Anglicanism has heroes. We need to dig a bit and sift away the rubble of history, but then they emerge.
Roland Allen (1868-1947) was one such man.
Biblical, missonal and passionate, he served his Lord and his church with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in China. After two stints in China he wrote a critique of the established church’s missionary methods entitled, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? Allen believed deeply that a return to Biblical patterns of mission would see the gospel spread around the world in a sustainable, disciple-making way.
I just finished reading Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours and highly recommend it. Allen organized this book around five chapters:
1) The social and religious climate of the first century offered no advantages to St. Paul’s preaching of the gospel. He was preaching to a world as hostile to the gospel as our own.
2) St. Paul’s gospel proclamation was marked by miracles and a financial policy of self-support, for himself and for the churches he started. He didn’t have a sense of entitlement or looking to the “diocese” for support.
3) St. Paul only required a short period of training converts before they were baptized and then released them in mission. He trusted the Spirit to convert people and then he released them to the work of ministry.
4) Authority and discipline was used to ignite mission not to squelch church growth.
5) Conclusions: i) Is our progress commensurate with all the money and effort expended? ii) Is that progress, if any, as rapid as the work of church-planting by the Apostle Paul? iii) Are we actually planting new churches or merely perpetuating a mission? iv) Are new causes truly indigenous and self-supporting, and if not, why not. v) At what stage in church-building does a missionary become dispensable?
Our Anglican hero, Roland Allen left me with two main thoughts: 1) plant indigenous, self-sustaining churches and 2) trust the work of the Spirit in new converts.
You’re right, RD. Far too rarely, it seems, does the church return to the biblical models. We’d rather emulate (and compare ourselves to) what may have worked 20 years ago.
Allen is indeed a great hero, one whose works and example we could well observe and follow. I wonder how long it will be before we Anglicans realize that it is us ourselves that are missionaries, as well as those who are “Called to Missions”? I wonder, too, how long before Anglicans can recognise that those briefly trained, un-collared, indigenous are really called by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit to make disciples . . .
Anglican church planting needs priests. You can’t have regular communion without a presbyter. If we are serious about this, shouldn’t we be rethinking how we train and ordain people? If we want tentmakers, is it fair to refuse to ordain a postulant because he or she doesn’t have a paid church position to go to?