What does Paul's missions strategy mean for today?A century ago Roland Allen published Missionary Methods: Saint Paul's or Ours?, a missiological classic which tackled many important issues, including what biblically rooted missions looks like in light of the apostle Paul's evangelistic efforts. Although Allen's work is still valuable, new understandings have been gained regarding Paul's milieu and missionary activity, and how his practices ought to inform missions in our ever-changing world.Using the centennial anniversary of Allen's work as a springboard for celebration and reflection, the contributors to Paul's Missionary Methods have revisited Paul's first-century missionary methods and their applicability today. This book examines Paul's missionary efforts in two parts. First Paul is examined in his first-century context: what was his environment, missions strategy and teaching on particular issues? The second part addresses the implications of Paul's example for missions today: is Paul's model still relevant, and if so, what would it look like in modern contexts?Experts in New Testament studies and missiology contribute fresh, key insights from their fields, analyzing Paul's missionary methods in his time and pointing the way forward in ours.Contributors include- Michael F. Bird- Eckhard J. Schnabel- Benjamin L. Merkle- Christoph W. Stenschke- Don N. Howell Jr.- Craig Keener- David J. Hesselgrave- Michael Pocock- Ed Stetzer- M. David Sills- Chuck Lawless- J. D. Payne
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Yes, you can access Paul's Missionary Methods by Robert L. Plummer, John Mark Terry, Robert L. Plummer,John Mark Terry in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Theology & Religion & Christian Ministry. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
It was Martin Kähler who first said that mission was “the mother of all theology.”[1] Roland Allen’s Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? was a resolute confirmation of Kähler’s dictum. The doctrines that Paul taught emerged principally out of his missionary situation. Consequently, any contemporary practice of mission has to appropriate Paul’s missionary methods and the theological rationale undergirding them.[2] In fact, the more we learn about Paul’s missionary methods, the more we might learn something about his theology too!
Allen also stressed that Paul’s missionary endeavors did not occur in a cultural vacuum. He pointed out that: (1) Paul focused his missionary work on certain provinces that contained a Roman administration, Greek culture, and Jewish influence and that bustled with commercial activity, because these centers were the most conducive to promoting the gospel in its wider environs. (2) Paul did not focus his efforts on any particular class or group of people, but engaged all hearers and inquirers. Paul entered cities as a Jew, a teacher of a form of Judaism, and claimed to be preaching a new revelation about the Messiah, but he did so in terms that addressed the sophistication of the Greek mind. (3) Paul’s missionary preaching tackled the worldview of his audience and features of their beliefs in things such as evil spirits, morality and religion, slavery, and the amphitheater.[3] Thus, Paul’s missionary success is partly attributable to his ability to understand and utilize his own peculiar contexts.
Allen’s discussion of Paul’s missionary context was rather terse and lacked the sophistication of someone like Adolf von Harnack, who meticulously described the forces and factors in the Greco-Roman world that made the expansion and growth of the early Christian mission possible.[4] Sociologist of religion Rodney Stark has also utilized sociological studies and appealed to factors as wide ranging as immunology to account for the rapid growth of the Christian movement.[5] In what follows, I want to describe briefly those features of Paul’s Jewish, Greek and Roman contexts that explain the success of the Pauline mission. Obviously, Paul’s faith in God and in the Lord Jesus—and the work of the Holy Spirit through him—drove his mission. However, we still have to be mindful of the geographical, political, cultural, linguistic and religious factors that God actually used to promote the gospel in the Greco-Roman world through the apostle Paul and his companions. That, I hope, will lead to a more thorough knowledge of the context of Paul’s missionary activities.
The Geographical Context of Paul’s Mission
Ancient authors knew of different people groups, ethnicities, tribes and nations spread across the inhabitable world. Luke records how, on the Day of Pentecost, the Galilean followers of Jesus began speaking in other tongues and praising God in the languages of the “Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:9-11). Luke also records the words of Jesus to the disciples, that they will be “witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8) which is virtually a table of contents for the Acts of the Apostles. But what was the “end of the earth” for people living in the Greco-Roman world?[6]
The world as the Romans knew it was a world basically cordoned off with Ethiopia in the south of Africa, India and mysterious lands to the east, Spain and the British Isles to the west, and the Germanic tribes to the north of Italy. Many ancient geographers such as Demetrios of Kallatis, Strabo, Pliny the Elder and Dionysius of Alexandria had written accounts of the peoples, lands and nations that they encountered in their journeys or had heard about from others. For most of the geographers, the major continents were Europe, Africa and Asia. It is interesting that Jerusalem lies close to the intersection of all three! This was the world known to the ancient Romans, though Parthian (i.e., Persian) authors obviously had better knowledge of the East such as India and China, as they came into contact with travelers from those regions more frequently.
The explosion of Christianity in the first two centuries meant that missionaries had reached many of these lands. By A.D. 70, not long after Paul’s death, there was a network of small Christian communities comprised of Jewish and Gentile adherents spread across Alexandria, Syria-Cilicia, Cyprus, Galatia, Asia, Mysia, Macedonia, Achaia, Cappadocia, Pontus-Bithynia, Dalmatia, Crete, Edessa and Damascus. The gospel had spread to all the lands that the early Christians knew. But the evangelistic work continued in the postapostolic era, and Eusebius records that a certain Pantaenus of Alexandria reportedly set off for India for evangelical work early in the second century.[7] In the developing church of the second and third centuries, the expansion of the church was regarded as part of the Christian message itself.[8] Some second century church fathers even thought that the Christian mission to the “end of the earth” had actually been achieved during the apostolic and subapostolic ages. Christians spread in such a profusion all over the Mediterranean and even into the Parthian regions that Tertullian could say to Roman critics of Christianity: “We [Christians] are but of yesterday, and yet we already fill your cities, islands, camps, your palace, senate, and forum. We have left you only your temples.”[9]
Paul wrote this to the Gentile churches in Rome:
For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ; and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation. . . . But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, any to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while. (Rom 15:18-24)
Evidently, Paul considered his work in the East complete—complete in the sense that he had established clusters of churches in many major urban areas, churches capable of reproducing his own evangelical efforts in that location and beyond it (it was the church in Ephesus that probably established the churches in Laodicea and Colossae!).[10] Paul now intended to continue his missionary work in the West after a brief visit first to Jerusalem to deliver the collection to the saints there.
In terms of a pattern, Paul consciously worked in areas that were under Roman control and usually had a Jewish community of some form. Paul appears to have spent most of his time in and around coastal cities in the eastern Mediterranean, perhaps because travel was easier to come by and they were major population centers bustling with people and commerce. There were exceptions to this. Early in his career Paul had spent some time ministering in Arabia and Damascus (2 Cor 11:32; Gal 1:17). But thereafter he focused on Roman provinces in the East. For instance, Luke tells us that when Paul and his companions “had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them” (Acts 16:7). From there Paul could have stayed in any number of the Hellenistic cities that existed between Damascus and Babylon, among the northern cites of the Decapolis, or as far south as Petra, and ministered among Jewish communities in the Far East all the way to Babylon. Yet Paul went west instead, into Greece and eventually onto Italy. There might be more going on here that just travelling convenience as Paul’s ambition to go to Spain might imply that he was influenced by Is 66:19, “I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud [Libyans and Lydians, famous as archers], who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan [Greece], to the coastlands far away that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations.” Although Spain did not have a thriving Jewish population and it was more Latin-speaking than Greek-speaking, Paul’s plan for visiting Spain (= Tarshish) was part of the itinerary in his role to declare God’s glory in Christ Jesus to Jews and Gentiles among the nations as part of the Isaianic script for the end of Israel’s exile and the beginning of the new creation.[11] Paul probably saw himself as a postcard for God’s glory that was being delivered all over the Roman world.
The Greco-Roman Context of Paul’s Missionary Work
There are several important facets to the Greco-Roman world of Paul’s day that enabled and facilitated his missionary work and communication with a network of Christian churches.[12]
Successive empires including the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman kingdoms had dominated the Ancient Near East. Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) led Greek armies to conquer Egypt, Asia Minor, Palestine, Persia and even parts of India. Alexander established Hellenistic cities throughout his conquests with the express purpose of spreading Greek language, learning and culture. This attempt to disseminate Greek culture was successful to the point that the Greek language became the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean. That is not to say that everyone in the East spoke Greek (see Acts 21:37). Indigenous languages persisted for some time. But Greek became the international language of commerce, politics and literature. The widespread usage of Greek enabled the spread of ideas and information through various oral and written media in the ancient world. Paul the Greek-speaking Jew from Tarsus (Acts 21:39; 22:3) was well acquainted with Greek language and customs, which enabled him to navigate effectively the socioreligious complexities of life in the eastern Mediterranean. Greek philosophy, concerned as it was with both ethics and religion, lent itself to thought about creation, god, religion, the immortality of the soul and the highest good. The schools of Platonic, Pythagorean, Epicurean and Stoic thinkers concerned themselves with asking questions about supernatural realities that Judaism and Christianity sought also to engage with the resources of their sacred texts and traditions.
The nature of the Roman Empire changed markedly after the accession of Augustus who, after successive civil wars, eventually became the unchallenged ruler of Rome and the Roman provinces in 27 B.C. Augustus reorganized the empire into imperial and senatorial provinces and embarked on a process of fiscal reforms. The Romans ruled provinces directly through proconsuls and legates, but often allowed client kings to rule as long as they kept the peace and taxes kept flowing back to Rome. Legions did not occupy all provinces, but were stationed in key points such as Italy, Gaul, the Danube and Syria. Paul found himself frequently caught between Roman officials and local authorities and was often imprisoned in Roman garrisons. Importantly, the Romans strove to propagate through the ancient media of coins, inscriptions, imperial decrees and even poetry the myth that Rome’s ascent to power had been divinely determined and, therefore, the peoples of the world should acquiesce and submit to Roman authority for its own good (see especially Virgil’s Aeneid). The Romans rewarded faithful subjects with citizenship and enabled others to come under the protection of its military might and legal system—something Paul too could use for his own advantage when he required it (Acts 16:35-40).
The Romans revolutionized travel in the ancient world. This is significant because travel was “the transmission belt for the gospel.”[13] Lines of communication were improved during the Roman period in a number of ways. First, Gnaeus Pompeius successfully led a campaign around 70–67 B.C. to rid the eastern Mediterranean of pirates who terrorized sea farers, threatened Rome’s grain supply from Africa and interfered with communications with the provinces. Second, by building roads and bridges, the Romans provided reliable and well-used forms of travel over land. Third, governors and local authorities were charged with protecting travel routes from bandits and thus ensured a degree of security for merchants and officials in their journeys. Travel by both sea and land became safer and faster during the Roman period. Not only travel but also the transmission of written communication became far more effective and reliable during this period. Augustus even introduced a postal system for the whole empire.[14] The international mobility afforded by Roman engineering and military presence meant that Paul’s various missionary journeys through Palestine, Syria, Asia, Greece and Rome were in a large measure possible because of the new routes that had been opened up and maintained by Roman infrastructure.
The urban centers in Greece and Asia Minor show a clear interface of Greek and Roman culture. Places like Corinth were reestablished as colonies for retired veterans. Corinth is full of Greek and Latin inscriptions. The cities were filled with temples, markets, various shops, baths, gymnasia and amphitheaters that provided means of entertainment and employment. Life in the cities was often crowded, and multistory tenements, called insulae, were densely inhabited. Early Christian meetings probably took place in many of these insulae but also in the apartments or houses of richer members who had significantly more spacious living quarters. Many of the Pauline churches were established in these dense and multicultural urban centers and probably met in a mixture of house churches, shops and lecture theatres.
Greco-Roman religion was inherently pluralistic. Veneration of local deities as well as Greek and Roman gods took place side by side. The Romans and Greeks often incorporated Eastern deities into their pantheon by identifying them with existing gods like Zeus or Jupiter. The Greco-Roman world contained a potpourri of public and private cults that developed out of archaic Roman and Greek religions and often absorbed Near Eastern religions such as the mystery cults. This was often combined with beliefs in astrology and folk religion centered on demons and spirits. Temples a...
