"We must be willing to begin with positive teaching, not with negative prohibitions, and be content to wait and to watch whilst the native Christians slowly recreate their own customs as the Spirit of Christ gradually teaches them."

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Source: Roland Allen, David M. Paton (2012). “The Ministry of the Spirit: Selected Writings of Roland Allen”, p.35, The Lutterworth Press

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Roland Allen

Missionary

Roland Allen was a British priest and missionary known for his influential writings on mission practices and the role of the laity in the church.

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"The spontaneous expansion of the Church reduced to its elements is a very simple thing...What is necessary is faith. What is needed is the kind of faith which uniting a man to Christ, sets him on fire."

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"If we allow the consideration of heathen morality and heathen religion to absolve us from the duty of preaching the gospel we are really deposing Christ from His throne in our own souls."

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"The apostles were moved, not so much by an intellectual apprehension, as by a spiritual illumination. They met men, and the need of those men whom they met cried aloud to them."

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