Reading: Methods, Chapter 12: Principles and Spirit

Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?
By Roland Allen

If we look out over the mission field today we see that we have made most amazing progress, and that our labors have been more than abundantly blessed. We see that we have established all over the world missions through which great numbers of heathen have been brought into the fold of the Church, civilization has been introduced into barbarous countries, immoral customs have been abolished and education and culture have been extended far and wide. On all sides, we see steady and increasing progress. It is impossible to have even the most superficial acquaintance with the history and present condition of our foreign missions without being convinced that we have been instruments in the hands of God for the accomplishment of his Divine purpose to sum up all things in Christ.

Nevertheless, there are everywhere three very disquieting symptoms:

(1) Everywhere Christianity is still exotic. We have not yet succeeded in so planting it in any heathen land that it has become indigenous. If there is one doubtful exception to that rule, it is a country where from the very beginning Pauline methods were followed more closely than elsewhere. But generally speaking, it still remains true that Christianity in the lands of our missions is still a foreign religion. It has not yet really taken root in the country.

(2) Everywhere our missions are dependent. They look to us for leaders, for instructors, for rulers. They have as yet shown little sign of being able to supply their own needs. Day by day and year by year there comes to us an unceasing appeal for men and money for the same missions to which we have been supplying men and money for the last fifty or sixty years, and there seems at present little hope that that demand will change its character. If we do not send men and money the missions will fail, the converts will fall away, ground painfully won will be lost: that is what we are told. When the day comes in which the demand is for men and money to establish new missions in a new country, because the old are capable of standing alone, the end of our work will be in sight. But at present, that day still seems far distant.

(3) Everywhere we see the same types. Our missions are in different countries amongst people of the most diverse characteristics, but all bear a most astonishing resemblance one to another. If we read the history of a mission in China we have only to change a few names and the same history will serve as the history of a mission in Zululand. There has been no new revelation. There has been no new discovery of new aspects of the Gospel, no new unfolding of new forms of the Christian life.

These symptoms cannot but cause us grave anxiety. There was a day when we rather expected these effects to follow our preaching, and rather prided ourselves upon the fact that no strange elements had produced new and perhaps perplexing developments of Christian thought and life. But today we are living in an atmosphere of expectation. We look forward to new and startling forms of progress. We begin to think that signs of dependent uniformity are signs, not of success, but of failure. We desire to see Christianity established in foreign climes putting on a foreign dress and developing new forms of glory and of beauty. So far then as we see our missions exotic, dependent, uniform, we begin to accuse ourselves of failure. The causes of that failure are not far to seek. We have allowed racial and religious pride to direct our attitude towards those whom we have been wont to call 'poor heathen'. We have approached them as superior beings, moved by charity to impart of our wealth to destitute and perishing souls. We have used that argument at home to wring grudging and pitiful doles for the propagation of our faith, and abroad we have adopted that attitude as missionaries of a superior religion. We have not learned the lesson that it is not for our righteousness that we have been entrusted with the Gospel, but that we may be instruments in God's hands for revealing the universal salvation of His Son in all the world. We have not learned that as Christians we exist by the Spirit of Him who gave up the glory of Heaven in order to pour out His life for the redemption of the world. We have not learned the lesson that our own hope, our own salvation, our own glory, lie in the completion of the Temple of the Lord. We have not understood that the members of the Body of Christ are scattered in all lands and that we, without them, are not made perfect. We have thought of the Temple of the Lord as complete in us, of the Body of Christ as consisting of us, and we have thought of the conversion of the heathen as the extension of the body of which we are the members. Consequently, we have preached the Gospel from the point of view of the wealthy man who casts a mite into the lap of a beggar, rather than from the point of view of the husbandman who casts his seed into the earth, knowing that his own life and the lives of all connected with him depend upon the crop which will result from his labor.

Approaching them in that spirit, we have desired to help them. We have been anxious to do something for them. And we have done much. We have done everything for them. We have taught them, baptized them, shepherded them. We have managed their funds, ordered their services, built their churches, provided their teachers. We have nursed them, fed them, doctored them. We have trained them, and have even ordained some of them. We have done everything for them except acknowledge any equality. We have done everything for them, but very little with them. We have done everything for them except give place to them. We have treated them as 'dear children', but not as 'brethren'.

This attitude of mind is apparent everywhere, but it shows itself most distinctly when it is proposed that we should submit any of our actions to the judgment of the native councils which we have established as a training ground for independence. The moment it is suggested that a council in which natives are in a majority should have the power to direct the action of a white missionary, the moment it is suggested that a native, even though he maybe a man of the highest devotion and intellectual ability, should be put into a position of authority in a province where white men still hold office, the white missionaries revolt. They will not hear of such a thing. We acknowledge that the Spirit of God has fitted the man for a position of authority, but he cannot occupy it because we are there.

2. Want of faith has made us fear and distrust native independence. We have imagined ourselves to be, and we have acted so as to become, indispensable. In everything we have taught our converts to turn to us, to accept our guidance. We have asked nothing from them but obedience. We have educated our converts to put us in the place of Christ. We believe that it is the Holy Spirit of Christ that inspires and guides us: we cannot believe that the same Spirit will guide and inspire them. We believe that the Holy Spirit has taught us and is teaching us true conceptions of morality, doctrine, ritual: we cannot believe that the same Spirit will teach them.

The consequence is that we view any independent action on the part of our new converts with anxiety and fear. Long experience of difficulties, dangers, heresies, parties, schisms, has made us over-cautious and has undermined our faith in the power of the Holy Ghost. We see the waves boisterous and we are afraid. If anyone suggests giving to the natives any freedom of action the first thought that arises in our minds is not one of eager interest to see how they will act, but one of anxious questioning; if we allow that, how shall we prevent some horrible disaster, how shall we avoid some danger, how shall we provide safeguards against some possible mistake? Our attitude in such cases is naturally negative.

This is why we are so anxious to import the law and customs. This is why we set up constitutions containing all sorts of elaborate precautions against possible mistakes. We sometimes hope to educate the native in self-government by establishing councils, or synods, on which they are represented, but we hasten to take every possible precaution to avoid the possibility of their making any mistake or taking any action, even in the smallest matters of ritual or practice, which may be contrary to our ideas of what is proper. In the councils we give an overruling authority to the foreign priest: in conferences, we make provision for dividing by orders on any question about which the foreigners feel keenly. By all means, we try to secure that the real authority and responsibility shall remain in our own hands. We are so familiar with difficulties that we make elaborate preparation to meet every conceivable kind of difficulty and friction before it arises. In so doing we often prepare the way for a difficulty which would never arise if we did not open the door for it to enter. The natives see this and resent it. They see the preparation for overruling them, they see that only when they advise what the foreigner approves will their advice be accepted, and they say, 'It does not matter what we think or say; if we suggest anything which the foreigners do not like, all the power is in their hands, and they will do as they please'. So, even when there is a perfect agreement, there is no real harmony; and even when the advice of the native representatives is followed, they feel no responsibility for the consequences. It is surprising how carefully the native Christian will consider a question, how eagerly they will seek the advice of their teacher, how willingly they will listen to his suggestions when once they realize that he really trusts them to do what is right, and really intends to let them go their own way even against his own judgment. It is sad how sullenly they will do what they themselves really approve and would naturally do themselves of their own accord when they think that they are being commanded. It is most sad when they do nothing because they feel that they have no responsibility. It would be better, far better, that our converts should make many mistakes, and fall into many errors, and commit many offenses, than that their sense of responsibility should be undermined. The Holy Ghost is given to Christians that He may guide them and that they may learn His power to guide them, not that they may be stupidly obedient to the voice of authority.

Moreover, the systems which we import are systems that we acknowledge to be full of imperfections, the sources of many difficulties and dangers at home. We bind on the new converts a burden heavy and grievous to be borne, a burden which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear; and we bind it upon a people who have not inherited it. To us the burden is in a sense natural, it is the result of our own mistakes and sins. We know its history. It has grown upon us. It belongs to us. It is our own. But it is not our converts' in other lands. They do not know its history, nor is it fitted to their shoulders. They will doubtless make their own mistakes. They will create their own burdens, but they need not be laden with ours.

In so acting we have adopted a false method of education. Slavery is not the best training for liberty. It is only by exercise that powers grow. Doing things for people does not train them to do them for themselves. We are learning more and more in things educational that the first duty of the teacher is not to solve all difficulties for the pupil, and to present him with the ready-made answer, but to awaken a spirit, to teach the pupil to realize his own powers, by setting before him difficulties, and showing him how to approach and overcome them. The work of the missionary is education in this sense: it is the use of means to reveal to his converts a spiritual power which they actually possess and of which they are dimly conscious. As the converts exercise that power, as they yield themselves to the indwelling Spirit, they discover the greatness of the power and the grace of the Spirit, and in so doing they reveal it to their teacher. But we are like teachers who cannot resist telling their pupils the answer the moment a difficulty arises. We still live in the age of Mangnall's Questions. We cannot resist the temptation to do for them whatever we can do for them. We cannot sit by and see things done ill, or ill in view of our ideas of well. That may be a form of government, but it is not education. The work of the missionary cannot be done by imposing things from without. The one result which he desires is the growth and manifestation of a Spirit from within.

We sometimes acknowledge this, but we excuse ourselves by saying that it is inevitable. We adopt a curious theory about missionary work. We argue that there are three stages of missionary work. In the first, the missionary must proceed by introducing the system in which he has been educated because he must have a system, and that is the only possible system for him. In this stage, the missionary must do everything for his converts because they are infants incapable of doing anything for themselves. Then there is a second stage in which the converts educated in the missionaries' system learn to understand and practice it. Finally, there is a stage in which they may conceivably modify it. With regard to this theory, it must be said that as a theory it is untrue, and in practice it is pernicious. In fact, there is no such first stage. There is no stage in which converts cannot do anything for themselves. There is no stage in which it is necessary that they should be slaves of a foreign system. The moment they are baptized they are the Temple of the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost is power. They are not so incapable as we suppose.

It is often said that the people to whom we go lack initiative and moral force, that they cannot and will not do anything for themselves, and consequently that, in the early stages, it is absolutely necessary to provide everything for them and to govern them until they acquire a character capable of meeting their own problems. But some of the people of whom this is said are seen every day to be capable of carrying on great commercial enterprises. They do not really lack initiative; and if they did, as Christians they should begin to find it. The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of initiative. If they had no initiative without Christ, with Christ they should not fail to have it. That power is in them by the gift of the Holy Ghost. It should be jealously guarded and hopefully encouraged to find larger and larger fields for its activity. But it often fails to find its proper sphere; it is checked and discouraged and stifled in a system in which everything is done under foreign direction. It is exactly because we believe in that power of the Lord that we go. It is the revelation of that Spirit that we seek. To deny it is to deny our hope, to check it is to hinder the attainment of our end.

Again, it is said that we are not now living in the first age of the Church's history, that we cannot go back and act as though these twenty centuries had not been, that we cannot and ought not to rob the new churches of today of the experience of the past, of all that we have learned by centuries of struggle and labor. That is true. We cannot teach less than the full truth which we have so learned. But to introduce the fully developed systems in which that truth has expressed itself amongst us is to attempt to ignore differences of race and clime and to omit necessary stages of growth. It is impossible to skip stages of growth. Scientists tell us that each human embryo passes through all the stages by which man has been evolved from lower forms of life. It passes through them, but it now passes through them quickly. In a few months, it repeats the history of ages. So our new churches guided and helped might speedily and painlessly learn the lessons which the Church of old learned with the pain and labor of centuries. But it is one thing to pass through stages quickly, it is another to try to omit them.

Again it is said that methods must change with the age. The Apostle's methods were suited to his age, our methods are suited to ours. I have already suggested that unless we are prepared to drag down St. Paul from his high position as the great Apostle of the Gentiles, we must allow to his methods a certain character of universality, and now I venture to urge that, since the Apostle, no other has discovered or practiced methods for the propagation of the Gospel better than his or more suitable to the circumstances of our day. It would be difficult to find any better model than the Apostle in the work of establishing new churches. At any rate this much is certain, that the Apostle's methods succeeded exactly where ours have failed.

But, important as I believe it to be in the very early stages of our missions to follow the apostolic practice, which manifestly and undeniably conduced to his astounding success, yet it is of comparably greater importance that we should endeavor to appreciate the principles in which the Apostle's practice was rooted, and to learn the spirit which made their application both possible and fruitful. Those principles are assuredly applicable to every stage of the Church's growth and that spirit is the Divine spark which should inspire every form of method in order to make it a means of grace. It is scarcely possible to imagine the Apostle in other countries or in another age using a different method; it is quite impossible to imagine him inspired by a different spirit, or adopting other principles of action.

The principles which seem to underlie all the Apostle's practice were two: (1) that he was a preacher of Gospel, not of law, and (2) that he must retire from his converts to give place for Christ. The spirit in which he was able to do this was the spirit of faith.

1. St. Paul was a preacher of a Gospel, not of a law. His Epistles are full of this. He reiterates it again and again. It was not simply that he was a preacher of a Gospel in contradistinction to the preachers of the Jewish law, he was a preacher of Gospel as opposed to the system of law. He lived in a dispensation of the Gospel as opposed to a dispensation of law. He administered a Gospel, not a law. His method was a method of Gospel, not a method of law.

This is the most distinctive mark of Pauline Christianity. This is what separates his doctrine from all other systems of religion. He did not come merely to teach a higher truth, or a finer morality than those who preceded him. He came to administer a spirit. Before St. Paul many teachers had inculcated lofty principles of conduct and had expounded profound doctrines. Men did not need another. They needed life. Christ came to give that life, and St. Paul came as the minister of Christ, to lead men to Christ who is the life, that in Him they might find life. His gospel was a gospel of power.

So he taught, and for that, all his life was one long martyrdom. If he would have admitted for a moment that his work was to introduce a higher law, a new system, he would have made peace with the Judaizers and he would have been at one with all contemporary reformers, but the Gospel would have perished in his hands. In his own words, he would have fallen away from grace; Christ would have profited him nothing. That he refused to do and for that he suffered. Men called him an antinomian in consequence; but he was not.

We have seen this truth illustrated in his practice again and again. He did not establish a constitution, he inculcated principles. He did not introduce any practice to be received on his own or any human authority, he strove to make his converts realize and understand its relation to Christ. He always aimed at convincing their minds and stirring their consciences. He never sought to enforce their obedience by decree; he always strove to win their heartfelt approval and their intelligent co-operation. He never proceeded by command, but always by persuasion. He never did things for them, he always left them to do things for themselves. He set them an example according to the mind of Christ, and he was persuaded that the Spirit of Christ in them would teach them to approve that example and inspire them to follow it.

2. He practiced retirement, not merely by constraint, but willingly. He gave a place for Christ. He was always glad when his converts could progress without his aid. He welcomed their liberty. He withheld no gift from them which might enable them to dispense with his presence. He did not speak, as we so often speak, of the gift of orders, or the gift of autonomous government, as the gift of a privilege that might be withheld. He gave as a right to the Spirit-bearing body the powers which duly belong to a Spirit-bearing body. He gave freely, and then he retired from them that they might learn to exercise the powers which they possessed in Christ. He warned them of dangers, but he did not provide an elaborate machinery to prevent them from succumbing to the dangers.

To do this required great faith; and this faith is the spiritual power in which St. Paul won his victory. He believed in the Holy Ghost, not merely vaguely as a spiritual Power, but as a Person indwelling his converts. He believed therefore in his converts. He could trust them. He did not trust them because he believed in their natural virtue or intellectual sufficiency. If he had believed in that, his faith must have been sorely shaken. But he believed in the Holy Ghost in them. He believed that Christ was able and willing to keep that which he had committed to Him. He believed that He would perfect His Church, that He would establish, strengthen, settle his converts. He believed and acted as if he believed.

It is that faith which we need today. We need to subordinate our methods, our systems, ourselves to that faith. We often speak as if we had to do simply with weak and sinful men. We say that we cannot trust our converts to do this or that, that we cannot commit the truth to men destitute of this or that particular form of education or training. We speak as if we had to do with mere men. We have not to do with mere men; we have to do with the Holy Ghost. What systems, forms, safeguards of every kind cannot do, He can do. When we believe in the Holy Ghost, we shall teach our converts to believe in Him, and when they believe in Him they will be able to face all difficulties and dangers. They will justify our faith. The Holy Ghost will justify our faith in Him. 'This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith.'