The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church

Ed: If ever a book on mission deserved to be read and re-read, it is Roland Allen's The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, and the Causes which Hinder it. Writing in 1927 from his perspective as a CMS Missionary in China, at the height of the world missionary movement, Allen concluded that whereas the Church in New Testament times expanded without being forced to do so, all the efforts of missionary expansion in the early twentieth century were hampered by the structural limitations imposed by the sponsoring denominations. In our own day, this book deserves to be read again in the light of the continuing decline of the Church of England in the United Kingdom.

Continue here.