Final thougths from Spontaneous Expansion

I just finished Roland Allen's book The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church-and the causes which hinder it. I'll say I'm challenged, encouraged, fearful of what I have done, am doing and will do in ministry. Here are some quotes from the final chapter:

• The rapid and wide expansion of the Church in the early centuries was due in the first place mainly to the spontaneous activity of individuals. As I pointed out in my first chapter, a natural instinct to share with others a new- found joy, strengthened and enlightened by the Divine Grace of Christ, the Saviour, inevitably tends to impel men to
  propagate the Gospel.
• The Church expanded simply by organizing these little groups as they were converted, handing on to them the organization which she had received from her first founders. It was itself a unity composed of a multitude of little Churches any one of which could propagate itself, and consequently the reception of any new group of Christians was a
  very simple matter. By a simple act the new group was brought into the unity of the Church, and equipped, as its predecessors had been equipped, not only with all the spiritual power and authority necessary for its own life as an organized unit, but also with all the authority needed to repeat the same process whenever one of its members might convert men in any new village or town. Thus the result of the spontaneous labour of any individual Christian were naturally and easily consolidated and established within the unity of the Church.
• This spontaneous activity of the individual, rooted as it is in a universal instinct, and in a Grace of the Holy Spirit given to all Christians, is not peculiar to any one age or race.
• They equipped them and set them free; we have refused to equip them, and have bound them to the foreign organization of our Mission.
• We must realize that baptized Christians have rights. What are those rights? They have a right to live as Christians in an organized Christian Church where the Sacraments of Christ are observed. They have a right to obey Christ’s commands, and to receive His Grace. In other words they have a right to be properly organized with their own proper ministers. they have a right to be a Church, and not a mere congregation.
• For they must learn from the very beginning to rely upon God, not upon men, for spiritual progress; upon the Bible, not upon human teachers, for spiritual instruction.
• There is one other point which I think the bishop should impress upon the Church if he is seeking for spontaneous expansion. It is not that he should exhort them to take the Gospel to their neighbours; but that he should tell them what to do when they have made converts in their neighbourhood too remote to be intimately attached to their own body, or in case people from a neighbouring village came to them to learn the Christian Faith. He should tell them first to make sure that the new converts are really converts to the faith of Christ and understand the use of the Creed, the Gospels, the Sacraments and the Ministry, and then to send word to the bishop.
• To leave new-born Churches to learn by experience is apostolic, to abandon them is not apostolic: to watch over them is apostolic, to be always nursing them is not apostolic: to guide their education is apostolic, to provide it for them is not apostolic.
• The man then who would guide such a Church as I have described and assist its education must obviously get out of the way to give it room; because if he stays, or if he leaves some one from outside in charge, it will plainly not have room to move.
• It is not created by exhortation. It springs up unbidden. Where men see it they covet it, and when the converts of the older missions see it they will begin to desire it. Desiring it, they will begin to seek it, and in seeking it to express it.
• The spontaneous expansion of the Church reduced to its elements is a very simple thing. It asks for no elaborate organization, no large finances, no great numbers of paid missionaries....The organization of a little Church on the Apostolic model is also extremely simple, and the most illiterate converts can use it, and the poorest are sufficiently wealthy to maintain it.
• What is necessary is faith. What is needed is the kind of faith which, uniting a man to Christ, sets him on lire. Such a man can believe that others finding Christ will be set on fire also.....It is to men who know that faith, who see that vision, that I appeal.

After reading it I realize there are many lessons learned from those who have gone before us. There are many things I have done and am doing that need evaluation. Do I do them out of comfort because I like to do them or do I do them because it allows the Gospel and the Spirit to best move out in the hearts of men? All in all, I want to live by faith. I don't want to build the work of the Gospel expansion on me. I want to see God move and respond boldly.

Categories: Movements, God, Books