Next year marks the one hundredth anniversary of Roland Allen’s small book Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? In that landmark text in mission studies, Allen argued that Western missionary methods had little in common with Paul’s missionary practices in the New Testament. The apostle and his partners did not establish large, permanent institutions, nor did they stay in one place for a decade or a career.
Allen wrote during the height of Western optimism, paternalism, and colonialism, and it took time for his ideas to gain traction. Yet the book eventually grew in influence and helped spur the shift toward contextualization and indigenization in world mission.
David Fitch wants to do something similar for North American missions and church planting. Fitch is Lindner Professor of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary and the author of several books, most recently The End of Evangelicalism….
I never really agreed with Roland Allen’s logic. Actually, Paul did go around and create permanent Christian communities where people in the community held things in common. While he himself didn’t stay in one place for long, he expected the people who he trained in areas to remain in fidelity. Certainly James stayed in Jerusalem his whole career. Say what you want to about the old style missionaries, the fact remains that the blossoming Anglican growth in churches in Africa is a result of that old style “stay and be fruitful” ministry model.
#1, it couldn’t be said better.