Salvation on the Side of the Road
Dan Duncan’s faith journey began when his mom pulled the car over to the side of the road. He was a young lad, but his curiosity about what his officer-parents were preaching and living was becoming stirred. So, he began to ask questions.
“I was sitting in the car with my mother driving,” Dan recalls. “I asked her about the nature of Heaven, how sins were forgiven, and what Jesus could do about future sins.”
Dan’s mom, sensing the Holy Spirit’s presence in her son’s questions, eased the car to the shoulder of the road and asked him if he would like to make a commitment to Christ.
“I did,” Dan says. “I was five or six at the time, but I’ve always been captivated by ‘ideas’— I love to know things.”
This never-ending pursuit of “ideas” caused Dan in his adolescence to begin to wrestle with what that commitment meant beyond just a declaration of loyalty to a person or a cause.
“I guess you could say that I’ve always loved the academic and theological side of Christianity. What I contended with in my teenage years and into college became what it meant to go beyond doctrinal affirmations, into a living, breathing relationship with God.”
Looking back, Dan admits that he was “born-again” in the traditional sense, but at the same time did not experience the awareness of what the Holy Spirit was doing in his life until he finally asked himself not what he believes but Who he believes.
No doubt Dan’s Salvation Army heritage was a great asset in his growth as a follower of Christ.
“I was born into The Salvation Army. My parents were officers in the Central Territory. I have been in the Army my entire life and have experienced both sides of appointment transitions.”
Enrolled as a junior soldier in a tiny corps in Virginia, Minnesota and as a senior soldier at the Aberdeen Corps in South Dakota, Dan even served in a local officer position while still in high school, as world services sergeant at the corps in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
“When I moved to Kentucky to attend college, I stayed in the Army, attending both the Lexington and Danville Corps during my four years at Asbury,” he says.
“I transferred my soldiership to the Louisville South Corps after graduation and have been a soldier here for twelve years. For the last two years, I’ve served as the corps sergeant major” (CSM).
Dan declares two reasons why he is still attracted to the Army.
“First, in this point of my life, it’s the promise of free and creative expression of my faith,” he explains. Pointing to the Army’s amazing history of innovative forms of evangelism, Dan sees a strand—there since the beginning of the Army and vital to its origins—that is woven into our movement.
“It’s not freedom to promote heretical notions,” he explains, “but it is an acknowledgement of the promise that expressing faith and faith practices in ways that may be different from ‘Army-barmy’ tradition shouldn’t immediately lead to ostracism.”
His second attraction to the Army is the mission—namely, meeting human needs in the name of Jesus Christ without discrimination.
“This may seem idealistic to some or too vague to others, but I have been taught two important things that impact how I read our mission statement.
“One is that the full Christian life is lived for others. As pure a motive as it is to want to be more like Christ, the goal is only fully achieved when I serve others. Meeting the needs of others, however large or small those needs are, is essential [to one’s growth in Christ].”
In addition, Dan reads into the mission statement that “God cares about the small, the insignificant, the mundane, and the regular.”
Among many examples in the Bible, he cites a dirty cave filled with smelly animals that became a holy place through God’s presence, or Jesus’ touch of an unclean peasant whom He restored to the Kingdom of God.
“All people” and “without discrimination” are two phrases that proclaim the Army’s allegiance to the universal sanctifying work of the Spirit, he adds. “This is attractive to me. The Army recognizes the same thing the Lord recognizes: there is value in the simple things and [among] common people.”
Nevertheless, Dan’s life has not been perfect. That impression would be an oversimplification, he insists.
Dan and his family have experienced unbelievable heartbreak. He has even asked God on occasion, “Where were You?” But God responded that He was there all along, and that Dan needed to stop running away from pain in a vain attempt to find an immediate solution.
“I learned surrender—not just in the hope that it brings joy, but in the knowledge that [in this life] there will be pain.” Today, CSM Dan Duncan strives to be a man closer to God, an even better husband, and a better father to his two beautiful children—a far cry from the little boy who gave his heart to Jesus on the side of a busy highway.
“God still teaches me simple truths!”
