The Salvation Army USA Southern Territory

10/31/2026

Major Dawn McFarland has spent years walking with people in recovery, leading six of The Salvation Army's Adult Rehabilitation Centers (ARCs). Now she is helping measure what faith-based recovery means in a person's life over time.

Major McFarland is the administrator of the ARC in St. Petersburg, Florida. She holds a Master of Arts in Integrated Recovery for Co-Occurring Disorders and is a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor. Commissioner Ken Hodder, then National Commander of The Salvation Army in the USA, brought her into the Better Together Research Project, a partnership with two other faith-based organizations, Adult & Teen Challenge and Citygate Network.

The project's survey looks at seven areas of life: happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, close social relationships, character and virtue, financial and material stability, and religious community and faith. Participants choose to take it when they enter a program, midway through, when they finish, and six months later.

The pilot began in January 2026 and runs through December 2027. Several federal agencies already know about the tool.

"They are very curious and are waiting to see what the pilot says."
– Major Dawn McFarland

Join us in praying for Major McFarland and for everyone on the road to recovery 🙏

Read the full story by Kristin Mudge: https://salvationarmyusa.org/stories/faith-matters-and-restoration-is-possible/

10/29/2026

What happens when a whole headquarters team looks at the same problem from different seats?

Program staff at our territorial headquarters spent a day with the Jack McDowell School for Leadership and Educational Development (SLED) at the Evangeline Booth College. Dr. T. Lynn Smith opened with a scenario: Friday at 2:30, a community partner offers a chance to serve 75 families on Monday morning, and needs a decision by four o'clock. Each person at the table answered from a different role, and every concern turned out to be part of the same situation.

Dr. Smith, Dr. Cathy Owens-Oliver and Major Claudia Roseno spent the rest of the day on seeing the whole, building teams that work and asking better questions. Those lessons fit any place people serve together, from a corps council to a ministry team to the family table. 🤝

Which one would help your team most? Share it with someone you serve alongside.

Learn more about SLED: https://www.sldleadership.org/

10/28/2026

10/28/2026

From The Editor: The Importance of Remembering

Remembering God's goodness in the past is how we learn to trust Him with the future. That conviction runs through Kristin Mudge's column for The Southern Spirit, written 25 years after September 11, 2001.

She carries it through a nation's grief and through her own: her mother, who left "a beautiful legacy of faith and love," and the pain she lives with today. Each memory turns her back toward praise.

"God has moved mountains in the past, so today I can believe He will do so again. And even if He does not, even if the answer is 'no,' He is still good, and His blessings abound."
– Kristin Mudge

Healthy remembering, she writes, "requires a certain amount of letting go." It looks up and around: at the thousands of volunteers who cared for first responders and grieving families, at neighbors coming together to pray, at the community that quietly surrounds us as we grieve.

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful." – Hebrews 10:23

What's a moment of God's faithfulness you keep coming back to? Share it in the comments. 🙏

Read the full column: https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/stories/from-the-editor-the-importance-of-remembering/

10/27/2026

Major Thomas McWilliams and his wife were visiting the Atlanta Temple Corps for a Sunday morning Holiness meeting when he found a note in pencil on the back of a tithe envelope. He has kept thinking about it for months.

It was a full morning of worship. "The band played wonderfully, the songsters sang beautifully, and the scripture passage of the day was read aloud in multiple languages." Then came the offering, and the envelope.

He turned the words over every way he could. Was it "a statement of fact, the title of a sermon preached sometime in the past, or a personal cry of despair"? Each reading led him back to the gospel. "We are all made of dust, and far more fragile than we like to think about," he writes, and so "we each need Him for life on this earth, and for a future life eternal."

The promise he offers the writer reaches further than one pew. The truth "that the Lord hears our humble cries also applies to anyone else currently struggling within their own heart, mind, and soul."

Pray with us for whoever wrote that note, that they have found the peace Major McWilliams hopes for. And share this with someone who needs to know they are heard. 🙏

Read the full reflection: https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/stories/the-gospel-note/

10/26/2026

"Nebuchadnezzar lost his mind and turned up the heat. Anybody here ever had Satan turn up the heat on you? I have."

- Commissioner Israel Gaither

The furnace went seven times hotter than usual, hot enough that the flames killed the soldiers tasked with throwing them in. Then the king who ordered it jumped to his feet. "Don't lie to me. I see four men, unbound, walking around in the fire, unharmed. And the fourth looks like a god."

"Something was happening that should not have been happening. Everything was reversed from what should have happened."

Inside the furnace he counted three.

"First miracle: the boys were unbound. The chains fell off. Second miracle: they were just strolling around in the furnace. Third miracle: they were not afraid. They were casual. They were cool in the fire. Unharmed."

All three happened inside. The chains came off before anyone outside knew anything had changed.

"Unbound from fear of the lie. Unbound from the fear of an addiction that has gripped you. Whatever, whenever – when Jesus arrives in the fire with you, He sets you free. And you walk around unbound, showing off what God has done in the furnace of your life."

"You may come out of it claiming your victory. But I want to tell you something – I remind you, it happened in the fire. That's where the victory occurred. And then you come out and you talk about it. Something that has already happened."

Then he gave the room his own rendition of verse 26 and called it the Gaither translation. The three step out of the fire and call back to the king who put them in it. "We're still standing. We've been through the fire. But we're still standing."

"I've seen loss. I've seen hurt. I've seen disappointment. But I'm still standing. I'm still standing. Still standing."

So what are you in the middle of that you have been waiting to be out of before you say anything? And what would change if the victory in it had already happened?

10/26/2026

Psalm 73 is honest from the first lines. Asaph admits he nearly lost his footing. He watched people who ignored God seem to prosper, and he wondered whether staying faithful had been worth it. Everything came back into focus when he went into God's presence.

He's honest about the rest too. His health may fail and his spirit may grow weak, and God remains.

The days are getting shorter and the year is starting to wind down. Energy runs lower, and some of what we leaned on is fading. This verse meets us right there. When we've given everything to Jesus, what we're left holding is Him, and He is enough to carry us through every season. ❤️

Who in your life needs this reminder? Send it their way.

10/24/2026

Jonathan Mobley once rode his bike for days around Norman, Oklahoma, trying to sweat the drugs out of his system. After one six-hour ride, he turned toward the Red Shield sign he had passed many times before.

"When we met Jonathan, he was sleeping behind the corps van. We got him into the shelter and knew right away that he is a unique individual, very capable, and exceeds what he puts his mind to."
– Lieutenant Corey Doggett, Norman corps officer at the time

Jonathan wasted no time immersing himself in the corps program. He began Soldiership classes and was enrolled as a senior soldier in July 2024.

One week later, he began working at the Army's shelter, helping to steward the very place he once turned to for refuge and deliverance.

Until the end of 2023, Jonathan considered himself agnostic. Today he says his state of mind did "a complete ‘180.’"

Major Frank Duracher tells the whole story in The Southern Spirit.

Read the full story: https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/stories/i-rode-my-bike-to-god/

Share a word of encouragement for Jonathan in the comments!

10/24/2026

"The trumpets are playing. Will you hear them? Will you answer the call and come and gather and pray?"
– Lt. Colonel Allan Hofer

In ancient Israel, the shofar called the nation together to pray. Next June, the call goes out across the South: come to Atlanta for the All For Jesus Centennial Celebration, June 4–6, 2027, at the Georgia World Congress Center.

For 100 years, God has been faithful to the Southern Territory. We'll celebrate that together, renew our commitment to Christ and His mission, and commission the Proclaimers of Transformation session of cadets. General Lyndon Buckingham, the international leader of The Salvation Army, will be with us, along with more than 100 guests from our partner territories around the world.

The road to Atlanta runs through prayer. Since Commissioning on June 6, our divisions have kept 24 hours of prayer going every day, passing the watch from one to the next. Florida holds it through November 21, and the watch ends on the eve of the Centennial.

Save the dates and find details at https://www.usscentennial.org

Share a request or pray for others on the prayer wall: https://soldier.sauss.net/PrayerRequests 🙏

10/22/2026

The Salvation Army in Romania has sent a heartfelt thank-you to its Partners in Mission in the USA Southern Territory.

Since its first corps opened in Bucharest in 1999, the Army in Romania has grown to serve in Bucharest, Ploiești, Craiova, Iași, Bacău and Buzău. On any given Saturday, children are laughing and learning at the corps, teenagers are practicing music, and young adults gather for worship and friendship.

Every weekday, the SMART Social Centers in Ploiești and Iași give vulnerable children a hot meal and homework help, and some who grew up in those programs now serve as corps members and volunteers. Three corps run Shower & Laundry projects for families and people experiencing homelessness. In Bucharest, a mobile team of a social worker, a doctor and a driver has gone out three evenings a week for more than ten years with medical care, sleeping bags, hot soup, coffee and tea. And since 2022, thousands of refugees and families affected by the war in Ukraine have received help while rebuilding their lives.

“This partnership reminds us that we are part of a global Salvation Army family united in serving others and sharing the love of Christ.”
– The Salvation Army in Romania

Pray for our family in Romania and the people they serve.

Read the full story: https://salvationarmyusa.org/stories/partners-in-mission-romania/