Winnipeg though I really don’t remember us picking this up. Were they given to all the cadets, of which we were 2? 2 out of 100 I should add.

And yes it marked TSA marching into a second century. No one would have imagined what the next century would bring. The emergence of worship bands and music, the desertion of The Church by the next generation, and the shifting of values within the developing world.

I read “Dancing With Dragons” or I think that was the title…though a quick search on Amazon makes me wonder if I have the title wrong! But the premise of the book was to look into the future of church life and get leaders to think about how the decisions they were making in the 80’s would impact the future. I just remember the author saying that there was a crack in history opening in the mid 1980s and would close in the mid 2020s… and we would then know the shape of things to come. I think that was very accurate.

Think of this – in the 1980s we went to the bank, to the theatre, to the library, to the church… now can do all those things off our phones. And the digitization of the work has had a great impact on our daily life which has a great impact on our relationships with institutions, including the church!