A few years ago, in the dead of winter, I received a call after hours from a fellow caseworker at The Salvation Army’s Addictions and Rehabilitation Centre (ARC) halfway house in Victoria. I was immediately struck by the somber tone of her voice. She told me she had just been contacted by a nurse at a local hospital, who informed her that one of our clients (let’s call him Daniel) had passed away. She had been tasked with identifying his body because, unbeknownst to my colleague, he had listed her as next of kin.

Daniel spent most of his life in Canada’s penitentiary system. From an early age, he was written off as “troubled.” He endured a childhood of abuse and trauma, which precipitated his turn to drugs and alcohol—a means of easing his suffering. Addiction and anti-social behaviour consumed him in adolescence. Women became the target of his rage. His repeated acts of violence produced unconscionable pain for his victims. The legal system responded accordingly: a judge designated him a “dangerous offender” just as he reached adulthood. The decision meant he would spend the rest of his life in prison serving an indeterminate sentence. He was deemed beyond rehabilitation by the standards of our correctional system.

After decades in prison, Daniel was released to The Salvation Army. He was gruff and reluctant to trust anyone. Given his history of offending against women, it was somewhat alarming that his primary caseworker was a young woman beginning her career in community corrections. 

Yet, as she advocated for him, holding him accountable without judgment, affording him dignity, he began to soften. In what would be the last year of his life, Daniel experienced joy, peace and a zeal for living unlike anything he had experienced before. His caseworker became the only person he regarded important enough to fulfil his last wishes on earth. 

Agape Love

I begin with this story because it gives us a glimpse of the kind of love Christ has called us to extend to others. “To merely welcome another, to provide for him or her, to make a place, is one of the most life-giving and life-receiving things a human being can do. They are the basic, universal acts of love,” writes Dallas Willard in Renovation of the Heart. This kind of love penetrates our souls and results in transformation and reconciliation for both the giver and receiver.

For more than 2,000 years, the word that captured the full meaning of this kind of love was agape. The authors of the New Testament, writing in Koine Greek, used this word to articulate Jesus’ teachings on love. They expanded the word from its original meaning in ancient usage—denoting affection, esteem or preference—to a more encompassing love that involves sacrifice, service and acceptance, as modelled by Christ. The Apostle Paul’s oft-cited 13th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians clearly illustrates its beauty and scope.

Sharing the love of Jesus is the centrepiece of The Salvation Army’s mission. It is the fountainhead from which our intention to meet human need flows. As our social mission and ministry units navigate the changing landscape of the social services sector in Canada, it is crucial we understand the nature of this “love” as agape and clearly communicate its meaning to those we serve and the staff we seek to empower.

What are the shifting dynamics in social services work? And why is it important to define love in this way, using agape as the archetype for our understanding? 

The Changing Landscape of Social Mission

The helping field, what we now commonly refer to as social services, has undergone seismic change in Canada since the late 19th century. Social work in this country began as a volunteer-led, private initiative, only gaining recognition as an academic pursuit in 1914. By 1926, the country’s first professional association—the Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW)—was formed. While The Salvation Army and other charitable organizations long cared for “the lost, the outcast, the disinherited of the world,” in the words of William Booth, a major shift occurred during the Great Depression: the state became more involved in the lives of citizens facing unemployment and destitution.

By the 1970s, government intervention expanded to include health, unemployment, welfare and pensions. This transformation paved the way for Canada’s social services to grow rapidly and professionalize. Thus, paid, educated and skilled professionals took up the reins of addressing the basic needs of individuals in our society. And despite changes in political and economic paradigms since the birth of the so-called welfare state, the role of government has been a consistent presence in social services.

The Salvation Army is one of the largest and longest-serving social service providers in Canada. We have no doubt been affected by these changes. The lion’s share of funding we rely on to meet the needs of people who come to us for help in our social mission units is made possible by government contracts and grants. This funding comes with expectations of contractual and regulatory compliance, an emphasis on deliverables, oversight, staff training and a higher degree of expertise among our personnel to offer services that are evidence- and best-practice-based. 

Agape is having the heart of the father when the prodigal son returns.

Staff are increasingly taught to prioritize policy compliance, efficiency, liability and documentation as the critical elements of their work. This is not a bad thing; it helps us meet operational demands and obligations so we can continue to care for those experiencing hardship. However, these activities require time and investment in systems that can detract from the overarching mission. Professionalization leads to what political economist Max Weber called the “iron cage,” where individuals become constrained by rigid systems of rationalization, efficiency and standardization.

With professionalization, the roles of staff in social mission have transformed. What clients and funders expect from staff—the demands placed on the front line—have never been higher. Support workers are the first to arrive on the scene to provide life-saving measures—namely CPR and naloxone (medication that reverses the effects of opioid overdoses)—during client overdoses. The toxic supply of drugs currently on the streets has dramatically increased the potential for an overdose and, sadly, far too many are fatal. Unregulated drug toxicity (mostly illicit fentanyl) is the leading cause of death in British Columbia for those aged 10 to 59, and the vast majority (78 percent) of those perishing from drug overdoses are male, the target population the ARC serves. More than 16,000 people have lost their lives to overdose since being declared a public health emergency in 2016. Our support staff are exposed to death and near-death regularly, even in centres like the ARC, which is a sober-living facility.

The severity and complexity of hardship experienced by people is greater than ever. With overlapping health, housing and economic crises, our social mission units see more refugees, complex mental-health cases, co-occurring disorders, exploited temporary foreign workers and people at the end of their lives with no family or peer support. Overcrowded emergency rooms and psychiatric wards have increased pressure for the elderly, severely mentally ill and chronic substance users to seek refuge at The Salvation Army. Staff have inherited duties that span the continuum of social work—from counselling to nursing. Close to 60 percent of the guests residing at the ARC transitional housing program are aged 60 and up. The needs of elderly residents with complex medical issues include early-onset dementia and lifethreatening cardiovascular diseases. In the same building, our staff take on the role of deescalating agitated individuals falling through the cracks of the system, while balancing our capacity and professional boundaries.

We are expanding our front-line workforce by hiring personnel who are educated and equipped to navigate these changing circumstances. This means bringing more staff into the Army from a wide range of backgrounds—many of whom are unfamiliar with the Christian faith and, therefore, the mission. Our mission is why we exist and is central to all we do, so leadership at the ARC continuously engages new hires in conversations about its importance. We often hear questions like, “Do you have to be religious to work here?” This begs the question and brings us back to where we started: What does it mean to share the love of Jesus in our social mission units today? And how do we explain our mission in a way that is true and relevant? My answer—and I believe the answer that would help The Salvation Army—is to define what we mean by love. 

Unconditional and Available to All

Since the earliest days of the church, agape was used to signify the kind of love God has for us and the kind he expects us to share. If we do not make this clarification with our mission partners about the nature of this love, we risk diluting our purpose or leaving it to the front line to interpret. If that is the case, we may resort to considering love as merely a means of self-help, political advocacy or, worse still, patter. Love then becomes sanitized, simple and palatable—nothing more than an extension of this world.

Agape, Christian love, stands in stark contrast to the way love is commonly understood in our society. Agape is unconditional and available to all—free from conditions or expectations. Conversely, the fallen world is dominated by transactional forms of love, where relationships and actions are preoccupied with what can be gained in return. The most powerful social forces—economics, politics and culture—are governed by self-interest and a quid pro quo mentality. In his book The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming, theologian Henri Nouwen notes: “There are endless ‘ifs’ hidden in the world’s love. These ‘ifs’ enslave me, since it is impossible to respond adequately to all of them. The world’s love is and always will be conditional. As long as I keep looking for my true self in the world of conditional love, I will remain ‘hooked’ to the world—trying, failing and trying again.”

Loving others is unconditional; however, that does not mean it is free of accountability or consequence. In our centres, we provide a loving environment that includes setting expectations for our guests and having the courage to address unsafe or harmful behaviour. If someone violates program rules in an egregious manner, they must be held accountable. We forgive and we continue to love, and we hold out hope they will learn from the situation. I have seen countless men at the ARC stumble time and time again. Each time they return, I impress upon them and the staff how crucial it is to welcome them back and let the past be the past. Agape is having the heart of the father when the prodigal son returns.

Does the calling to love the vulnerable come with a heavy burden that could lead to burnout? Yes, if love is not properly practised and understood. The agape we share is not by sheer willpower alone. We must, as Scripture tells us, rely on Christ to work alongside us and accept that we find our true rest in Christ. We must also provide agape to our teams, as leaders and colleagues, and create cultures that uplift, encourage and “count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). 

The Greatest of These

Identifying love as agape illuminates our purpose for all mission partners in a complex and rapidly evolving social landscape. Agape is no less impactful today than it was in the Jewish and Hellenistic cultures of Palestine and across the Roman Empire in the first century. It is unique, confounding and transformative. Agape is what sets Christian love apart, and it is how our communities should be known. As the ancient theologian Tertullian wrote in defense of Christian communities living in the Roman world: “It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us.”

In our age of uncertainty and change, agape must inform, animate and ultimately ground our approach to social mission. “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love [agape]” (1 Corinthians 13:13). 

Jonathan Hopkins is the executive director of the Addictions and Rehabilitation Centre in Victoria.