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Eight-week initiative highlights importance of junior soldier program.
March 2—Junior Soldier Enrollment and Renewal Sunday—kicks off the Territorial Junior Soldier Advancement Campaign, “In My Father’s House.”
The campaign is designed to renew awareness and interest about the junior soldier program throughout the Western Territory, encourage and inspire current junior soldiers and leaders, and bring a new emphasis on conducting a consistent, high quality junior soldier program.
Lasting eight weeks, it is a point-based system, rewarding individual children as well as corps. While not a “contest,” the territorial youth department hopes that corps will hold their own celebration of their junior soldiers, and that divisional staff will celebrate corps achievements.
“We need members! An army without soldiers is obviously no army at all,” declared Territorial Youth Secretary Captain Kyle Smith.
The enrolling and training of junior soldiers is an important part of our mission to develop young people into lifelong followers of Jesus Christ as soldiers in The Salvation Army. The point of this “Advancement Campaign” is just that—to advance the Junior Soldier program, advance our kids, and advance our Army!
This campaign will serve as a new starting point for many corps and an encouragement for others who already have made the junior soldier program a priority. It’s a chance to remember that the junior soldier program is a way to assimilate the kids we reach through our outreach programs (Sunday school, vacation Bible school, troops, after-school programs, etc.).
Let the incredible story of the Phoenix South Mountain Corps (below) spur you on to think of the possibilities for affirming the youth in our community as functioning members of the body of Christ through the junior soldier program!