The Timothy Conference

T H E T I M O T H Y C O N F E R E N C E

ROLAND ALLEN (1868-1947), an Anglican priest, served as a missionary in China with the SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL IN FOREIGN PARTS from 1892 until 1904. Like Nevius, he criticized the methods employed by most missions in China. He wrote several books, but expressed his philosophy of indigenous missions in Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? (1912) and The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church (1927). Allen emphasized the role of the Holy Spirit in missions and encouraged missionaries to work in itinerant church planting, trusting the Holy Spirit to develop the churches. Allen’s main. principles are these: (1) All permanent teaching must be intelligible and so easily understood that those who receive it can retain it, use it, and pass it on. (2) All organizations should be set up in a way that national Christians can maintain: them. (3) Church finances should be provided and controlled by the local church members. (4) Christians should be taught to provide pastoral care for each other. (5) Missionaries should give national believers the authority to exercise spiritual gifts freely and at once. Allen’s principles have influenced many twentieth-century missiologists, most prominently DONALD McGAVRAN. MELVIN HODGES (1909-86), a missionary and mission administrator with the Assemblies of God, wrote The Indigenous Church (1953). Widely used in missions courses, this book expressed the ideas of Venn, Anderson, Nevius, and Allen in an updated, popular format. Hodges acknowledged the difficulty missionaries experience in changing a field from a subsidy approach to an indigenous approach. He also emphasized training national workers and giving them responsibility for the care of the churches, freeing the missionaries to concentrate on starting new churches. In his book, Verdict Theology in Missionary Theory , ALAN TIPPETT (1911-88) updated the three-self formula of Henry Venn. Tippett served on the faculty of the School of World Mission at Fuller Seminary and was a member of Donald McGavran’s inner circle. The writings of Tippett, McGavran, and others show that the CHURCH GROWTH MOVEMENT accepted and built on the work of the earlier proponents of indigenous missions. In Verdict Theology Tippett proposed a sixfold description of an indigenous church: (1) Self-image . The church sees itself as being independent from the mission, serving as Christ’s church in its locality. (2) Self-functioning . The church is capable of carrying on all the normal functions of a church—worship, Christian education, and so on. (3) Self-determining . This means the church can and does make its own decisions. The local churches do not depend on the mission to make their decisions for them. Tippett echoes Venn in saving that the mission has to die for the church to be born. (4) Self-supporting . The church carries its own financial burdens and finances its own service projects. (5) Self-propagation . The national church sees itself as responsible for carrying out the GREAT COMMISSION. The church gives itself wholeheartedly to evangelism and missions. (6) Self-giving . An indigenous church knows the social needs of its community and endeavors to minister to those needs. Tippett summarizes his understanding of the indigenous church with this definition: “When the indigenous people of a community think of the Lord as their own, not a foreign Christ; when they do things as unto the Lord, meeting the cultural needs around them, worshiping in patterns they understand; when their congregations function in participation in a bode which is structurally indigenous; then you have an indigenous church” (136). In recent years some missiologists have suggested adding a seventh mark to Tippet’s list— self-theologizing . They believe a truly indigenous church will develop its own theology, expressed in culturally appropriate ways. These theologies would affirm the central doctrines of the Christian faith, but they would express them using metaphors and concept, that reflect their own unique cultures.

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