Note from Commissioner Debi Bell:
“Today we are well aware of the passion of William Booth to reach the lost for Jesus. We usually do not think of him as having a sense of humor, but here is a document that demonstrates he did — even when it came to his passion for reaching the lost.
Beware of reading the following words – they may convict you and bring about a new awareness of how you are “not reaching the lost for Jesus” and that just may result in a lifestyle change. I have to admit, it gave me pause.”
From the Writings of Salvation Army Founder, William Booth
PART 1 – HOW TO NOT REACH THE POOR, THE HEATHENS, AND THE TROUBLEMAKERS
*some language has been altered for ease of reading
Having many times in varying forms and different places labored to show the Field Officer and Soldier how they can succeed in their Corps, it has seemed to me that my extended experience might enable me to suggest some methods which, if effectively set in motion, will be very likely to make them Failures.
I give these methods confident of their efficiency. They are none of them original, seeing that they have been known and practiced by Salvationists over and over again in the past, and that with striking results.
Still, they may not have come under the notice of all my Comrades, and I present them for their consideration, and such amongst them as are really anxious to let down Corps which the devotion, labors, and sacrifices of their predecessors have built up, and who may be desirous of driving out of the Kingdom precious souls for whom their Master died, will here find recipes which they can adopt and employ with a tolerably certain prospect of success.
So, to Salvationists who do not want to reach and save, we give the following counsels:
Don’t go where they are; keep out of those neighborhoods where they live. Act as though there were no such people. Leave them to harden in sin, sink lower in vice and crime, and to go to Hell without being disturbed on the way there. You will then in time, perhaps, come to lose sight of them and question their very existence, as some other people do.
Make it evident that you look down on them as an inferior class of people.
Don’t let them come where you are, if you can help it. Have door-keepers who will keep them out of your Halls, or throw them down the stairs if they do come in, because they don’t behave like ladies and gentleman.
Be impatient with any little irregularities they may manifest. That is, if they keep their hats on, or speak to one another in the meeting, as they do at their places of amusement, lose your temper over it. Or, worse still, let a door-keeper strike them, or use violence in keeping them out, or patronize and encourage Sergeants who do all this, and the roughs will never trouble overmuch, indeed they will soon find out that you do not love them, and then they will most certainly trouble you no more.
If they do come near you, don’t talk to them in a language they can understand. Adapt your praying and singing and talking to the Church and Chapel and nice people; and there being nothing the roughs can understand or that interests them, they will soon cease to trouble you with their vulgar presence.
Make it evident that you look down upon them as an inferior class of people. Dress and talk and pray all above their notions, as though you belonged to a superior class. There is nothing they hate like stuck-up lady-and-gentlemanism.
Scold them plenty. Be like the Judgement Day to them. Let them only see one side of the character of God, and that the angry side. In short, be just the reverse of what Jesus Christ was, who came not to condemn, but to save.
Threaten them a great deal and fail to perform your threats, and they will mark it down and reckon you up as not being true to your word, and despise and trifle with you ever after. Or if you don’t do this, have plenty of law against them. Always be running for the police, getting out summonses, making them pay fines, or sending them to prison — in short, hate them where you should love them, drive them where you should draw them, and make their damnation more certain and terrible because of your appearing on the scenes, rather than be the means of making their calling and Salvation sure. If you want to save the roughs, just go and do the opposite of all this.
PART 2 – HOW TO NOT REACH CURRENT/POTENTIAL CORPS MEMBERS
*some language has been altered for ease of reading
I have not heard from a solitary soul as to how the advice I gave on this subject in the last Officer was received. No one has hinted to me as to whether it was read, or esteemed; or tried, much less have I heard whether any Salvationist derived any instruction from the admirable counsels I gave on that occasion!
Being, therefore, in the dark as to whether any result came of that effort, I am a little perplexed about going any further. However, I will add another chapter, and then, if nothing happens, I shall feel like giving the attempt up, and consider that no further counsel is required on the subject.
But to resume…
Begin your work by looking down on your Corps. Encourage yourself in thinking that it is not worthy of you. Mention this feeling to corps leaders, and to one or two other soldiers with whom you are first brought into contact. They will be sure to tell it again to others, and it will thereby come quickly into everybody’s mouth.
Deal very firmly with backsliders. Alas! you will find many of them. Make them realize that you regard their conduct with great aversion, and that you consider that little or no excuse can be found for it. If you talk to them at church or elsewhere, make them feel that you consider them entirely to blame for the whole trouble. Don’t allow that anyone else did them any wrong in the matter. This will make them sure that you are ignorant and hard-hearted, and effectually close their minds against being benefited by anything you do or say.
In your interactions with fellow Soldiers or Officers, there are two methods which may be followed with equal probablities of success. One is to keep yourself as much as possible to yourself. Carry your head high and keep everybody at arms length as though you were some superior person. That will make them draw off from you and leave you to fight it out alone. Or secondly, you can make yourself everybody’s companion – talking, laughing, joking with all alike. That plan will shake the confidence of the best of your people in your sense and your religion, and effectually destroy the respect of all.
I recommend you go in hot and strong for simply interesting the people; that is, amusing them. The easiest way to do this will be to tell them stories – religious, of course, but they should have plenty of fun in them. By that means you will keep an audience happy in their sins, and perhaps, although not always, get something extra out of them for the offering.
In singing, pay no attention to either topic or time or pitch or tune, and as to the selection of your song, take anything the band can play, whether the people can sing it or not; and if you have no band, then take what the people can sing easily, in which case you will sing the same things over and over again. Indeed, as to singing and a great deal else that you do, you might have a four-week arrangement, and do exactly the same things over and over again, and at the end of the month begin and go for the same form of service over again. Indeed, you might make the plan apply not only to the singing, but to your sermons, your open air work, and everything else you do, and then the people will gradually grow sick of the sameness of your affair, together with its utter want of interest and power, and fall off one by one.
Make your open air meeting short and lively. Have plenty of songs, and be sure and never give the words out, lest any strangers who may gather up to listen should know what it is you are singing. Keep the testimonies “short and to the point” and without meaning, so that nothing may be said likely to affect anyone hanging around. The more alike these testimonies or speeches are one to the other, and the more commonly they are a repetition of what has been said in that place before, the better. Be sure not to talk much, if at all, yourself. Spare your throat, and keep what you have to say that is of importance for the Corps, where you can reckon to a dead certainty on having nobody present likely to be moved by your talk, all of them having heard, if not the same words, the same truth over and over again… But if you do speak now and then in the open air, never prepare what to say. Just take what comes up at the moment. Anything will do there.
As soon as you have opportunity (after joining a new Corps), begin to make unfavorable comparisons between your new Corps and the one you have just left — you might show the superiority of the building, the officer’s quarters, the band, and you might specially crack up the soldiers — tell how kind they were to you and how much you loved them, and it would also be good if you added, in a careless sort of manner, that you wondered whether you were going to like your new Corps family as well as those you have just left behind.
If you have a large audience of poor and rough people, it will be a good plan to charge admission at the doors of your Corps. That will be almost certain to keep away the class who are most likely to be converted and make good and efficient Soldiers.
Keep your Corps as dingy and as dirty as you reasonably can. Never open the windows between meetings for ventilation. If there is a hole in the plaster where the War Cry or announcements were nailed up, leave it, and make another. If the lights are dirty and shelves dusty, on no account get a ladder and clean them. If a pane of glass is broken, leave it, or patch a piece of brown paper on it. If tiles from your roof come down, or a gutter gets clogged, and the water comes through the ceiling, or trickles down the walls, don’t touch it yourself beyond occasionally making a joke about it.
The Officer or Soldier who wants to fail should avoid everything like novelty. He should not attempt new ventures, or strive to push his Corps, or get men saved by going outside the old fashioned ways of doing things. Let him stick to the old ruts. Keep all the open airs and processions and everything else on the same plans and in the same places as from the beginning. He can with good effect take for his motto the saying: “As it was in the beginning in this Corps, so it is now, and so it ever shall be. Amen.”
When you speak against sin – which you will do at all times – you should manage to go in heavy against drunkenness, and fornication, and harlotry, and blasphemy, and any other open and vulgar vices, but you should always carefully avoid saying anything that is likely to apply personally to the congregation you are dealing with, or make them miserable, because, don’t you see, that might wound somebody’s feelings, and make them feel that they were condemned by God and on their way to Hell, and bring them to their knees crying, “God be merciful to me a sinner!”
Don’t talk about the Army much out of the meetings, and what you do say let it be exclusively about your own doings either in the past, present, or future. Seldom make any references to what is being done by your comrades in other parts of the world, and when people are determined to discuss the Movement, you might bring in with good effect a reference to some of its breakdowns, or remark on what you think are its weaknesses, or show some points where other people have suggested possible improvements.
National Salvation Army Week 2016