Indigenous pioneers
By Charity Sites
To understand the how of the unreached, one must understand
how indigenous principles became the strong force that they are in AG World
Missions today. These missionaries were most influential in bringing these
issues to the forefront of our mission and followed New Testament principles
through which national churches are now flourishing throughout the world.
The Inspiration
Roland Allen trained for ministry at Britain’s Oxford
University and became a priest in 1893. In 1895, he traveled as a missionary to
northern China. During his missionary work, he began to re-evaluate missionary
methods of establishing churches. Allen realized that national churches could
not be formed or developed in the same way as Western churches. Instead, they
must be established to function and grow on their own — in other words,
to be self-supporting, self-propagating and self-governing. In 1912, he
conveyed his ideas concerning indigenous missions in his well-known book,
Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? Allen’s work
was the inspiration which ignited a missions effort
that would focus on indigenous principles.
The Initiator
Alice Luce became a missionary to India in 1896. Almost 15
years later, she served with a missionary group in Vancouver, British Columbia,
where she felt called to Mexico. Her passion was to reach out to
Spanish-speaking countries and so, after meeting missionaries Henry and
Sunshine Ball, the idea for Latin American Bible Institute was birthed. Ralph
Williams, who later served as a missionary to Latin America along with Melvin
Hodges, served as the school’s first superintendent. Luce wrote most of the
curriculum and became well-known for her missionary service in education.
In 1921, inspired by Roland Allen, Luce wrote a series of
three articles in the Pentecostal Evangel entitled “Paul’s Missionary Methods.”
These writings introduced indigenous principles to the Fellowship. Later, in
the May 9, 1931, Pentecostal Evangel, Luce wrote an article called “Scriptural
Methods in Missionary Work,” where she expressed her observations of missions
in the New Testament Church:
“This recital of the crying need of Christless lands makes
us feel how hopeless and impossible is the task of taking to them all the
Gospel, how can we ever complete the task? The solution of the problem seems to
me to lie in the missionary methods of Paul. He taught, established and
grounded nationals in the Faith during his first visit to them, and then he chose out from among them deacons and elders in whose care
he left the infant churches … the whole burden of the support, government and
extension of the churches appears to have been left to their own national
workers.”
Luce was keenly aware that how missions is done must be grounded in principles that had already been established by the
early Christian Church. The most effective way to reach the unreached was,
essentially, to help national believers help themselves. Giving national
churches the ability to support themselves and thrive on their own creates a
greater opportunity for the churches to multiply.
“I firmly believe that we missionaries are doing our best
work when we are training the national workers to go forth and carry the Good
News themselves.”
Luce’s plea was for missionaries to make indigenous
principles a priority, knowing that it would bring the greatest results for the
Kingdom.
“If we twentieth century missionaries followed Paul’s
methods without fears or misgivings, I believe we should soon see the national
churches growing faster than ever, and a robust type of Christian life would
develop which would surpass our highest expectations.”
Undeniably, Luce was right.
The Integrator
In 1918, at the age of 25, Noel Perkin went to Argentina as
a missionary. After four years he returned to the U.S., married Ora Blanchard, and they began pastoring. In 1927, Perkin became
Assemblies of God foreign missions secretary (now executive director). In 1929,
indigenous practices were written into the records of the General Council, and
in 1931, the first missionary manual was published. This manual included
principles for national church relationships.
Under Perkin’s leadership, two significant policies were
instituted that shaped the future of the Fellowship’s mission throughout the
world.
The first was the commitment to establish indigenous
churches. We do not transplant the American church abroad. The 1931 AG
missionary manual, published under Perkin’s leadership, states: “The winning of
souls to Christ and establishing of assemblies in all places where converts are
won should be regarded as the primary objective of all missions.” It further
stipulated that missionaries were to establish churches that were
self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating.
Second, Perkin closely followed Alice Luce’s belief that
missionaries are most effective when they are “training the national workers to
go forth and carry the good news themselves.” His passion for advancing the
cause of Christ throughout the nations was guided by indigenous methods, and his
leadership in foreign missions created opportunities to integrate these
principles into AG missionary activity.
Perkin, having a banking background, understood the numerous
benefits of self-support. He conveyed his priorities through many writings to the
Fellowship and missionary family:
“The big task of the missionary is to make missionaries from
the national Christians. More people are won to the Lord from the ministry of
national evangelists than by the word of a foreign missionary. The work in Nigeria
doubled in a short space of years, and it was attributed to the faithful
witness of national Christians and not to the ministry of the missionaries. …
Our work in Central America is very largely carried on by national ministers
receiving no support from foreign source” (Published in Heritage magazine, Fall
1987).
These are just a few of many examples in which Perkin led
the way in incorporating indigenous principles into the Fellowship’s
methodology. Policies and practices he initiated more than 70 years ago
continue to guide AG World Missions today.
The Instructor
In 1936, Melvin and Lois Hodges left for Latin America as
appointed missionaries. After a year in El Salvador, they served in Nicaragua,
where Hodges founded the Matagalpa Bible School and served as president for
five years. While in Nicaragua, he and missionary Ralph Williams helped
organize the Nicaraguan Assemblies of God, and also established a short-term
Bible school. The Hodges family then returned to El Salvador, where Melvin
served as principal of the El Salvador Bible School. He also served as
superintendent of the El Salvador work for four years.
Hodges continued to work in Central America, testing and
proving indigenous principles firsthand on the mission field. Early in his
ministry, he became firmly convinced that training national workers was the key
to the effective evangelization of any country. He, along with other pioneer
missionaries, planned curriculum and prepared for some of the first organized
Bible schools in what is now recognized around the world as a model mission
field.
In 1950, Hodges became the field superintendent of the
Assemblies of God Fellowship in all of Central America. During his term, the
number of churches in Central America increased by more than 400 percent In 1953, the Division of Foreign Missions asked Hodges to
publish the church planting principles which were producing such amazing
results in Central America, and so he wrote The Indigenous Church. Hodges
defined and refined principles that had been established by early founders and
became one of its strongest advocates.
In 1954, Hodges became field secretary for Latin America and
the Caribbean, overseeing missionary efforts in 26 countries. He served in this
position for 20 years. During that time, the number of churches in Latin
America more than doubled and the number of members increased by more than 700
percent.
As Hodges dealt with these indigenous principles in depth,
he kept reiterating the importance of laying the right foundation in establishing
indigenous national churches. Hodges rightly stressed that if principles were
compromised early on, it would be very difficult to correct, as was experienced
in Liberia and Togo (see page 16). If, in the construction of a building a
foundation is crooked, the compensations to try to straighten it can often be
more difficult than laying a right foundation in the beginning. This is a
primary reason why AG World Missions values and practices indigenous methods of
evangelism and training from the start.
Missionaries Roland Allen, Alice Luce,
Noel Perkin and Melvin Hodges were used by the Holy Spirit in helping our
Fellowship practice biblical principles that continue to effectively reach the
unreached. Clearly, establishing indigenous churches that multiply
themselves is the primary way to how we can reach the billions who are still
lost and waiting for the message of the Savior.
CHARITY SITES is a missionary associate with AG World
Missions Communications
E-mail your comments to tpe@ag.org.
