The path to salvation is often long, pitted, and winding. Sometimes it begins with a bowl of soup.
Majors Martina and Paul Cornell have fed many hungry mouths and washed many feet – both literally and figuratively. And after more than 30 years of service in disaster relief, the call remains the same: to feed, to heal, and to offer hope in the face of desperate need.
The Cornells were officially installed as the leaders of the Salvation Army Massachusetts Division on July 1. It’s the next in a long list of service appointments for the husband-and-wife duo, with recent missions in Suffern, New York, and Dayton, Ohio.
Martina began her involvement with The Salvation Army at the age of 14, not long before massive floods decimated her hometown in Puerto Rico, causing the deadliest single landslide on record in North America. As she and her family searched for loved ones amid frantic recovery efforts, she served.
“I was able to be part of that support and help those who were affected,” Major Martina Cornell said. “We came alongside them, and we supported them, and it was very impactful for our neighborhood because this had never happened on the island. I was able to be there at a very young age.”
As Martina served in the disasters that followed, including Hurricane Hugo just four years later, the path for a life of service had been laid.
Major Paul Cornell found the same life, and eventually his wife, through a different route.
An introspective intellectual, he asked many questions of the Bible and of a Christian worldview. Each question led him to the same conclusion – the person of Jesus Christ.
As his Savior formed him, so grew the fire in Paul’s heart to share this life-altering news through teaching, counseling, and serving in the wake of disaster. One of the first was in Martina’s home country, where Hurricane George had left much of Puerto Rico a shadeless wasteland.
“The first thing that really kind of stuck out to me... was going to a place where there was utter and complete devastation everywhere that you look and everybody was affected. This was a part of everybody’s story,” Major Paul Cornell said.
“There was no relief. And so, to be in that kind of situation and trying to offer people whatever just gives them a little bit of hope. Even 10 or 15% more hope can be a game changer for people who are absolutely hopeless. That was what really got me open to the idea of walking into devastating circumstances... to be able to give of myself to be of service to others.”
Like Martina, Paul sought out more places suffering catastrophe, such as spending two weeks just outside the scalding rubble after 9/11, caring for those with melting boots and broken hearts in any way he could.
The pair met at a Salvation Army event while both were in the early stages of seminary, a harbinger of the lifelong service partnership to come. As the future Cornells’ affection for one another grew, so did their shared passion for disaster relief ministry.
“We’re big believers of loving people and coming alongside people and helping them, to see them for who they are and to care for them and to love them,” Martina said.
“The more we kept doing this type of ministry, we have seen that every time God has grown that passion to come alongside those [people] and provide the resources that they need.”
The Cornells' new call in Massachusetts isn’t a tropical island ravaged by natural disaster or a city in flames, but such experiences have equipped them to care for those suffering in different ways.
They’ll offer help to a broad spectrum of people, utilizing The Salvation Army’s robust service offerings. Instead of asking what they do, what they do not do is an easier question to answer, Paul said.
Sheltering, feeding, and emergency disaster programs are just the start. Other resources include utility assistance, Christmas/seasonal assistance, character-building programs, support for pre-school children, those in school, in college, post-grad, all the way up to senior aid, music programming, and much, much more.
Soaring living costs and food insecurity are two particular issues that the Cornells plan to emphasize as they begin work in the Bay State.
“The Salvation Army is uniquely positioned to give service in every zip code in the state of Massachusetts for those two particular needs,” Paul explained.
You can find service offering details for Massachusetts here, or on the national website at salvationarmyusa.org.
Whether their neighbor needs help with a utility bill or a roof over their head and a warm meal on a winter night, the end goal is to offer them eternal hope. But the first task is often to meet immediate physical needs, like filling an empty stomach.
William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, summed up the approach of meeting physical need, restoring dignity, and then addressing eternal reality with a simple phrase that has endured: “Soup, soap, and salvation.”
“The idea is that you provide somebody who’s hungry a bowl of soup, because they’re not interested in listening about salvation or what they’re going to do with the rest of eternity if their stomach is empty,” Paul explained.
“And then that idea of helping somebody get their dignity back, get cleaned up, get a shower, get a fresh set of clothes, feel like a human being again... Now they could feel like we’re human-to-human speaking. And then comes the message of salvation.”
And so, under the new leadership of Majors Paul and Martina Cornell, Salvation Army Massachusetts will continue to offer all three. Their job, and The Salvation Army’s role, is not to fix every ailment across the state, but to love and serve the next neighbor in front of them each day.
“Am I able to come up with a solution or a scenario that mitigates the full range of what everybody needs at the time of their disaster? No, but I can at least give them a hot cup of coffee on a cold night, a new coat during the winter, and then maybe be able to sit and have that conversation about Jesus Christ,” Paul said.
“That kind of engagement is going to stick with people far longer, perhaps into eternity. That’s what I love about The Salvation Army and the way they deliver service to the whole person.”
Click here to learn more about The Salvation Army Massachusetts Division, or visit the national website here for info about their work across the country.