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Pauls_Missionary_Methods

Yesterday, I wrote about Roland Allen’s landmark work, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?. In celebration of the book’s centennial anniversary, a group of well-regarded evangelical scholars have come together to assess the ongoing relevance of Allen’s proposal today, as well as other features of Paul’s mission work that deserve exploration.

Paul’s Missionary Methods: In His Time and Ours, edited by Robert Plummer and John Mark Terry, takes Allen’s primary focus (planting indigenous churches and trusting in the Holy Spirit to lead national workers to lead these churches) and expands the discussion into other aspects of missiology.

The Apostle Paul and His New Testament Context

The first section of Paul’s Missionary Methods focuses on the Apostle Paul’s ministry within his New Testament context. The essayists explore Paul’s ministry within his religious and historical milieu (Michael Bird) as well as the extent of and the motivation for his missionary journeys (Eckhard Schnabel).

Robert Plummer lists the elements of the gospel that Paul preached, and Benjamin Merkle looks at the ecclesiology of the churches Paul planted. Christoph Stenschke makes the case that Paul expected his own missionary mindset to be replicated in the mission of the churches he planted, including personal witness to the gospel and future planting of churches.

Don Howell and Craig Keener analyze two aspects of Paul’s work that are often neglected in conversations about his missionary strategy, namely, his theology of suffering as part of God’s plan to bind him to Christ and give credibility to his ministry (Howell) and his involvement in spiritual warfare through “power encounters” and bold evangelism (Keener).

The Apostle Paul’s Influence on Missions

In part two of the book, the contributors look at Paul’s influence on missions.

Agreeing with Lesslie Newbigin, David Hesselgrave believes Allen’s “missionary methods” would be better described as “generational submission” – that is, a “resubmission in each generation of the traditions of men to the Word and Spirit of God.” Hesselgrave places Allen’s work within the historical context and trends of the early 20th century, and then interacts with contemporary trends, showing how the idea of “generational submission” might play out in current conversations.

Michael Pocock’s essay argues that Paul’s strategy is determinative for us today. Pocock traces Roland Allen’s impact on contemporary trends in mission, including “insider movements” (house church movements that in several respects remain inside their cultural context).

John Mark Terry observes the indigenous mission efforts of Paul, and delineates how advocates through the years have applied aspects of this model to church planting. Ed Stetzer and Lizette Beard’s contribution paints a portrait of Paul as a successful church planter and offers insight into how Paul’s ministry challenges and encourages church planters who continue this work today. Chuck Lawless claims Paul’s activity as a mentor was one of the key elements in his development of leaders who would continue to implement his work.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Paul’s Missionary Methods is a book that follows in the footsteps of Roland Allen. The primary strength of this work is in seeing how each contributor continues to work with the same tone and within the same framework as Allen, without merely parroting the views expressed in Allen’s work.

The contributors build on Allen’s work by showing how these insights have been developed in mission work since the book’s initial publication. For example, David Hesselgrave gives a brief overview of the missions movement in the 20th century, interacting with Allen’s proposal and showing how missionaries have rejected or accepted various insights.

Likewise, John Mark Terry traces the advocacy of indigenous church planting from the years before Allen wrote his book all the way to the church growth movement of the late 20th century, including the development of the six-fold description of the indigenous church: self-image, self-functioning, self-determining, self-supporting, self-propagation, and self-giving. Even for those who have not encountered Allen’s work, the analysis in these essays provides an education into the development of missionary thinking in the past few hundred years.

Another strength of this book is the willingness of the contributors to explore important areas and themes left largely untouched by Allen’s proposal. For example, the essay on Paul’s theology of suffering and the essay on Paul’s view of spiritual warfare, while not dealt with significantly in Missionary Methods, is nevertheless of vital importance for missionaries today who deal with persecution, difficulty, and at times, demonic opposition.

The reader soon discovers, however, that not all of the contributors agree as to how Allen would have dealt with contested elements of mission today. For example, Pocock believes Allen would have viewed insider movements favorably as an example of indigenous mission work developing its theology and practice apart from outside authority.

On the other hand, David Sills believes Allen would have viewed these movements as a compromise of critical contextualization. Because the authors do not interact with each other in the book, there is no adjudicating position that helps the reader see how the debate over Allen’s views would play out.

Conclusion

In the end, Paul’s Missionary Methods: In His Time and Ours is a terrific contribution to current conversations on missiology. It represents Roland Allen’s work well, building upon its foundation and exploring related concepts with a firm commitment to biblical truth and a recognition of the ongoing relevance of the apostle Paul in church planting today.

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