For example, if you have ever heard of church planting movements, church growth, or missional churches, then you have encountered some of Allen’s influence.  He was the man who often addressed the spontaneous expansion of the Church (and wrote a book about it), was one of the leading influences on Donald A. McGavran (father of the Church Growth Movement) and Leslie Newbigin (major influence behind the missional church movement).

Lord willing, some exciting matters will unfold next year in honor of the book’s anniversary.  Missionary Methods is the theme for the 2012  January-March edition of the Evangelical Missions Quarterly.  The 2012 theme for the Evangelical Missiological Society is missionary methods, with numerous papers being presented on this topic in several locations across the United States and Canada.  Related to these presentations, Craig Ott and I are editing a book with William Carey Library.  Exciting things are unfolding, and probably others of which I am not aware.  Let me know if you come across other such matters.

I may even be releasing a book on Roland Allen later this year.  Shhhhhh.

In light of this upcoming anniversary, I have set up a Twitter account: @RolandAllen100. Follow it.  It contains a daily quote from Allen’s numerous writings.

If you are not aware of Allen and his missiology, check out these two previous posts: The Man and The Missiology.

Make sure you add Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? to your 2012 reading list–even if you have read it.

Has Allen’s been an influence on you?  If so, please share.

March 4, 1901 Peking and Tientsin Times Reference to Roland Allen

The year 2012 will mark the 100th anniversary of the publication of Roland Allen’s classic book Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?.  In honor of this event, I am presently working on a biography on the legendary Anglican.  At the time of this blog post, only one such biography has been published.  Roland Allen: Pioneer, Priest, and Prophet (Eerdmans/Forward Movement) was published in 1995 by Roland Allen’s grandson, Hubert J. B. Allen.   It is an outstanding work that you should add to your library.

Because I cannot do adequate justice to his missiology in 1000 words, I want to provide you with two other significant resources (at least the Cliff’s Notes ) to give you a better understanding of Allen and his missiology.  HERE is the PowerPoint presentation of my lecture on campus and HERE is a link where you can download the corresponding lecture (the player on my site is not the best).  Let me warn you, the lecture is just over one hour in length–do not listen while operating heavy machinery. 

Allen was a prolific writer.  He wrote numerous books, pamphlets, and articles that were published in his lifetime.  I have compiled an extensive Roland Allen bibliography to assist you in better understanding him and his missiology as well. 

So, here goes my attempt to introduce you to his missiology. 

In order to understand Allen’s missiology, you need to know about the following four categories:

• Issue of Theology
• Issue of Devolution
• Role of the Missionary
• Concept of Spontaneous Expansion

Issue of Theology

Allen’s missionary methods are meaningless apart from his theology.  He believed that the Apostolic Church learned from Jesus. And the two significant areas of his theology that dynamically influenced his missiology were ecclesiology and pneumatology.

Concerning ecclesiology:  Allen believed that churches were to be indigenous (self-supporing, self-propagating, self-governing) from the moment they were birthed.  This also included the fact that even young churches were to be able to participate in the Euchrist, with their own leaders administering it. 

Concerning pneumatology: Allen’s missiology was supported by the conviction that all new believers (and thus new churches) had the indwelling Holy Spirit who would guide, protect, seal, sanctify, empower, and instruct those new believers.  For Allen, missionaries were to manifest a faith in the Holy Spirit to do what the Scriptures claimed He would do in the lives of the new churches.  Allen understood that most missionaries feared that new churches would quickly become corrupt, and therefore had to resort to paternalistic methods.

Issue of Devolution

Devolution was the practice whereby missionaries would over many years, “devolve” authority onto the local churches, so they could be and function as local churches.  This practice of paternalism usually resulted in a situation with the churches becoming dependent on the western missionaries for financial support, evangelism, leadership development, buildings, etc.

In his article, “Devolution: the Question of the Hour,” Allen argued strongly against this practice.  Turning to the Scriptures for support, as was his practice, he referenced the Apostle Paul:

“St. Paul, for instance, established a Church when he organized converts with their own proper officers, but he did not organize a Church and then later, and piece by piece, devolve an authority which at first the Church did not possess.  He devolved all necessary power and authority upon the Church when he established it. . . . When St. Paul had once established a Church there was nothing left to devolve.  We read nowhere of his going back to a Church and adding to its powers by devolving upon it some responsibility or authority which he had before kept in his own hands” (World Dominion 5 (1927): 278).

Role of the Missionary

The work of the missionary involved four critical practices:

• Priority on Evangelism
• Practice an Apostolic Approach
• Maintain the Ministration of the Spirit
• Manifest Missionary Faith

While Allen advocated works such as education and medical missions were good and necessary, he strongly believed the priority of all missionaries was to be that of evangelism, calling people to repentance and placing faith in Jesus alone for salvation.  Following in the pattern of the apostolic teams, missionaries were to enter into an area, do evangelism, plant churches, raise up leaders for those churches, and “retire” from the work in that area.  Missionaries following after an apostolic practice, were to leave behind the Scriptures, Creed, Sacraments, and Orders.  The “goal” of such missionaries was the “ministration” of the Spirit, to teach the new churches how to rely on the Spirit.  Maintaining the ministration of the Spirit was the way to avoid devolution.

In his article, “Mission Activities Considered in Relation to the Manifestation of the Spirit,” he wrote:

“Just as we ourselves only manifest spirit in our activities where those activities are free and spontaneous, not forced or governed or controlled . . . so those to whom we minister the Spirit can only show forth His power in their own free spontaneous activity.”   

Encompassing these three aforementioned critical aspects, the missionary had to manifest a missionary faith.  Such faith was what the missionaries placed in the Holy Spirit to do His work in sanctifying the churches.  This faith in the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish what the Scriptures taught about Him was the way missionaries would escape the fear that resulted in paternalism and prevented the spontaneous expansion of the Church.

The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church

While Allen was a High Church Anglican, he believed the Scriptures taught the Church could exist with very simple structures and organization.  For Allen, the spontaneous expansion of the church was a simple thing.  Yet, missionaries, following years of western tradition, had made it much more difficult than what he understood to be in the Scriptures.  In his book, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It, he explained:

“This then is what I mean by spontaneous expansion. I mean the expansion which follows the unexhorted and unorganized activity of individual members of the Church explaining to others the Gospel which they have found for themselves; I mean the expansion which follows the irresistible attraction of the Christian Church for men who see its ordered life, and are drawn to it by desire to discover the secret of a life which they instinctively desire to share; I mean also the expansion of the Church by the addition of new Churches.”

Whenever a Spirit-filled indigenous church was present, and the missionaries were manifesting a missionary faith, the situation was ripe for such expansion.

Now…go and read Roland Allen for yourself.

Allen was a leading influence on both Leslie Newbign and Donald A. McGavran, with the latter being possibly the most influential missiologist of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, many people today believe Allen is only a shadowy figure of yesteryear, bearing little influence on contemporary missions.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

More than likely, you have been influenced by Roland Allen if you:

• have ever talked about church planting movements
• have pondered church multiplication
• believe churches can be indigenous from the moment of their birth
• have considered the role of the Holy Spirit in new churches and in missionaries
• have despised the thought of supporting paternalism
• have realized that church leaders can be both thoroughly biblical and effective without lengthy periods of training (divorced from their people) and without financial support from sources beyond their churches
• have advocated that Spirit-empowered national believers generally are able to carry the gospel farther and faster than missionaries can among those nationals
• have believed the missionary practices of the New Testament Church reveal principles that are applicable today, and not simply a description of an Age long gone

For most of us today, we have been influenced by Roland Allen. . . and do not know it.

While Allen was a controversial figure in his day, his thoughts began to catch on near the end of his life.  However, it was sometime after his death that others began to take his work seriously.  Hear the prophetic words of Allen to his grandson Hubert J. B. Allen:

“I can recall, when I was about twelve years old, asking my ‘Granfer’ whether I could read his books, and receiving from him the reply: Oh, yes, you can read them by all means–but you won’t understand them: I don’t think anyone is going to understand them until I’ve been dead ten years. . . .”

Speaking of his grandson. . . Hubert J. B. Allen has written the only book-length biography on Allen to date, Roland Allen: Pioneer, Priest, and Prophet (Forward Movement Publications; Eerdmans, 1995).  I strongly commend this outstanding work to anyone interested in better understanding the man.  Hubert Allen has produced a work that brings life to Allen’s personality.  While Roland Allen may not have been likely to approve of such a work about himself, his grandson has greatly honored the man.

Here is a brief chronological biographical sketch to assist you in better understanding Allen:

• Born to Charles Fletcher (1835-1873) and Priscilla Allen (1839-1935) in England, December 29, 1868
• 6^th of 7 children (2 girls, 5 boys)
• Baptized at 4 weeks
• Charles died in 1873 while away from family ministering in Central America
• Roland won a scholarship to St. John’s College (Oxford)
• Won university’s Lothian Prize for essay on Pope Silvester II which was published in The English Historical Review
• While an undergraduate at St. John’s College he was greatly influenced by the Anglo-Catholic faculty members of Pusey House
• Following college, faculty of Pusey House influenced him to attend the High Anglican training school in Leeds
• Ordained in 1892 as a deacon in the Anglican Church
• 1893 became a priest
• Served in the Durham diocese in the parish of St. John the Evangelist, Darlington
• Later applied to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
• Was rejected by the Society due to a “Heart Condition”
• Applied to the independent Church of England to North China to be a missionary
• 1894 accepted by Mission
• 1895 completed his curacy
• Went to China and quickly learned the language
• Oversaw non-Christian day school
• Opened  a clergy school in the northern part of China
• While in China  he also oversaw a printing press, became a chaplain at a Legation
• Started writing for the Mission’s quarterly journal, The Land of Sinim
• 1900 was in the Boxer Rebellion
• Kept a detailed journal of the uprising, published in 1901, The Siege of the Peking Legations
• During furlough in England, married Mary Beatrice Tarleton (1863-1960)
• Two children: Priscilla Mary (1903-1987) and Iohn Willoughby Tarleton (1904-1979)
• 1902 Allen and wife departed for China
• Started serving at a mission station at Yung Ch’ing
• Started to apply missionary principles that were contra paternalism.
• Soon had to return to England due to poor health
• Mission agency never allowed him to return to China
• 1904 Allen began serving as a vicar in a rural Buckinghamshire parish of Chalfont St. Peter
• 1907 resigned from position as vicar due to theological reasons
  • Allen refused to carry out baptisms, marriages, and burial services for non-believers
• Started doing deputation work for a mission organization, assisted ill clergy, and spent much time thinking and writing
• 1912 published Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours
• 1913 published Missionary Principles
• 1914 developed relationship with Sidney James Wells Clark, wealthy Congregationalist layman and Thomas Cochran, Presbyterian Scotsman missionary-physician
• 1917 partnered together to begin World Dominion Movement, to conduct surveys, research, and publish writings
• 1918 each man became involved in the Survey Application Trust and its publishing arm, the World Dominion Press
• 1914 Allen served as a Naval chaplain
• 1914-1918 he taught Classics in Worcester
• 1917 published booklet, Pentecost and the World
• 1919 published Educational Principles and Missionary Methods
• Later, Allen’s missiology conflicted with other members of the World Dominion Movement, yet he continued to be the principal contributor to the journal World Dominion in the 1920s
• 1923 published Voluntary Clergy
• 1924 extensive survey work in Canada
• the Canadian experience and several extended visits in the latter 1920s to southern Africa and India also influenced his missiology and confirmed for him many of his controversial thoughts
• 1927 published The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It
• 1928 published Voluntary Clergy—Overseas
• 1929 published Nonprofessional Missionaries
• 1930 published The Case for Voluntary Clergy
• 1930s Allen and wife moved to Nairobi, to be near children
• Assisted with St. Mark’s Church in Nairobi
• Soon left St. Mark’s, believing he was hindering the church
• 1937 published S.J.W. Clark: A Vision of Missions
• Learned Swahili and translated and published several Swahili writings into English; all translations were of Muslim texts
• June 9, 1947 Allen died
• Gravestone is in Nairobi’s City Park.  Simple stone cross with the inscription:

ROLAND ALLEN

Clerk in Holy Orders

1868-1947

I AM the Resurrection and the Life Saith the Lord

Several years ago, I published an article in The Churchman titled, “The Legacy of Roland Allen”.  You can find it HERE on my site, or at The Churchman’s site HERE (FYI: I have no idea why they have “John Dobson’s” name above mine. I’m not John Dobson and have not written anything on New Testament Greek–regarding the typo, it’s all Greek to me.).

Next post: Roland Allen: Part 2, His Missiology, stay tuned!