Works of Roland Allen Enter the Public Domain

9th June 2018 marks the 71st Anniversary of the death of Roland Allen, one the most influential missionary thinkers of the Twentieth Century. This also means that his numerous works are now all in the public domain.

My thanks to the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide for providing copies the following titles, include his most famous book, Missionary Methods St. Paul’s or Ours.

Roland Allen [1868-1947], Missionary Methods St. Paul’s or Ours. A Study of the Church in the Four Provinces. London: Robert Scott, 1912. Hbk. pp.234. [Click to visit the download page]

Roland Allen [1868-1947], Missionary Principles. London: Robert Scott, 1913. Hbk. pp.168. [Click to visit the download page]

Roland Allen [1868-1947], Educational Principles and Missionary Methods: The Application of Educational Principles to Missionary Evangelism. London: Robert Scott, 1919. Hbk. pp.138. [Click to visit the download page]

I thought that this extract for the Wikipedia article on Roland Allen would serve as a helpful introduction.

Allen became an early advocate of establishing Churches which from the beginning would be self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing, adapted to local conditions and not merely imitations of Western Christianity. These views were confirmed by a trip to India in 1910 and by later research in Canada and East Africa. It is with this background that Allen wrote his book Missionary Methods which was first published in 1912. It has been suggested that his thought was influenced in part by the earlier primitivist writings of Anthony Norris Groves and by the Brethren movement.

Allen’s approach to Mission strategy for indigenous Churches is based on the study of Saint Paul’s missionary methods as he is convinced that in them can be found the solution to most of the difficulties of the day. He believed it was the recognition of the church as a local entity and trust in the Holy Spirit’s indwelling within the converts and churches which was the mark of Paul’s success. In contrast was Allen’s belief that the people of his day were unable to entrust their converts to the Holy Spirit and instead relied in His work through them.

Read more about Roland Allen here.