Notes based on the words of Roland Allen
The context of Roland Allen’s classic book Missionary Methods is his missionary work to the ‘third world,’ as an Anglican missionary. His experience is therefore quite different from where I live and serve. However, he looks beyond the ‘received wisdom’ of his day and found much to criticise in the usual practices he observed. Essentially he wanted to return to New Testament practice in mission.
The apostle Paul founded Churches, not missions. He set up no organisation intermediate between his preaching and the establishment of a fully organised indigenous Church.
Paul’s normal practice was to preach in a city for a number of months, and then leave behind a Church. He later returned, appointing elders in the Church. Church leadership was not found in an external worker, such as one of Pauls’ team, but rather someone from the Church itself. Timothy and Titus were later sent respectively to Ephesus and Crete, to address certain issues, not to lead the Churches.
He perhaps visited again and/or sent a letter, or one or more of his team to support the Church. Paul seems to have been flexible, responding to different issues as they arose. The NT letters indicate a range of issues arising and a range of problems to be addressed.
‘The question before us is, how he could so train his converts as to be able to leave them after so short a time with any security that they would be able to stand and grow. It seems at first sight almost incredible. In the space of time which amongst us is generally passed in the class of hearers, men were prepared by St Paul for the ministry. … What could he have taught them in five or six months? If any one today were to propose to ordain men within six weeks of their conversion from idolatry he would be deemed rash to the verge of madness. Yet no one denies that St Paul did it. The sense of stupefaction and amazement that comes over us when we think of it is the measure of the distance which we have travelled from the apostolic method.’
‘Nothing can alter or disguise the fact that St Paul did leave behind him at his first visit complete Churches. Nothing can disguise the fact that he succeeded in so training his converts that men who came to him absolutely ignorant of the gospel were able to maintain their position with the help of occasional letters and visits at crises of spiritual difficulty.’
Elsewhere, Paul warns Timothy not to appoint someone into eldership too early (1 Tim 5.22). We will need to find the balance between the practice in Acts, where elders were apparently appointed quickly and this later warning. As someone said, truth has two wings.
Clearly we must recognise Paul’s explicit dependence on the Holy Spirit, whilst he was present with his converts and, more so, during his absences. See these words of Paul:
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Phil 2.12-13)
Paul refers to numerous co-workers (more than 50) by name – men and women working with him on his apostolic mission to preach the gospel, to plant churches, to train and release leaders. Do we struggle to replicate this success because we do not appoint sufficient such workers? And do not appoint them soon enough?