Roland Allen and the Coming Kingdom

Introduction

At first reading, Roland Allen did not seem that concerned about changing society. He argued that, over the years, the purpose of overseas missions had subtly changed. In the beginning, there was a conversion to Christ, and other social concerns would follow. In his day, however, he saw that reversed. Missionaries spoke of the gospel of enlightenment, the gospel of healing, the social gospel and the gospel of sex equality. The uplift of people became the gospel itself. ¹ Allen criticized this approach for two good reasons. First, he argued that it simply did not work. Secondly, he criticized it because it was out of agreement with Paul’s mission. ²

Yet when one examines more fully the implications of Allen’s emphasis on the ministry in missionary churches, he opens the door to a number of ways in which the church can work to change society. He also makes some very important connections between the promises of the prophets, Jesus announcement of the coming kingdom, and Paul’s missionary methods. In doing so, he again invites the church to bring the good news of the Kingdom of God to the modern world.

Are there really any good news for a world deeply divided between rich and poor, where war threatens over scarce resources? What kind of Gospel speaks to people who worry more about the planet’s future than about personal sin? Who wants to believe in faiths that seem to fuel prejudice, imperial overreach, or terrorism? Yet, as faith is discarded as boring, irrelevant, and even pernicious, a miasma of despondency has settled over societies around the world.

Promises of the Kingdom

Into such a world Jesus says, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the good news’ (Mark 1:15). Jesus did not need to explain what he meant by the Kingdom of God to his first listeners. Attuned to the promises of the prophets, even their casual readers felt their pulses quicken at the announcement. There would be forgiveness of sins, even for those who oppressed the poor. Scarlet sins would be washed whiter than snow (Isaiah 1:18). Good food would satisfy the hungry (Isaiah 25:6). They would be radiant over the grain, the wine, and the oil (Jer. 31:12). Water would abound in the wilderness (Isaiah 43:19). The dry land would rejoice with singing (Isaiah 35:7).

The sick would be healed. The deaf will hear and the blind will see (Isaiah 29:18). The lame man will leap like a deer (Isaiah 35:5,6). To the landless came the promise, ‘They shall sit every man under his vine and fig tree’ (Micah 4:4). All understood that this was a promise of employment and a home. Slaves and hostages would be released. Those in bondage in Babylon would be free and come home. Sons and daughters would come from afar (Isaiah 60:4). The coming one would proclaim liberty to the captives (Isaiah 61:1). In the proclaimed kingdom there would be peace between peoples. ‘The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together’ (Isaiah 11:6). Yes, and they will beat their swords into plowshares and not learn war anymore (Micah 4:3).

The New World Society

The promises of forgiveness, food, water, healing, jobs, liberation, and peace resonate deeply in the hopes of people everywhere. They are no less than the outline of a New World Society. Were they even partially realized they would constitute very ‘good news’ to every generation.

The Church and the Kingdom

The Gospels spell out Jesus’ focus on the Kingdom. It is so valuable it is worth selling all to obtain it (Matthew 13:44–46). It grows like a man sowing seed in a field. Some of it produces much fruit, others a little and some, none at all (Matthew 13:1–23). The results are always spotty. There are weeds among the wheat and bad fish among the good (Matthew 13:31–32). Though the results are less than perfect, the growth is inevitable. The Kingdom grows like a mustard seed. Though it begins small, it will become such a big bush that birds will be able to nest in its branches (Matthew 13:31–32). The Kingdom works in society like leaven swells a lump of dough. True, the growth is sometimes slow. Watching a seed germinate or leaven working in dough is sometimes imperceptible. However, after walking away for a time, one comes back to see the marvellous changes that have taken place both in individual people and within the entire society.

Jesus began the Kingdom movement by forgiving sins, healing the sick, feeding the hungry and reconciling enemies. Even death was no barrier to the promises of the kingdom when he raised people from the dead. Finally, Jesus warns that whole nations will be evaluated by whether they have fed the hungry, given water to the thirsty, welcomed strangers, clothed the naked and visited the sick and imprisoned. Judgment on both societies and individuals will be based on whether they helped fulfil the promises of the Kingdom (Matthew 25:31–46).

In the first 3 centuries the church continued Jesus’ Kingdom work. People sold their farms to be able to help feed the hungry. Peter and Paul healed the sick. Without the cost of stipendiary clergy and expensive buildings, money was available to help the needy within the small congregations and also to be sent back for the poor in the Jerusalem church (Romans 15:26).

When Christianity became the approved faith of the empire under Constantine, the Kingdom of God was subsumed under the rule of the state, albeit a ‘friendly’ state. At times the State was helpful in Kingdom concerns. Now the state would worry about peace between nations. Now, for the first time, Christians fought in Caesar’s army. Clergy were educated and paid for. To house to growing number of worshippers, now that the faith was popular, church buildings needed to be built and cared for. Slowly and subtly the church’s mission was no longer announcing the kingdom, but building the church in Caesar’s kingdom.

As clergy were celebrated and fêted in Caesar’s realm, some disaffected followers of Jesus headed for the desert, first as hermits and later as monasteries. The early monasteries and nunneries focused again on Kingdom work. Hungry visitors were fed, the sick were cared for. Landless and unemployed might share in the monasteries’ property and prosperity. Some monks even helped bring peace between warring chieftains. In troubled times the monasteries were places of refuge and beacons of hope.

In later times many monasteries were less interested in serving others than in serving themselves. At the time of the Reformation, prosperous monasteries often seemed to be ripe plums ready for the picking. As kings and princes plundered them to enhance their own power, the Reformers called on the society and the state to help with Kingdom work. Saddled with the supposed necessity of paid clergy and inherited buildings, local congregations hardly had the resources to do much feeding or land reform. Cities would have to care for the sick. Kingdom work now became divided. The church with its ministries of word and sacraments would concern itself with forgiveness and hope for eternal life. Society and the state would have to pick up, if they would, the more mundane aspects of Kingdom work.

The division of Kingdom work between church and state was not without its blessings. Under the nation state system, taxes could be levied to support hospitals and health care, supply food aid, and provide employment and drinkable water. In so doing the state and society provided far more aid than churches, now saddled with expensive clergy and buildings, ever could. Yet, that division between church and state had its down side as well. With their own divisions between rich and poor, states have had a difficult time in addressing gross financial inequalities in their societies. In addition, they have not had the global perspective to work assiduously for peace between nations unless it was in their own self-interest.

The division of Kingdom work between church and state has also had a negative effect upon the church. Some aspects of social ministry continue to be carried out by church bodies or by non-governmental institutions supported by them. Local congregations, however, have not done much. They cannot afford to. Because they have limited themselves chiefly to the spiritual aspects of Kingdom work, the vision of their work has become myopic. Indeed, the church is often dismissed as merely handing out spiritual blessing to people who do not feel the need for them. As a result, in the affluent nations of the world, many congregations are getting weaker and are just struggling to survive.

Current Church Crises

In his ‘Foreword’ to the 1962 edition of The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes which Hinder it, Kenneth Grubb writes: ‘He [Allen] shows us how to start again from the beginning, but he is not always so clear about how to start from halfway down the course.’ ³ While Grubb was speaking about the policies of international missionary societies, these words might also describe the application of Allen’s ideas to contemporary congregations in Europe and America. How might one introduce the concept of non-stipendiary ministers to congregations and parishes which have known the ministry of professional, university and seminary trained clergy for centuries?

Paradoxically, the current church crises of aging congregations, dwindling attendance, and church closures in Europe and America may be opening up the possibility and potential of new forms of the church. The crises are real. The Church of England reports that about 20 church buildings are closed for worship every year. ⁴ Similar statistics are true for Germany, France, most of Europe and also America.

Perhaps the biggest crisis organized churches face today is the loss of young people. Seventy percent of Protestants age 18–30 drop out of church before the age of 23, and give multiple reasons for their departure. Robert Wuthnow writes, ‘Unless religious leaders take younger adults more seriously, the future of American religion is in doubt,’ ⁵ When asked why they left the church, 22% said that the church often ignored the real problems of the world. Others said that the church was not relevant to their career or interests. ⁶

Both the closing of many churches and the exodus of young Christians, many of whom retain their faith, can be understood as the death knell of Christianity as we have known it. However, these crises might also provide a wonderful opportunity to both refocus its message on the good news of the kingdom and new forms of the church led by non-stipendiary ministers.

Roland Allen to the Rescue

In his day Allen was ‘prescriptive’ in writing about the need for non-stipendiary clergy in new mission congregations. This was the whole argument of his first book, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? ⁷ As telling and cogent as the argument was, it was met with great resistance partly because it went against everything that missionary societies were doing. Who was this Roland Allen telling others how they should be doing their mission work?

In our day, Allen’s argument is not so much ‘prescriptive’ as much as ‘permissive’. As a result, Allen’s insights are much less law than they are good news. What does a congregation do when it is too small to keep up a church building and pay its pastor? Here is where Allen comes to the rescue saying, the building can be sold and the pastor can be replaced by elders (bishops) who are blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, etcetera (I Timothy 3:2f.). It would be perfectly suitable if you would bless (ordain) several of your leaders and continue to be the church in this place.

After an acceptable time of grieving for what has been lost, members can look to the future with a sense of relief. Now there is no need to sorrow over the loss of membership and the selling of the building. Though less money is collected, none of it is spoken for. Suddenly there is more money to be given away than before. People can meet in homes, in the back rooms of restaurants or any other available space. Were church members, however, simply to leave their buildings and clergy for small groups or house churches, the church might still age and die. Roland Allen was not simply concerned about the form of the church; he was also very concerned about the relevance of the church to every culture and concern.

Allen and the Relevance of the Church

As a missionary, Roland Allen was very concerned in making the Christian message meaningful to those to whom he was sent. However, he found that by insisting upon an institutional training for local clergy and promoting their professional status often removed them from the living concerns of their people. In writing about Christ’s education of the disciples Allen writes:

Christ trained His leaders in the midst of their own people, so That the intimacy of their relation to their own people was not marredand they could move freely among them as one of themselves; we train ourleaders in a hot house, and their intimacy with their own people is so marred that they can never thereafter live as one of them, or share their thoughts. ⁸

Allen was concerned about making the Gospel relevant to people of different ethnic cultures in the missionary lands. Thus, he advocated that people from within those cultures were the best people to evangelize and nurture their own people. He believed that every group had its own natural leaders and teachers. He regretted that by insisting on professional training of a few elite pastors the natural leaders were silenced and the church might lose their gifts. ⁹

Often young people and other disaffected folks constitute a similar ‘alien culture’ to church goers today. Thus, they may well be ‘out of reach’ for a university or seminary trained parson employed by a congregation or church body. This is compounded by the supposed need to remain aloof from political and social questions to concentrate on the preaching of a narrow Gospel and the administration of the sacraments. No wonder that the church becomes more irrelevant and isolated from common concerns.

To bridge the growing gap between the church and society, we need both a new message and new messengers. The new message is really the old message that ‘the Kingdom of God is at hand.’ The church no longer needs to be concerned about its survival, its control, or its influence. Its mission is not to build the church but to bring the hope of the kingdom, the new world society. Allen is right that this hope is centred in a conversion to Christ. Allen writes:

If we set Christ first, faith in Christ first, the Name of Christ first, we set men on a sure road to something that is infinitely good, but that progress is in Christ, not in our intellectual, moral, and social doctrines, and we cannot set them on that path except by bringing them to Christ. We must put Christ first. ¹⁰

Christ is key but Christ’s message was about the coming kingdom. The good news of the coming kingdom is that Christ forgives sins, feeds the hungry, provides water for the thirsty, heals the sick, provides jobs and home, liberates the captives and brings peace between people. The evangelism message for today is that in Christ there is hope for all of these concerns shared widely among all the peoples of the world.

Together with the new messages (really, the old one) the church needs new messengers. These are the voluntary clergy. One might say these are the ‘old clergy’ responsible for the tremendous growth of the church in the first 3 centuries. Allen defines voluntary clergy as follows:

Voluntary clergy are men who earn their living by the work of their handsor their heads in the common market, as serve as clergy without stipend orfee of any kind. ¹¹

Coming from the society and not the seminary, such clergy would intimately know the problems and concerns of the people they sought to reach. They would not have to learn the culture; they would have been brought up within it. Furthermore, because they require no funds, each local congregation would have more resources to help the people in their neighbourhood. In fact, in the pattern of congregations in the New Testament, they might even have money left over to help the needy in congregations elsewhere.

How might congregations led by voluntary clergy bring the hope of the coming kingdom to their community? Which of the promises of the kingdom would a small house church be able to address? Coming from that society, knowing their own people and the struggles they face, Allen had the confidence that they would know what to do and how best to do it. ¹²

The Prophetic Ministry of the Church

As the state and societal organizations took over significant areas of social ministry, some members of the church felt excused from social responsibility. Others left the church to get on with what they felt was the real mission of helping the vulnerable. Still others in the church have felt a great responsibility to speak to the powers that be, to advocate help for the hungry, for the environment, for the sick, for the unemployed, for the captives and to bring peace between nations. Church conventions and convocations have passed resolutions and church hierarchies have issued statements. However, as the influence of the church has waned, these statements and resolutions have largely been ignored.

Meanwhile on the streets thousands, if not millions, of people have sought to address the rising inequalities between rich and poor, and the mass unemployment of a whole generation of young people. As the largest corporations dwarf many medium and small nations, states are no longer even able to address some of these global issues. Needed is vantage point above and beyond the nation-state to address these issues and the means to do it.

Allen was right; Christ is the key. The vantage point for addressing global issues is the cosmic Christ. ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers’ (Colossians 1:15,16). Lost in much of contemporary politics is precisely the world-wide vision of the cosmic Christ and the Kingdom he promised.

If Christ is the vantage point for a prophetic ministry, what are the means to address world needs and promote some global solutions? In the past were some courageous clergy to address world needs and suggest some political solutions, many in his congregation would leave saying that this is not really the business of the church. Others would criticize such action and warn that if this continued, the church would lose its contributors and might have to close.

Though Allen does not speak to this concern, his promotion of the voluntary clergy does. For Allen, the church did not need any money to survive and thrive. Therefore, it was free to speak out then, and also now. Where will the church gather to speak out on the important issues and be present in humanitarian crises? If voluntary clergy are part of the unemployed demonstrating on the streets, the signs they hold can be the prophetic message for the day. If the voluntary clergy are distributing blankets, tents, and medicines in an earthquake, famine, or flood, the church there will speak volumes in its concern.

But, do those speaking out really need Christ and his church? Can they not simply demonstrate, and help? Of course they can. However, Christians working in the coming Kingdom will want to be where this kind of ‘Kingdom action’ is taking place. Empowered by their faith in Christ and moved to be part of his Kingdom work, Christians will bring with them a sense of hope, focus, inspiration, and endurance.

The Sacraments and the Kingdom

If the church building is gone and the remaining group cannot afford a full-time pastor, what will be the shape of the church and its focus? For Allen, the church from its beginning, met and grew around the sacraments. Allen writes:

He (Paul) taught them the form of the administration and the meaning of the two sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. There is not a shadow of evidenceto support the notion that the sacraments were considered optional in the early Church.In the writings of St. Paul it is taken for granted that every Christian has been baptizedand that all meet habitually at the Table of the Lord. ¹³

One of the reasons why Allen wanted voluntary clergy to be ordained was so that it would be possible for Christians throughout the world to receive the sacraments as often as they wished. In commenting on the importance of the sacraments in the theology of Roland Allen, Åke Talltorp writes:

In the theology of Roland Allen, the Sacraments are regarded as constitutivefor the Church. ‘Christ instituted his Church when He ordained His Sacraments’. ¹⁴ ‘There is no question that it is the observance of the rites of Christ which stamps the Church. It is the celebration of Holy Communion which is the crux. That is the key of the situation. That is the great witness which Christians bear before the world.’ ¹⁵ The reason for the local Church to be properly constituted is its task as a witnessing community. ¹⁶

What might the church look like in preparation for an occupy protest, an emergency medical unit in a disaster area, or a quiet village that has closed its church building? There would be a gathering for inspiration, sharing hope, urging endurance, and centred in the sacrament. Then in the sacrament would again be the incarnation of God present among us, centred in Christ’s sacrifice for us and giving us the power to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the Kingdom. As members share the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine, they are reminded of our task to forgive sins, share food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, and healing for both the body and the conflicts between people.

We Are Not Alone

Struggling with world unemployment, disease, poverty, hunger, and war, each small group of Christians finds themselves helpless in the face of such overwhelming challenges. Yet, we are not alone. In advocating the use of voluntary clergy, Roland Allen faced one of the greatest challenges to his thesis. By letting clergy arise from within the congregation he would be undermining the unity of the church. What if each small group would go off on its own and lose contact with other Christians of the same persuasion? In answering that challenge, Allen opened the door to an entirely different concept of the unity of the church and in so doing, shows us how Christians, and even people of other faiths, can work together for a new world society.

Like St. Paul, Allen believed that Church unity was a given. It was not something to be created because it already existed. Churches were not independent; they were extensions of the one Church. There was only one Lord, one faith, one God and Father of all. As a result there could not be two churches in different places with one head, yet not being in communion with one another. ¹⁷

Allen believed that there were two ways of maintaining that union which already existed. One was through the transplant of laws, customs, of the founding church to the younger churches. This had been done through church laws, central administration, a priori tests of orthodoxy, and the universal application of precedents. ¹⁸ Allen, however, believed that unity maintained on the basis of law was wrong. He writes:

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 teachers of the Jewish law, he was a preacher of Gospel as opposed to the system of law. . . His method was a method of Gospel, not a method of law. ¹⁹

Allen asserted that Paul was more interested in a spiritual unity. Paul taught unity chiefly by taking it for granted. Secondly, he used his position as a Pharisee with a Greek education to bring about an understanding between the two cultures. Thirdly, he encouraged the younger churches to make contributions to the poor in the mother church. Last of all, he encouraged great communications between the churches through letters and a network of visitors. ²⁰

For the foreseeable future there will continue to be a wide variety of churches, with or without denominational labels. Some will continue to have professional paid clergy and an increasing number will have voluntary clergy. Yet for those who take for granted the unity of the church under our common Lord, we realize the profound truth that we are not alone and there are many to help in the coming Kingdom.

With the focus on the Kingdom of God, The New World Society, are we also working with those of other faiths? Of course we are. Has it not warmed our hearts to see the Red Crescent ambulances work together with those of the Red Cross in times of an emergency? Focused on the promises of the Kingdom, Christians freely work with those of all faiths and those who have no religious faith to bring healing to our world. Working with others we also witness to Christ who brings us the enduring hope that the Kingdom is at hand.

The Apostolic Ministry

Today, who will give permission that closing a church building is all right, that it would be a blessing to ordain voluntary clergy, that instead of worrying about the church’s survival, we should concentrate on the promises of the Kingdom? It is not likely to come from the headquarters of a church body or from a successful mega-church. It is not currently the goal of the universities and seminaries that educate clergy.

Nearly all of those who have been nourished by Roland Allen’s writings, and have celebrated his influence in their lives and ministries, have been deeply connected with the missionary work of the church. For them, ‘apostolic’ is not a term that carries with it ecclesiastical authority. Rather, it describes the function of being sent by Christ to bring the good news of the coming Kingdom.

Needed in our day is a new ‘apostolic ministry’ for churches in crises. Allen believed that there would be a continuing need for excellent academic education. St. Paul had that type of education and it is still necessary for today, not to serve as the pastor of a local congregation, but to be an ‘apostolic minister’ in the pattern of Paul.

Even as Christ said, the Kingdom of God is at hand, so too, a new pattern of church life is at hand. Perhaps we will only start with twelve or so ‘missionary types’ who have imbibed the good news from Roland Allen. However, clergy now losing their congregations might rethink their vocations. Some might well take on secular occupations and become ‘voluntary clergy’. Others, inspired by St. Paul, might well choose to become apostolic ministers. Now institutions training clergy for non-existing congregations might rethink their mission and educate many of their students to be missionaries like Paul.

Roland Allen brought good news to missionaries struggling to create churches in new lands in the pattern of the ones in their homeland. Today he continues to bring good news to congregations that no longer can continue the in the patterns of the past. In doing so, he frees congregations and their leaders from their concerns to keep the church going. In that freedom Christians can again concentrate on bringing the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand.