Roland Allen - right on it
Ok, this is old news (from 1927 to be exact), but worth touching on again. From Chapter One of Allen's Spontaneous Expansion of the Church.
Many years ago my experience in China taught me that if our object was to establish in that country a Church which might spread over the six provinces which then formed the diocese of North China, that object could only be attained if the first Christians who were converted by our labours, understood clearly that they could by themselves, without any further assistance from us, not only convert their neighbours, but establish Churches. That meant that the very first groups of converts must be so fully equipped with all spiritual authority that they could multiply themselves without any necessary reference to us: that, though, while we were there, they might regard us as helpful advisers, yet our removal should not at all mutilate the completeness of the Church, or deprive it of anything necessary for its unlimited expansion. Only in such a way did it seem to me to be possible for Churches to grow rapidly and securely over wide areas;
What would happen if we removed ourselves from the work right now? Would Cru continue to exist on a college campus if we removed the staff? Just curious. Wouldn't be cool to plant a new work on a campus and then come back a year later to see that it had gone to 5 more campuses without your permission? How do we do that?!
3 comments:
Shane, good to see you're back. That is a sweet post, I haven't read spontaneous expansion yet.
Here's my take: Instead of seeking to have campuses multiply to reach other campuses, I think the best bet is to have movements in a pocket of people multiply to reach another pocket of people on campus.
In Nebraska most (maybe 50-60%) of the African American men on campus are athletes. Once a movement is started on the football team it's easy to see how that movement could grow and multiply into a new movement to reach the black community. Some of these students know each other already, live in the same town and most have a connection of some sort. It's not a huge leap.
If staff simply went from campus to campus launching movements that multiply, you could cover a lot of ground and you'd have a plan that could conceivably reach the whole campus...every pocket of people. That's why I love what Craig and Joe are doing in Mex. City - they train pastors, lay people, volunteers, students...whoever! They realize it will take a networker or strategist to do the job of launching each campus, but once the campus is launched someone else can launch movements around campus. Anyway, love the post.
Ethan - you are right on the money - and not only that, but you are a practitioner! I think what gets in our way is we are too worried about what will happen to what we launch. We have trouble moving on because we feel a need to stick around and grow it. A lot of this is the difference between an apostolic focus and an teacher/pastor focus. It is hard for many of us to move beyond that. Good word.
btw - Spontaneous is completely online if you don't mind reading off your computer screen.
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