ACTS: The Coming of The Missionary Spirit

(abridged from Pentecost and the World)

Roland Allen (1918)

The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was the coming of a missionary Spirit. The
Spirit stirred in the hearts of the disciples of Christ a great desire to impart that which
they had received. He revealed to them the need which Christ the Redeemer alone could
supply. He enabled them to pass on to others that Gospel which they had so generously
received. He directed them to reach out farther and farther into the Gentile world,
breaking down barriers of prejudice which might have hindered their witness, or
prevented them from receiving into communion those most remote from them in habits of
thought and life.

In the book of Acts, the gospel was spread not only by those set apart for this work, but
also by the general body of disciples. After the death of Stephen “they that were scattered
abroad went everywhere preaching the word”, and the Apostles are expressly excluded
from the number of those who were so scattered. In Galatia, after Paul’s second visit, it is
said that the churches were established in the faith, and increased in number daily. From
Thessalonica “the Word of the Lord sounded forth, and not only in Macedonia and
Achaia”, but far beyond. The whole history of the Church in the early centuries witnesses
to the fact that the disciples were missionaries to the nations among whom they lived.

This Spirit, the missionary Spirit, was given to every believer. Whosoever received the
Spirit of Christ in some degree, if only by approval and support of the efforts of others,
expressed that desire for the conversion of the world which the Spirit inspired. What was
wholly unknown, what was unthinkable in the early Church, was that Christians should
oppose, or deride, or even fail to support, men who were laboring to spread the
knowledge of Christ in the regions beyond. Those that knew the Biblical narrative knew
that God had the “ends of the earth” as His ultimate passion.

Not even the Judaizing party in Jerusalem did that. The Judaizers protested strongly
against the form in which the Gospel was proclaimed to the Greeks; they sent out their
own emissaries to attack, to undermine, and to destroy the influence and teaching of Saint
Paul. But their opposition was directed, not against the conversion of the Gentiles, not
against missionary work itself, but only against a particular form of evangelism which
they deemed to be dangerous. It was universally agreed that the Gospel must be preached
to all the nations. (see Luke’s statement from the resurrected Christ himself that is used to
bring to a close his first volume- Luke 24:45-49)
All who received the Spirit of the exalted Christ were more or less conscious then of the
missionary passion and impulse of the Spirit. They all truly obeyed the command of their
Lord to go into all the world, for they possessed a Spirit which impelled them to desire
the world-wide manifestation of their Lord. Now it is the world-embracing Spirit himself
which obeys the command rather than the wandering body. Christ came into all the
world, though in the flesh He never went outside Palestine. It is obviously necessary to
avoid the mistake of thinking that the reception and expression of the missionary Spirit of
necessity involves going on missionary journeys, or that missionary journeys are truer
and fuller expressions of the missionary Spirit than any other. The Spirit of redeeming
love is manifestly expressed as truly in striving for the salvation of those around us where
we live as in preaching to multitudes across the seas. It is the reception and the
expression of redeeming love which is the all important issue, rather than the manner or
the form of the work in which that Spirit is expressed.

The desire produced by the Spirit for the salvation of the world may be expressed in any
form of Christian activity; but that Spirit is not revealed to others with equal clearness by
every form of activity. In the book of Acts, Saint Luke makes the revelation of the Spirit
clear to us by setting before us the acts of those whose lives were devoted to what we,
today, call “missionary” work. If he had dwelt upon the labors of those who were not
engaged in this special missionary work the revelation would have been less clear. The
work of those who organized the churches may well have been as true expression of the
Spirit of redeeming love as the work of those of whom we are told the most. But if Luke
had written at length of church organization we should have probably missed the
revelation of the Spirit of Christ as the Spirit which labors for the salvation of the world.

By insisting upon the missionary aspect in the book of Acts, we learn to know the Spirit
as the Spirit who inspires active zeal for the salvation of others which enables us to easily
perceive the same Spirit in other forms of activity as well. We understand that the
organization of the churches and the addressing of social conditions are equally forms in
which the Spirit in us finds expression. Every form of work can be undertaken by that
same Spirit, each individual finding his unique activity to best manifest that same desire
for the salvation of humanity which the Holy Spirit inspires.

In this sense, if we believe in the Holy Spirit as He is revealed in the Acts, we must be
missionaries. We cannot accept the teaching, we cannot believe that the one thing of
eternal importance to our souls is to receive and to know this Spirit, without feeling
ourselves impelled to the missionary task of Christ. We cannot believe that the Holy
Spirit reveals our own need and the need of all humankind without beginning to feel that
need of others for Christ laid upon us as a serious call to participation. We simply cannot
believe that this Spirit is given to us precisely that those who so need Christ may be
brought by us to find the one way of salvation for their souls and bodies in this world and
in the world to come, without feeling impelled to present ourselves as His human
instruments. We must embrace the world because Christ embraces the world, and Christ
has come to us, and Christ in us desires to embrace the world.
Activity world-wide in its vision and intention and hope and goal is inevitable for us
unless we are ready to deny the Holy Spirit of Christ revealed so clearly in the Acts.

Roland Allen was an Anglican missionary in China working with the Society of the Propagation of the
Gospel. Later he labored some 40 years writing missionary principles, retiring to Africa, where he died in
Kenya in 1947. First edition of Pentecost and The World was in 1912. Courtesy E4 UNITY Institute.