Roland Allen - On Expansion
A few notes from Roland Allen's introduction in The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church are worth noting. Replace "churches" with "movements" and see how this strikes you.
You can download the entire book here
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 . . . .
Many are beginning to perceive that we cannot establish a foreign Church governed and directed by foreigners, and then at some moment say: "Let us make it indigenous or native by process of devolution." If the Church is to be indigenous it must spring up in the soil from the very first seeds planted. One or two little groups of Christians organized as Churches, with their Bishops and priests, could spread all over an empire. They would be obviously and without question Native Churches. But if we establish Missions rather than Churches, two evil consequences, which we now see in greater or less degree everywhere, sterility and antagonism, inevitably arise . . . .
Spontaneous expansion must be free: it cannot be under our control; and consequently it is utterly vain to say, as I constantly hear men say, that we desire to see spontaneous expansion, and yet must maintain our control. If we want to see spontaneous expansion we must establish native Churches free from our control.
2 comments:
One of the deepest desires I have is to see Christ born into new cultures and the full mature expression of His love rise out to be a blessing back to the planters and to the world. We all learn more about God when we see this new expression. This is a far different approach than the paternalistic westernizing that has often occured as well intentioned missionaries have discipled first converts in a new social network. Much has been said about this. My personal favorite discussions of the topic are Whose Religion Is Christianity?: The Gospel beyond the West by Lamin Sanneh and The Celtic Way of Evangelism by George Hunter. There is a lot to be learned for 21st century campus ministers.
Caring for new believers and for new communities is a delicate task. Generally we've done this poorly by dragging the new believers out of their context into an existing community or by dictating the forms the new community will take.
With that in mind, I'm still in favor of offering resources and direction for new groups. We need to consider carefully how to do this. Every new movement we launch will force this question on us again. This is a new question for us as we move from an institutional model to an organtic planting model. I just downloaded the .pdf of Allen's book. Tom Virtue of LA Metro says, "anything worth doing is worth doing badly". We just need to make first efforts and improve from there. But, there are genuine concerns (and plenty of historical horror stories) that embracing messiness can jepordize the viability of new plants. For many missionaries, the fear of contributing to unorthodox communities will keep them paralyzed in institutions. This fear of unorthodoxy is deeply rooted in our 'protestant' tradition which was born out of frustration with religeous corruption.
A cheat answer to the question is to improve our referral to local churches of appropriate ethnic/cultural , so that our student groups remain under the guidance of discerning leaders.
here's another link to Allen's .pdf
http://www.nextreformation.com/html/resources/spontaneous.pdf
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