Soul Saving
Even in the boardroom.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NRO Executive Editor
January 19-20, 2002

"The Most Effective Organization in the U.S.", by Robert A. Watson and Ben Brown (Crown Business, 243 pp., $25)

o you know what group management guru Peter Drucker calls the most effective organization in the U.S.? Probably, if you already skimmed the subtitle of the book above. It's the Salvation Army. And, in a few ways, this is perfect timing for a book about the good red Army.

This book, had it been released, say, in August, would have likely been buried in the business section at Barnes and Noble, never to be seen by those of us who don't read business-management how-to books, and who remain relatively ignorant about those guys in quasi-military uniforms who ring the bells by the red tin kettles at Christmas time.

Retired Salvation Army national commander Robert Watson wrote The Most Effective Organization in the U.S. to pass on a little of the "Army spirit" to an unlikely community — the business community. But the book is easily for anyone. Filled with stories about the Army's beginnings in England and early radical Salvationist days on the streets of Manhattan — as well as about its gradual mainstreaming — it's a good primer on the Salvation Army and the good that they do. For manager types, it has the added bonus of spelling out some of their keys to success.

Of course, ultimately, the main key to success may not make it into every office. Theirs is a little help from the Man upstairs — which Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the like, may not quite embrace.

What's a shame though, is that the book did not come out a few months later, giving Watson and his coauthor, Ben Brown, some time to include a write-up on the marvelous work the Army has done since the first plane hit the World Trade Center on September 11.

Within 45 minutes of the terrorist attacks, about 200 Salvation Army officers got themselves to the crash sites in New York City, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, assisted by some 5,000 volunteers. No one ever asked them to. They never had any terrorist-attack training. They just got into their vans and got down — only to face the collapse of the first tower, which covered their vehicles with the building-flesh-ash mixture that was to be found all over lower Manhattan in the hours, days, and weeks to come.

The Army's "holistic" "soup, soap, and water salvation" ministry would feed rescue workers for days. In fact, the Army is still down at Ground Zero now. Quickly setting up 21 mobile feeding stations in Manhattan, they served 300,000 meals in the first 72 hours after the attack. And they plan to remain there until the last worker has gone home — feeding, massaging, providing phone cards, counseling, praying.

It's easy to figure out how an organization with a relatively small staff (3.4 million, including volunteers) can manage to tend to everyone who asks for help — whether the disaster be the unprecedented September 11 or a hurricane, flood, job loss, sickness, or injury. Its mission, in its own words, is "to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination."

This is not fine literature. It's written like a business book. But it's a nice look at a group that answers to a higher boss — the Highest, in fact — and for which so many Americans, in every zip code, must be grateful.