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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.
>>Application for
2008 Institute<<
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