Category: Quotes

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Foreigners and Aliens – quote from Roland Allen

Roland AllenThis year is exactly one century since an English missionary named Roland Allen wrote
a ground-breaking book, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?  In the book, Allen wrote truthfully and prophetically,

“Foreigners can never successfully direct the propagation of any faith throughout a whole country. If the faith does not become naturalised and expand among the people by its own vital power, it exercises an alarming and hateful influence, and men fear and shun it as something alien.”

 

Other Articles on Roland Allen:

The Legacy of Roland Allen: Part One-His Life
The Legacy of Roland Allen: Part Two-His Philosophy of Missions
The Influence of Roland Allen on 21st Century Church Planting
Audio Presentation on Roland Allen by Dr. J.D. Payne

 

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“I Mean Something Which We Cannot Control” by Roland Allen

Roland AllenIf we are willing to relinquish control and allow for spontaneous multiplication in our churches, we will see the gospel go further than we ever dreamed possible. In the classic book written ahead of its time, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church: And the Causes That Hinder It, Roland Allen describes the advantage of losing control in a release of spontaneous multiplication.

By spontaneous expansion I mean something which we cannot control. And if we cannot control it, we ought… to rejoice that we cannot control it. For if we cannot control it, it is because it is too great, not because it is too small for us. The great things of God are beyond our control. Therein lies a vast hope. Spontaneous expansion could fill the continents with the knowledge of Christ: our control cannot reach as far as that. We constantly bewail our limitations: open doors unentered; doors closed to us as foreign missionaries; fields white to the harvest which we cannot reap. Spontaneous expansion could enter open doors, force closed ones, and reap those white fields. Our control cannot: it can only appeal pitifully for more men to maintain control.

Other Articles on Roland Allen:

The Legacy of Roland Allen: Part One-His Life
The Legacy of Roland Allen: Part Two-His Philosophy of Missions
The Influence of Roland Allen on 21st Century Church Planting
Audio Presentation on Roland Allen by Dr. J.D. Payne

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A Leader Who Finishes Well

The Making of A LeaderIn his outstanding work “The Making of A Leader,” J. Robert Clinton studied the lives of hundreds of leaders and asked the question- “What makes a leaders finish his/her life well?” We use the answers to this question in our Organic Greenhouse Story 2 Training to push our leaders to have a long-view of finishing well. These were what Clinton found to be the top 5 commonalities:

A Leader who Finishes Well:

1) has a perspective that focuses his/her energies on ministry strengths.

2) maintains a learning posture throughout all his/her life.

3) enjoys repeated times of personal/spiritual renewal.

4) mentors others while continuing to be mentored.

5) disciplines her or his own spiritual formation.

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Are you a Church Person or a Kingdom Person? by Brad Brisco

It is so easy for people in the church—especially those “doing church work,” including both staff and volunteers—to become “church-centric” rather than “Jesus-centric” or “Kingdom-centric.” We can become so fixated on the programs of the church that we lose sight of the real reason, or purpose, behind our activities. In a book called Liberating the Church, author Howard Snyder sums up this tendency in this way:

The church gets in trouble whenever it thinks it is in the church business rather than the Kingdom business. In the church business, people are concerned with church activities, religious behavior and spiritual things. In the Kingdom business, people are concerned with Kingdom activities, all human behavior and everything God has made, visible and invisible. Kingdom people see human affairs as saturated with spiritual meaning and Kingdom significance. Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy and truth. Church people think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church change the world. . . . If the church has one great need, it is this: To be set free for the Kingdom of God, to be liberated from itself as it has become in order to be itself as God intends. The church must be freed to participate fully in the economy of God.

Are you a church person or a Kingdom person? Does your church need to be “liberated” to participate more fully in God’s economy or mission?

— Brad Brisco

Originally posted on his blog 

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Arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed…

“Many of us Christians have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by its implications. We arrange things so that we can get on well enough without Divine aid, while at the same time ostensibly seeking it. We boast in the Lord but watch carefully that we never get caught depending on Him . . . . Pseudo faith always arranges a way out to serve in case God fails it. Real faith knows only one way and gladly allows itself to be stripped of any second way or makeshift substitutes. For true faith, it is either God or total collapse.”
-A.W. Tozer, “Root of the Righteous”
(thanks Maurice Smith & J. Guy Muse from their Facebook pages)
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The Father is a “Seeker”

I had an amazing meditation time today thinking about this:

But the time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way. NLT John 4:23

I have read this a gazillion times, but the truth of that last sentence astounded me…the Father is looking for worshippers. WOW. He is the “seeker” of people who will bow their life down toward Him. He is the one on the Go, on the Lookout, the aggressor in nudging people toward worshipping Him.

What an amazing God we serve…one who created us and one who comes after us even when we have built walls between ourself and Him. May we worship–bow our life down towards Him–that way…the way He wants, the way he seeks!