Book Review: M Methods: St. Paul's or Ours?

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Book Review: M Methods: St. Paul's or Ours?

Salaams! Just finished up an excellent book I've been reading now for quite awhile in my morning devotions--took it slow & easy (my second read through it): Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours?, by Roland Allen. As many of you are already no doubt aware, Allen was a man waaaaay ahead of his time; the book was first published in 1912, with a Second Edition in 1927 (I bought my Eerdmans 1979 edition brand new for $2.95!). A companion volume, which ought to be read as well, is called The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church: And the Causes Which Hinder It.

Allen takes an in-depth look at Paul's CP & leadership training methods, beginning with a discussion on whether Paul enjoyed any special strategic, moral or social conditions which contributed to his incredible success which we do not have in this day and age. Answer on all counts--negative. Allen then continues with an excellent review of Paul's Gospel presentation (miracles, finance, substance), training methods (teaching, baptism & ordination candidates), dealings with organized churches (authority & discipline, unity), and finally he makes some applications for his (and our) time.

His analysis is right-on, very applicable to our day and age, and is cogently argued. This is CPM-type methodology waaaaay before there ever was any such designation. His focus, as in all his works, is about how to plant TRULY indigenous churches with local leadership who have a passion/vision for their own and beyond from the beginning. His focus is about keeping things simple and keeping everything in the hands of the locals from the beginning. One of the key points of the whole book: the paramount "answer" to any and every question that locals ask of the M should always be: "Tell it to the church." Yes, in our case that might mean a very small handful to begin with. Allen ends the book with the observation of a real M and the example of his work in following this advice, saying that he had "learnt that the secret of success in his work lay in dealing with the church as a body." Doing more and getting farther by actually doing less...

To summarize Allen's application points from the secrets of the Apostle Paul's success in founding churches (emphasis mine):
1. "The test of all teaching is practice" (so that it can be easily grasped, retained, used, and passed on)
2. "All organization...must not be so elaborate or so costly that small and infant communities cannot supply the funds necessary for its maintenance. The test of all organizations is naturalness and permanence."
3. "The management of all local funds should be entirely in the hands of the local church which should raise and use their own funds for their own purposes..." (the test of finances is the lack of dependence on or dictation by a foreign entity)
4. "The whole community is responsible for the proper administration of baptism, ordination and discipline" (the test of being the body of Christ is the mutual responsibility of its members--owning it themselves)
5. "Authority to exercise spiritual gifts should be given freely and at once...The test of preparedness to receive the authority is the capacity to receive the grace"

The lingering challenge for us and all modern M work is stated clearly by Allen in his Introduction to the Second Edition:

We cannot imagine any Christianity worthy of the name existing without the elaborate machinery which we have invented. We naturally expect our converts to adopt from us not only essentials but accidentals. We desire to impart not only the Gospel, but the Law and Customs. With that spirit, St Paul's methods do not agree, because they were the natural outcome of quite another spirit, the spirit which preferred persuasion to authority...with an unhesitating faith in the power of the Holy Ghost to apply them to his hearers and to work out their appropriate external expressions in them.

Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours?
by Roland Allen "In little more than ten years St Paul established the Church in four provinces of the Empire, Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia..." ( more )

Product Details
Paperback: 188 pages
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company    (June 1, 1962)
ISBN: 0802810012
27 used & new from $7.50

Spotlight Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Timeless principles for carrying out the church's mission , December 31, 2000
Reviewer:
Eddy Hall (Goessel, KS USA)  - See all my reviews
"Roland Allen was an Anglican missionary in China from 1895 to 1903.  For a few years afterward he was in charge of an English parish.  For the next 40 years he was writing on missionary principles.  Much of what he wrote seemed to be forgotten.  The present work and a later volume written in answer to criticisms (The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes which Hinder It) are the only two that have been regularly reprinted.  Allen himself told his son that his writings would come into their own about the year 1960.  In fact that year saw the republication in a single volume of many of his other writings."  [From the foreword.]

It is amazing to me that Allen wrote this book in 1912.  Even today his radical critique of Western missionary methods is cutting edge, though the biblical principles he advocates are now being embraced more and more by some ministries that are not tradition-bound.

While this book and its sequel (Spontaneous Expansion) address mission work specifically, the principles described do not apply only to how the people of one country do missionary work in another.  These books really are about what the Bible has to show us about how to carry out the mission of the church, whether in our own culture, in ministering cross-culturally in our own back yard, or planting churches across an ocean.

If Allen is right in the conclusions he draws about finance (chapter 6), many (most?) church planting efforts may be operating by financial principles that do more to hinder rather than help establish a healthy, self-supporting church.

His observations on the biblical pattern for selecting and equipping elders for local church leadership challenged not only the status quo of the Anglican church of his day, but continue to challenge the practices of most churches today.

In my work as a church consultant, my sense is that (1) most church members, and probably even most pastors, are unaware of the radical differences between our presentday ways of doing church and the New Testament precedents, because they are largely ignorant of the biblical precedents; and (2) even when they become aware of some difference, there is a tendency to assume that those differences are inconsequential.  Yet many of the most passionate of today's church leaders look at the church of Acts and long to see God's Spirit at work with that kind of power in the church today.

If we really long to recapture the vitality of the New Testament church, wouldn't it be worthwhile to seek to understand the principles by which it operated?  (The "Methods" of the book's title is misleading; "Principles" would be more accurate.)  Then we can consider whether those principles might be essential to the spiritual vitality of the church and go about asking how we can apply those principles in our context.

For anyone serious about developing such a biblically-rooted vision of how to go about doing church, I highly recommend this book and its companion volume.

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"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
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