Salvation Army chief focuses on family

The new leader, who is an ordained minister, plans to focus on holistic family values during his time helping others in the county.

By BETH N. GRAY
Published July 20, 2004

BROOKSVILLE - Chris Nicholls is passionate about restoring families. He's also keen about building facilities to serve them.

Nicholls, 41, and his family moved last month to Hernando County where he will captain the Salvation Army's contingent here. He replaces Capt. Tim Williford who was reassigned in June to Fort Walton Beach.

"The wife and I are very tuned to the situation the family is in right now," Nicholls said. It is an era of the nonnuclear family, said the 20-year career officer with the Salvation Army.

"The ability to raise a family now has deteriorated," Nicholls said. "We know we're not able to restore the two-parent family, but we're interested in a holistic family approach," he said, speaking for himself and his wife, Katrina.

Both are ordained ministers through the Salvation Army College for Officers Training in Atlanta, and both bear the rank of captain in the organization. Katrina Nicholls will work as a volunteer alongside her husband here.

The family includes son Joshua, 12, at home; son Christopher, 17, a senior at Osceola High School in St. Petersburg; daughter, Nicole, 18, a student at the University of Florida; and dogs, Buster and Snoopy.

Nicholls said he is eager to integrate character-building programs with a Christian emphasis into the organization's efforts in Hernando. And he wants to address the needs of why people come to the organization for help, especially those who return again and again.

"We want to try to go a little bit further with them, meet their emotional and financial needs, as well as stress needs, help folks move out of a rut and help them move off that level," he added. "We don't want a revolving door but to help people get back on their feet. It's a more holistic approach than just how to eat for the next three days.

"If you just throw cans of beans at people, you're not going to get very far," Nicholls said.

"If you can help them with the tools of raising their families successfully, the moral values - we just see the family in a downward spiral - (we can) enable them to move forward."

That's not to say there will be no beans under Nicholls' leadership. The Salvation Army is still about "soup, soap and salvation," said Nicholls, quoting founder William Booth.

"If you can get them soup and soap and the ability to cleanse themselves, by then, hopefully, you can tell them about the word of God, meet the physical needs; then we also need to look into the emotional, spiritual and other needs they may have," Nicholls said.

The Salvation Army in Hernando has some needs of its own. It operates out of two portable facilities at 15464 Cortez Blvd. but is eager to advance plans to build a 10,000-square-foot headquarters that will include a church, kitchen, gym and administrative offices on a 5-acre site at Cortez and Arizona Street.

"We're coming at a real good time," Nicholls said. "A good foundation has been laid," he said referring to his predecessor, Williford, under whose watch the building plans were formulated. Now is the time to focus on fundraising for the $3-million project.

Nicholls said he intends to meet with community leaders, search out prospective donors who may have been overlooked in the past and develop a higher profile for the Salvation Army locally.

"Our greatest percentage of donors are those who, somewhere down the line, we helped - an employee, a family member - and met a physical need," he noted."We help you out for nothing," Nicholls said, referring to free food and beverage handouts when the Salvation Army is called in to assist disaster areas.

"The army can do with a nickel what the government can do with a buck," Nicholls said. "God is good."

The Nicholls family, having moved here from Pinellas Park, is exuberant in their new assignment.

"This is my kind of place," said Nicholls. "This reminds me of what Florida used to be: big oaks, Spanish moss. All we had there was big signs. People are so kind to you, too."

Information about aid and programs offered by the Salvation Army is available by calling 796-1186.

[Last modified July 19, 2004, 23:49:16]