In its origin, The Salvation Army was known for soup, soap and salvation. The vision and values of William Booth permeated the movement, guiding all aspects of work and ministry in the early days. And although we’ve maintained our reputation for reaching out to the lost, we’ve also grown from a small mission in the grimy street of East London to an international evangelical church with billion dollar budgets and thousands of employees and volunteers. Keeping that focus is a lot harder today than it was in Booth’s day.

Dorothy Marcic, in Managing with the Wisdom of Love (1997), asserts that all spheres of organizational operation need to be grounded in the core values of the organization. “… it will not ‘work’ if it is anything less than authentic and does not deal with the core values of the organization.” Values statements, along with mission statements, establish a standard of behaviour that define an organization’s distinctives. Values build the culture of an organization. And if that culture is built on unclear or conflicting values, chaos can result.

We’re fortunate. We are part of an organization that has actually spent some time thinking about and considering what constitutes its values. It’s now been four years since the ten core values for the Canada & Bermuda Territory were articulated. Since then, they’ve appeared on walls in ministry units, been printed in employee manuals and orientation books, and even made the inside cover of the War Cry. We know many ministry units that daily rise to the challenge of living these values in all aspects of their organizational life. Lived values can be a real and genuine commitment.

The Salvation Army Ethics Centre is a resource centre funded by the Canada & Bermuda territory. We provide services that are available to every ministry unit in the territory. In conjunction with the social services department, the Ethics Centre has been developing a tool to help determine how effectively the core values of The Salvation Army in this territory are integrated in social services ministry. The long term goal of the project is to work with individual units. Following an initial survey at a unit, the Ethics Centre will work with the ministry unit to develop a plan to equip the unit to more effectively integrate Salvation Army core values into their ministry, when that would be helpful.

Further information regarding the initial visioning and development of the Values at Work project can be accessed by clicking here.