John Sandeman interviews Commissioner James Condon head of the Salvation Army, Eastern Australia, about prayer.

James Condon is a man of prayer.

How do you pray?

I am an early riser and the first thing I do is pray. I get out of bed and I go to my prayer chair as I call it and I spend time in prayer.

I am also a person who takes time for prayer retreats which can vary from a day to two days, down to perhaps a couple of hours.

On a particular morning I may decide I will not go to the office early. I will head off to somewhere like Centennial Park, sit by a pond, and spend a couple of hours in prayer.

I have got other places that people make available to me for prayer retreats—where I may spend a day or two waiting on God and praying.

When do you get up? How long do you pray for?

I am up at 4am. My personal prayer time is approximately 30 minutes at the start of the day. I adhere to the Scripture that says “pray continually”. As I sit at my office desk during the course of the day, the one thing I ask God for is wisdom.

I often pause during the day to pray. Today for example I decided to go and sit in Hyde Park in the sun for a while and pray. I don’t do it every day.

While I am sitting there I am thinking about things that are happening, and wanting to commit them to God in prayer.

When I go to my times of prayer retreat I read the Scriptures, I spend time in prayer. And I always take time to listen to God.

What I have learned about prayer is that prayer is not just about talking to God—offering praise, intercession, repentance, confession, praying for people and about situations—it’s absolutely critical that we take time to listen to God.

The last thing that I always do at the end of my time at a prayer retreat is to say, “Lord, this is my time to endeavour to listen to you”.

I always think of Samuel: “Speak Lord for thy servant listeneth”. That’s not easy because my mind goes in all sorts of directions. I have to stay focused and say to the Lord, “What do you want to say to me?” I sit there with a pen and a pad, ready to write down what I think the Lord is saying.

Of course the Lord speaks to us in different ways.

I find sometimes the Lord will speak to me from Scripture. I will be reading and I will feel that the Lord is saying “James—this is speaking to you”.

I had an experience only last week. I was reading from the book of Daniel, about Daniel in the Lion’s den, how God rescued him, how God saved him. And I felt ‘this is a word from the Lord for me’. The Lord was saying he will rescue you, he will bring you out of the fire.

Can you tell me a story of how prayer has changed your life or caused you to do something different?

I am a great believer in Paul’s words in Philippians 1:6: “Being confident that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion, until the day of Jesus Christ.”

I remember praying, “Search me, oh God, know my heart—is there anything there?” as I always do on retreat. And I did feel the Lord say to me, “Yes. You can sometimes be a bit harsh with the way you speak to your wife.”

I thought “Oh, okay. Yes Lord, I can see that now.”

Can I talk to you about the Salvation Army—something you pray for a lot. To someone outside, the Salvation Army seems like a welfare agency but perhaps from inside, it is a church.

The Salvation Army’s history comes in here. The vision that God gave to William Booth, who was a Methodist Minister in London at the time. He wanted the church to do more (and I say that with reservation because some churches were doing nothing because of the caste system) to help the poor—the homeless, the hungry, the rejected of society and the vulnerable. But his vision was never to start another church.

He wanted to help the people with the prayer that they would become members of the local church, Church of England, Methodist or Baptist. But because he was a preacher himself—and the people knew that he was a preacher—the people said we want you to be our preacher, we want you to be our church. So he put up a tent and started to have meetings.

That’s how we were born. A church with an acute social conscience. A church seeking to fulfil Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:

“Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.”

It is interesting with our work with refugees and asylum seekers, [the word] “Army” strikes fear. ‘What is this army?’ In suburbs like Auburn, where many of these people first settle because that is where the Department of Immigration has their housing units, these people are often referred to the Salvation Army to get clothing or furniture.

They see us as a charity. But we endeavour to share the gospel—the good news—with them as well. Because they will say “Why do you do this?” and then it is an open door.

One of the challenges for us is that the average Aussie who knows us as a church, does not see us as the church for them. They see us as the church for the down and outs or homeless, the drug addict or alcoholic. That’s not them.

That does not mean we don’t have middle or upper class people who make up Salvation Army Churches.

What should other Christians be praying for the Salvation Army?

I have always been a great believer in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face…” I have been a great believer in that verse for Australia because we are the “great southland of the Holy Spirit” and I long to see revival.

So, to answer your question, pray that we, the Salvation Army will be what God wants us to be—that we will fill the place that God has given us in the Christian church—to be the Salvation Army in 21st century Australia in terms of connecting with all Australians, in terms of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. That is my number one prayer request.

[Also pray for] repentance. I do believe repentance is important. I am talking now about the Salvation Army. When I talked to you earlier about God speaking to me through Daniel, I was referring to the Royal Commission (into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse). On the 28th of January to the 7th February, I will be in the Royal Commission every day answering questions about abuse that happened in Salvation Army homes.

I believe—and I am talking about the Salvation Army, personally—I have long believed in repentance as a key to receiving God’s blessing upon the church, upon the Salvation Army.

People have not always understood me when I talk about “corporate repentance”. The abuse that happened in children’s homes is a typical example. We need to acknowledge what happened. We need to repent of it.

What do I mean by repent? We need to show that we are sorry, that we regret it. And of course repentance is not just about being sorry, it is about change. And that is one of the things we will be showing to the Royal Commission.

I could not think of a more powerful illustration. I wish you well at the Royal Commission. Any other prayer points?

Last week I sent out an email: “Pray for rain”. I went to Christmas bush mission to Dubbo in December. Out to a place called Tottenham for a community carols on the Sunday night. Boy, things are bad out there.

A couple of months ago I was up in Mt Isa, went up in our helicopter all day visiting properties. We have got rural chaplains in the outback.

The message I am getting back is that it is really really bad. So the first point this morning was praying for people to be saved. Prayers for healing. Prayers for rain.

And prayers for particular events. Red Shield summer camp is on this week. It’s when we bring children from low socioeconomic areas, and people from the outback who have never been to the sea. And opportunities are given there for children to make decisions for Christ. Many children make decisions this week.

What do you think Christians in Australia do not have because we do not ask?

For me, the church in Australia need to be asking God, how do we connect with the wider Australian community?

I am 64 so I remember the Billy Graham Crusade. The crusade—the public gathering together with the preaching of the evangelist was the way we reached people.

Today, it is all about relationships. We have to build relationships with the unchurched, the unsaved people.

Our prayer needs to be that the Lord will direct us to people, that he will put people in our way that we can build relationship with and be used for the salvation of that individual.

That God will open our eyes and direct our steps so that we really do connect.