Missionary Matt Allen said we should discuss the indigenous church. So here goes a first little post:
Three-Self Formula. In the nineteenth century two missionary executives, Henry Venn of the British Church Missionary Society and Rufus Anderson, a North American Congregationalist, were concerned about the lack of viable churches. They arrived almost simultaneously at what has been called the
three-self formula: self-support, self-government, and self-propagation,
terms created by Anderson. Theirs was a bold attempt to produce churches that would remain steadfast, but often it did not work. Stephen Neill argues that the premature withdrawal of the mission effort, leaving the church in the hands of the “native pastorate” in Sierra Leone in 1860, “inflicted on the Church a paralysis from which a whole century has not availed to deliver it”. That failure could have been because the national preachers occupied a position which was alien to the local culture. For a useful historical and theological analysis of the hundred-year-old three-self formula, see Beyerhaus.
I personally believe that there are four basic abuses to the indigenous church:
–leaving too soon
–giving too little help
–giving too much help
–staying too long
Check out bcwe.org
