Booths Writing Boldly: Part 3
by Colonel Richard Munn
This 10-part series will look at bold written exhortations from William, Catherine, Bramwell, Herbert, and Evangeline. The force of their collective convictions still lands. Often quoted, they have the capacity to pierce straight into the heart of the matter, impatiently swatting aside distractions and equivocations.
Booths Writing Boldly: Part 3
“Go straight for souls, and go for the worst.”
—William Booth
“There is nothing quite so discouraging for the evangelist than the beaming smiles of the saints.” So quipped Canon Michael Green.
General William Booth was similarly hardwired throughout his tumultuous life, reprimanding his son Bramwell on one occasion for lining the dignitaries of the town on the front pews where he was guest preaching. Ever the evangelist, William wanted the “sinners,” and we can surmise, “the worst.”
Of course, Jesus said so himself, in Matthew 9:12: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”
What stands out in this most renowned of bold Booth quotes are the words straight and worst. Never one to equivocate, William orders the shortest of undistracted lines and then pushes the mission to the limits. Going straight for souls is not enough — we must aim for the far reaches of brokenness and alienation.
It does not make Salvation Army ministry easy; it does make it extraordinary.
This vitality is present in the covenant of every officer around the world, simultaneously inspiring and unnerving: “to live to win souls and make their salvation the first purpose of my life.”
It is the same drive and focus that prompted General Shaw Clifton to reference The Salvation Army as “a permanent mission to the unconverted” in the international ecumenical handbook, The Salvation Army in the Body of Christ.
How about today? Is this only aspirational, a quaint vestige of the past? I suggest not, a thousand times not. Go to many a corps community of faith or Adult Rehabilitation Center and hear the testimonies from former gang leaders, criminals, and prison inmates. They will often quote St. Paul, referencing themselves as “the chief” of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).
As Vachel Lindsay memorably penned in the poem “General William Booth Enters into Heaven”: “Hallelujah! … Bull-necked convicts with that land make free.” We can scarcely believe they are the same people.
They are not.
