More Rolland Allen...

I've now finished reading "Missionary Methods". It's a great book which I heartily recomend, although it can seem a little un-PC in places.
Two things jumped out at me in the rest of the book. The first was a discussion about mission and the importance of preparing people to share the Gospel. Allen makes the point that Paul didn't have time, resources or personel to give his people a thorough theological education, and yet he felt they were properly equiped to be agents of the Good News in the provinces where they were set. He contrasts this with nineteenth century missions, as we can with twenty-first century church. I have often been told by lay people that they want to do mission, they just want to get it all sorted out for themselves first. Ironically, the Gospel has often been most effectively shared, not by people who had everything clear in their brains, but by people who had caught something simple in their hearts. We need to help our people to understand that it is their relationship with Jesus that is the starting point for mission, not their grasp of theology. Most of us need some simple (non crass) ways of expressing the core of Christian Faith that we can own and proclaim, rather than more sophisticated appologetics...
The second thing that struck me as important was his belief that we should trust local churches in decision-making, discipline and finance. His refrain, "Tell it to the church", is worth repeating again. It's all too tempting to try and sort things out for people, but they will learn and grow most if we allow them to grow with God. He has a lot to say about the need for missionaries to "retire". Those of us in mission/ministry in twenty-first century Britain need to keep this in mind...
A lot of what Allen has to say about mission has come to pass in the history of the global church, but he still has a lot to teach us about how to do church in the UK. He finishes with a moving (and mildly fictional) account of a missionary who was applying the St Paul's "method". The account finishes with a "native" chatechist asking the missionary if he knows what he's doing. The missionary replies that he knows what he thinks he is doing, but wonders what the chatecist thinks he is doing. The man replies, "Sir, if you keep on like this, you are going to found an indigeonous church."
We need to found more indigeonous churches in Britain today. Whether we call them Fresh Expressions, Inherited Churches, or whatever, we need them to be truly local, and that is going to take a real culture change to achieve...