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Roots
The Salvation Army
was birthed in the deprived east end of London. One of the Army’s
keys to success was incarnational warfare. We became poor to reach
the poor with the Gospel of the Kingdom. Some of eternity’s
greatest unknown heroes are the selfless slum brothers and slum
sisters of our history. Our movement celebrates these warriors with
nicknames like ‘the Angel Adjutant’ and ‘the Saved Chimney Sweep’.
General William
Booth deployed Commissioner Frederick St. George de Latour
Booth-Tucker to India curtly: “Go to India. Dress like the
Indian.” “These are our people,” he taught his son, Bramwell.
Booth-Tucker:
An Appreciation
Tucker invaded
India, barefoot and begging for food. He gave up his comfort and
his identity, becoming Fakir Singh. And, as with many heroic
endeavours, Tucker’s adventures captivated a generation. So many
people offered to join him that he set these conditions to quell the
tide:
Service will be a
matter not merely of being willing to go anywhere, but of wishing to
live and die for the particular race to which you are sent. You will
be absolutely alone and under close scrutiny. It will be essential
to learn at least one Indian language. You must leave entirely and
forever behind you all your English dress and habits. Officers will
be barefoot. You will avoid the English quarter, but will always
live among natives – sometimes in a cave, a shady tree, or someone's
veranda – or in a mud hut 16 by 10 feet. You will cook as they do,
and wash your clothes in the stream with them. You have nothing to
fear from the climate. The people are different and intensely
religious. . Find out what their thoughts are before you share
yours. And if you are planning to return, don't go. We would not
think of sending anyone out who did not plan to make it a life work
(Ervine, God's Soldier , Vol I, page 576).
Tension
Colonel Herbert
Rader points out the enduring image of The Salvation Army’s "heart
to God and hand to man." General Booth’s heart was with God. But
he also performed a ‘Twister’ game’s gymnastic manouevre with one
hand out to the rich to resource his other hand plunging deftly into
the needs of the poor, the orphan, the alien, and the widow. It was
too difficult a move for one even this spiritually dexterous. Booth
admitted:
I have been trying all my life to
stretch out my arms so as to reach with one hand the poor and at the
same time keep the other in touch with the rich. But my arms are not
long enough. I find that when I am in touch with the poor I lose my
hold upon the rich, and when I reach up to the rich I let go of the
poor.
It is a tension all
of us who are Salvation Army warfighters have felt. Or should feel.
Brengle to Booth-Tucker
The Brengle
Institute celebrates Commissioner Samuel Logan Brengle's strongest
suit, holiness, and brings leaders together for short, intense times
of sharpening and refreshing.
55 years after the
birth of the Brengle Institute comes BTI, the Booth-Tucker
Institute, celebrating Commissioner Frederick St. George de Latour
Booth-Tucker's (aka Fakir Singh) strongest suit, incarnational
warfare, and bringing together leaders for short,
intense times of sharpening and refreshing.
Officers and other
leaders will descend on another east end, Vancouver’s downtown
eastside, for two-week stints at a tenement hotel and SA meal
programme to experience the slum warfare first-hand, deploy and
debrief, and return to their home fronts sharpened and refreshed.
BTI delegates will
be immersed in the Biblical, historical and practical aspects of
incarnational/guerrilla warfare. Facing the obvious need for
infiltration, integration, and invasion by the power of the Holy
Spirit, delegates will be challenged to explore their own
incarnational imperatives in light of the realities of their home
fronts. For more information and applications, visit
thewarcollege.com or contact info@thewarcollege.com.
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Letter to Booth-Tucker Institute Potential Delegates
Dear Comrades:
Greetings in the name of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. I
trust the battle progresses well on your front.
This past summer we embarked on an adventure called Booth-Tucker
Institute (BTI). It is a one-week incarnational refresher for
Salvation Army leaders around the continent.
We’re excited to offer another season of it, next summer, June 23-30,
2006, right here in Vancouver.
It is your opportunity to re-connect with the Holy Spirit’s prodding
toward Jesus’ bias for the poor. Coincidently, it is also an
opportunity to connect with session mates and old friends over a
week in the trenches. As we like to say, ‘the fellowship is in the
fight’.
We’re trusting that God will take BTI and use it to help transform
The Salvation Army for the exigencies of the millennium-three war.
BTI, of course, is but a taste of the daily realities that our slum
brothers and sisters, the world over, endure. But we trust that it
will fan the latent tension in each of us about simplicity,
sacrifice, aggressive Christianity, and the global war.
It is open to officers and local officers. For more information,
visit thewarcollege.com or contact me (sixonefour@lightspeed.ca or
605 696 9614).
God bless The Salvation Army.
Stay close to Jesus. Keep fighting as heroes. Grace. I remain,
Yours in the trenches,
Stephen Court, Capt.
Booth-Tucker Institute
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