The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church: And the Causes Which Hinder It - by Roland Allen
The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church by Roland Allen is a rather short but very thought provoking book. In it, he somewhat implicitly asks the question, Who builds the Church? Leading to that thought, he critiques our method of Evangelization, are we doing it right? Do we need to organize the expansion of the church? Do we need to establish mission stations, do we need missionaries who depend upon appeals for money for their support. Will the Gospel spread if we don't purposefully come up with a plan to spread it? Allen warns that what we are trying to do in our methods is to organize the work of God, to dictate where people will get saved and a time period in which their salvation must happen. But as Allen points out, " For spiritual work spiritual organization is necessary; but can we create a spiritual organization of spiritual forces? Only a divine intelligence can do that. But we attempt to do the work of that divine intelligence;...