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 for and about the events of Holy Week leading up to, and including Good Friday. Some years we have had a featured soloist as well to add to the evening.

Over the past few weeks, however, my health has not been too good. The stresses of life, despite my general happiness in life, have exacerbated some health conditions that changed my life a great deal some 20 years ago – conditions that, as these recent days have proven, are still capable of coming back and haunting me from time to time.

So, despite the preparations that we had made and the posters and leaflets produced to invite people to the event it has not been possible to go ahead THIS YEAR – let’s hope things can return to normal in plenty of time for 2026.

In the meantime, however, I thought - why not use the music chosen for this year, some used in previous years and some other items from our wonderful Salvation Army heritage to produce a Holy Week programme of reflective music that can be enjoyed by many, many more listeners than our SA hall could hold – and, what’s more enjoyed and blessed by time and time again!

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 of England, Wales and Scotland in its first decade it became The Salvation Army in 1878, Booth taking on the mantle of the General of his army.

Within 25 years, as we hear in this episode, 60,000 Salvationists could gather together at the Crystal Palace for a Silver Jubilee and today, 158 years after those humble beginnings the Army is at work in over 130 countries, right round the world.

This episode uses music with its origins in the earliest 40 years of the movement's history 1865-1905, a surprising amount of which is still known and occasionally used in the present day. We hear music from writers such as Richard Slater, George Scott Railton, Kate and Herbert Booth (two of the Founder's children) and William Pearson as well as, of course, popular tunes of the day 'adopted and adapted' for the Army's mission a-plenty.

Some of the music has been adapted by well-known composers like Ray Steadman-Allen, Norman Bearcroft and Leslie Condon and sections featured include the ISB and ISS, Hendon, Portsmouth, Stockholm and Boscombe Bands, songster brigades from Birmingham and Moonee Ponds, Sydney Australia and a stellar collection of soloists including Susan Turner, Fred Crowhurst, Kaytie Harding and Ian Johnston - not to mention Commissioner John Lawley himself!

Enjoy this opportunity to transport yourself back in time to hear music and words with a relevance to the present age.

God bless you all.
Marc

'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 songs are interspersed with thoughts reflecting Her Majesty's life and service, particularly her strong and vibrant Christian faith - and many of her own quotes have been recorded by Jeannine Ridha for the broadcast.

The meeting will be broadcast, as usual, on Fortress Radio at 6pm on Sunday 18th September and then available on the "Going to the Army!" site as well as the Fortress Radio Podcast service.

Please join me for this special meeting.

Marc