The Ministry of the Spirit: Selected Writings of Roland Allen

Roland Allen is renowned for his original solutions to dilemmas about mission. His principal works were written in the opening decades of the twentieth century, yet his radical ideas still resound in today's church. The Ministry of the Spirit brings together some of his shorter pieces which have long been unavailable, enabling today's readers to delve deeper into Allen's ideas. Among them are "Pentecost and the World," "Non-Professional Missionaries," "Mission Activities," and an abbreviation of "The Case for Voluntary Clergy." The writings collected in The Ministry of the Spirit sit with Allen's better-known work and are no less penetrating and suggestive for the mission of the church. Allen's fundamental belief in centrality of the work of the Holy Spirit to Church life shapes his conclusion. As Professor Lamin Sanneh says in his Foreword: it is 'hard to believe that Allen first broached these ideas nearly a hundred years ago, for they are so redolent with contemporary meaning.' Roland Allen's experience as a missionary in North China led him to re-assess radically the missionary principles of the Western churches. His work, recognized as prophetic even in his own lifetime, has taken on a new significance in the third Christian millennium.

Lamin Sanneh was educated in his native Gambia as well as Britain and the United States. He taught at Harvard University before taking up his present position as the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale University. He is also Chair of Yale's Council on African Studies. Sanneh's books include West African Christianity; Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture; and Encountering the West: Christianity and the Global Cultural Process.