Roland Allen's View of Paul's Apostolic Method

Apart from the early chapters of the Acts, we have little to go on as to the methods or modes used by the other apostles. Probably they were similar to those used by Paul. Modern missiologists seek to glean what they can from Paul’s methods, but suggest that his methods would not necessarily obtain now, the world having changed so much. Roland Allen—a famous missionary in China—wrote two books, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Christian Church and St. Paul’s Missionary Methods or Ours? These are two most stimulating works. Being written some 60 years ago they may appear to be dated, yet Allen asks questions which are still relevant.
 

 He first states that Paul in 10 years founded churches in Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia. His methods were not distinctive, nor peculiarly his own. He had no printing press, no New Testament. He would immediately baptise his converts (or, have them baptised), seemingly without any instruction as we today would call it instruction. He had only one desire, and that was to present the Gospel without it being a system of morality. What Allen points out is that Paul trusted the Gospel and the Holy Spirit to both work their work of grace in the new churches, without the supportive roles that missionary bodies take up today, and the tendency to turn churches into moralistic units.

 Allen also asked some questions in order to focus on what we would call modern differences. He asked: 

1. Did Paul deliberately select certain strategic points at which to establish his churches? 
2. Was his success due to a certain social class or caste of people to which he made an appeal? 
3. Did special conditions obtain in Paul’s day, i.e. were the social, moral, economic or religious patterns such as to render any comparison to today’s world innocuous?
4. Was there any particular virtue in the way in which the Apostle presented his Gospel, eg. the use of miracles, his finance, the substance of his teaching? 
5. Was there any particular virtue in his way of dealing with 'organised churches', i.e. means by which discipline was exercised and unity maintained?

1. Allen says that Paul did not have a deliberate policy in regard to the selection of strategic points, as such. No journey seems to have been planned, as the Acts’ account would indicate. The Spirit’s guidance seemed linked with various circumstances. For example, he simply touched Ephesus on his return to Jerusalem on his second journey, and found a good reception there on his next journey. II Corinthians 1:5-18 shows Paul in a state of uncertainty, and his further journey into Achaia was because of his love for the church. This leads us to the conclusion that he was led by the Spirit rather than that he held some principle of expansion.

 

2. Allen discounts any value to the suggestion that class or caste has much significance either in receiving or opposing the Gospel. Paul made no attempt to speak to any class of his day, as, say, missionaries in India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries addressed themselves to the Brahmins. Nor did Paul’s Gospel root itself in Jewish soil; to the contrary, Paul suffered much for preaching to Jews. Allen gives many examples of Paul’s universality in his contacts. He was ‘a man for all seasons’.
 

3. The suggestion that certain conditions are more conducive to Gospel proclamation than another has no encouragement from Paul. On the one hand there was a revulsion by some against the immorality and evils of the day, and in this sense a preparation for a pure Gospel, and on the other a desire for the promiscuous. It is ironic that so many years after Allen’s writings, conditions are more like those of the promiscuous society of Paul’s day, than perhaps they have ever been, in which case the matter is a non sequiter.

 

4. Allen spends most time on this fourth section, showing convincingly that all the aids which Paul used are just as available for the church today. The Gospel has not altered, the use of signs and wonders is still operative, and the word and deeds can be just as dynamic. He takes up the whole matter of mission finances very clearly, showing that in the early church all monetary help was for personal needs, and not for ecclesiastical support Indeed no such things existed. There was no property, no political power, nothing irking to any national feeling such as domination and paternalism by ‘foreign boards’. He then goes on to show that Paul preached the simple kerugma as it is found throughout the Acts, and that he had five elements to his mode of preaching, namely (a) an appeal to the past to win sympathy by a statement of the truth common to him and the hearers; (b) a statement of facts, an assertion of things which can be understood, apprehended, accepted, disputed or proved regarding Jesus the Messiah, his crucifixion and resurrection; (c) the answer to the inevitable objection that the most thoughtful and judicial minds have made to his claims; (d) the appeal to the spiritual needs of men, the craving for pardon, and the assurance of comfort, and (e) the final grace warning against rejection which involves serious danger. In other words, Paul does nothing which we could not do today with profit.

 

5.  Allen’s point regarding discipline and unity relates to the training of converts. Allen says churches flourished because Paul established churches and not missions. He had no eye for paternalism, but taught as thoroughly as possible, and left the churches to work out their own matters. Baptism was virtually without instruction, and converts were not trained for a professional ministry. We have much valuable material in the Pastoral Epistles in regard to the life and unity of the church, but certainly the church is not organised or promoted. Professionalism was absent, and Allen points out that those who would be pastors and elders were not sent to some other situation for training. Training—if it can be called that—happened in the local church, and so the congregation understood God’s will for their pastors and elders, and in that sense would be subject to them.
 

 In regard to the moral life of the church, Allen sees Paul’s authority as proper and functional but suggests that the apostolic authority finished at the death of the Apostle, and normal local church ministry would prove sufficient. Teaching on proper living (cf. Eph. 4:20-32), would be given through the local ministry and would not be moralistic, especially in the light of the liberating and motivating power of the Gospel. Thus the life and unity of the church did not derive from an organisation but within the organism of the church. This, of course, accords with the New Testament. that the church is the Body of Christ, and he its Head. He gives it life, and through the Holy Spirit directs what we today would call ‘strategy of mission’. The local church as functional could not be directed from another country!

From Proclaiming Christ's Gospel In Today's World, by Geoffrey C. Bingham, pp. 31–34.