"Going to the Army!" - Marc Harry's Podcast

Had things gone to plan: then today – Tuesday 15th April 2025 I would have been preparing myself for one of my favourite events of the year. Each Holy Week for quite some years now the Band and Songster Brigade from Lincoln Salvation Army here in the UK have presented an evening of reflective music for Easter. The music chosen has usually been interspersed with bible readings and poetry written...

To mark the TENTH anniversary of the very first GttA podcast in July 2013 this is the first of a very special 4-part series of podcasts featuring music from each decade of the Army's existence right up to the present day.The Salvation Army began - as The Christian MIssion - in 1865 when William Booth preached outside The Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel, East London. Spreading throughout the whole...

'The Salvation Meeting' makes its return this Sunday after my summer break.It returns with something, by necessity, a little different from a 'normal' meeting.The 90 minute 'special' has been specially written and recorded to be broadcast the evening before the funeral of our late Queen Elizabeth II and takes the form of a 'Heavenward-looking Vigil'Specially selected Salvation Army music and...

For the last meeting prepared before I take my summer break (I'll be back in September!) I found my inspiration after seeing a question asked in a Salvation Army forum online: What is a Salvation Meeting?In these days when most corps only have one service on a Sunday it seems strange to some to imagine we once had at least 3 indoor meetings, Sunday Schools, Open-Air meetings and more EVERY...

"Send the Fire!"What must it have been like to have been in that room...that day...on that occasion when the sound of a mighty wind brought tongues of flame to settle on each person's head?And then to have gone out into the streets with the followers of Jesus as each man heard the message in his own language - as the sheer POWER of the Holy Spirit on that first Day of Pentecost saw many thousands...

"I've had enough!!""Stop the world, I wanna get off!"Heard these expressions? Maybe you've said them?Life can sometimes seem like a trial - one thing after another, problems piling up...Peter gives us reassurance in his first epistle:"So be truly glad! There is wonderful joy ahead, even though the going is rough for a while down here."Of course, nothing we endure could ever get anywhere near the...

Never has there been a more maligned animal than the poor old donkey! Forever seen as slow, grumpy and - in the words of GK Chesterton "The devil's walking parody of all four-footed things."But, as the general once wrote "In the service of Jesus there's a place for all" and oh yes, our donkey had his day!There's a lot more to the story than you may know, though...so come and join me for a great...

While in every way this is a 'traditional' Salvation Meeting in every other way I decided to use exclusively the music of General John Larsson, recently Promoted to Glory.While choosing the music for meeting - songs, choruses, band piece, songster and singing company songs - I tried to keep away from the many songs the General wrote for the many musicals he co-wrote with General John Gowans. I...

The meeting is titled "A Prayer for Peace" and we will be lifting up the situation in Ukraine to God in the very best Salvation Army way.Music from the International Staff Band and Songsters, Sunbury Junior Singers, Canadian Staff Band, Portsmouth Citadel Songsters and much more...Music from composers including Eric Ball, Ray Steadman-Allen, Kenneth Downie, 'Gowans & Larsson' and Howard...

There can be no doubt about it!God HAS blessed The Salvation Army over the 157 years of its existence. He still blesses our ministry today - in well over 130 countries all around the world. Hallelujah!But, there can be no denying it, the membership/soldiery of the Army has declined to numbers well below those we remember in years gone by. Should we shake our heads and wonder what has happened,...