Roland Allen Republished

Robert Schmidt Editorial Note: In 2001 Robert Schmidt had the opportunity to visit with Hubert Allen, the grandson of Roland Allen and biographer of the famed missiologist. Together at Oxford’s Bodleian Library Dr. Schmidt and Mr. Allen re-examined Roland Allen’s unpublished manuscript, ”The Ministry of Expansion: The Priesthood of the Laity,” in anticipation of its…
Read more

Letter to the Christian Nobility of the World

Robert Schmidt Editorial Note: Robert Schmidt was a seminary professor in Nigeria from 1960 to 1963. The first draft of the following paper was written in the late ’60s after he returned to the United States. It probably will not be helpful for those pastors struggling to keep their congregations and their careers afloat in these difficult…
Read more

The Elastic Lutheran Polity

John Hannah In the early 1960s the ecumenical vanguard was the Consultation on Church Union (COCU). It involved Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Congregationalists in an effort to bring together their quite diverse and mutually exclusive understandings of ministry and church polity. American Lutherans were not involved, but we are evolving slowly but surely toward restoration of…
Read more

Wittenberg and Missional Ecumenism

By Matthew Becker Last October an article appeared in the Lutheran Witness that claimed “Luther’s home city (Wittenberg) includes no Lutheran congregation.” The article quotes Matthew Harrison, executive director of LCMS World Relief and Human Care: “There are people with deep Lutheran sentiments in Wittenberg, but there is no congregation organized and operating under the…
Read more