11.17.08

create don’t clone

Posted in ekklesia, gospel, mission, theology at 5:30 am by len

In one of his papers, the Anabaptist post-Christendom writer Stuart Murray observes that we must “create, not clone” new churches. In a similar way Newbigin uses Roland Allen to critique McGavran, based on the sovereignty and freedom of God:

“Allen’s charge against modern missions was that they had been tempted by their alliance with colonial powers to act as though the mission of the church could be pursued in the style of a cultural educational campaign, as though the object was to multiply replicas of the sending churches. In contrast Allen rightly saw that in the New Testament portrayal of mission the central reality is the active work of the living Holy Spirit himself. It is the Spirit who brings about conversion, the Spirit who equips those who are called with the gifts needed for all the varied forms of ministry, and the Spirit who guides the church into all the truth. The Spirit is not the property of the sending church or the missionary who is sent. It is not part of the missionary’s duty to mold the new church in to the style of the old. The Spirit is sovereign and free…”

The Open Secret, 130

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