As I work on the literature review for my dissertation, I am tracking the development of evangelical missions strategy from its earliest days to its modern form in the prevailing models of Disciple Making Movements/Church Planting Movements (DMM/CPM). I will be posting reflections on my readings here, as a form of pre-writing. This post represents one in that series of reflections.
In his sweeping overview of missions history, David Bosch identifies the Enlightenment era as a time when Christian missions were intertwined with the interests of Empire. During this period, the spirit of missional self-sacrifice took a back seat, and European Christians spread abroad to instill what they viewed as civilization into people they believed were their inferiors. It was also a time of increasing pragmatism in the missionary outlook, as the Protestant Reformation’s break with tradition introduced a forward-looking disposition and the ideas of the Enlightenment encouraged more methodical sensibilities among ministers.1
In these regards, Henry Venn is both a product of his time and ahead of it. Grandson of a founding member of the Clapham Sect, Venn was imbibed with William Wilberforce’s abolitionist spirit. Yet, a subtle paternalism nonetheless emerges in some of his writing.2 Venn’s view of native churches as almost equal partners in the Gospel allowed him innovate new ways of doing missions sustainably by accessing local resources, while at the same time failing to imagine an ecclesiology capable of taking root in non-English soil.
Son of Clapham
Born in Clapham, on the outskirts of London on February 10, 1796, Venn grew up under the influence of a group challenged by the Evangelical Revival, but unwilling to sever ties with the Anglican Church. Most famously exemplified by Wilberforce, these evangelicals enjoyed positions of power and privilege in English society and sought to levy that influence through public advocacy outside the Church and spiritual activism within it.3
After excelling in his studies at Cambridge, Venn began a career as a minister, and eventually became Vicar at St. John’s in Holloway. During this time, he promoted and took part in the activities of the Church Missions Society whenever he was able.4 In 1840, his beloved wife Martha died of tuberculosis. Deeply marked by the loss, he never remarried and seemed unable to settle back into parish ministry. By 1846 he had resigned his pastorate to devote himself fully to the CMS, where he found a deeper sense of calling.5
As Honorary Clerical Secretary, Venn was as pragmatic as he was idealistic. He was single-minded in devotion to his principles and litigated them fastidiously. His ingenuity and attention gave him an energy that exasperated others, but his sweet tempers won their affection.6 He made it his mission to analyze and overcome the challenges faced by CMS missionaries through extensive correspondence. Availing himself of his position, he encouraged missionaries to write frequent reports the successes from which he learned all he could, and responded with verbose letters of advice.7
The Euthanasia of a Mission
Venn held native believers in higher esteem than was common for his time. He wrote to an indigenous member of CMS’ Sierra Leone mission, “I have always had great hope in the African heart,” and expressed confidence that, once converted, his countrymen were capable of becoming “devoted followers and zealous preachers of Christ.”8 Elsewhere, he celebrated an interpretation of Revelation 7 that included “every petty distinction of jealousy or envy laid aside,” as all races become “united, as brethren—all perfected in love. Glorious day!”9
Because of this, Venn was capable of envisioning native believers who could advance the Gospel and not just passively receive Christianity’s civilizing influence. But it was also Venn’s pragmatism that shaped his missions strategy. In 1841, the CMS faced a financial crisis that spurred them to consider whether native churches should be freed from their dependence on the missions society.10 Furthermore, in a surprisingly modern-sounding passage, Venn references the “insufficiency with the magnitude of the work” in India, arguing that the self-extension of native churches are more effective than “a few scattered missionaries… one to 100,000 heathens.”11
These dispositions led the CMS to adopt the principle that the work of a missionary was to lead “heathens” to a “knowledge of Christ,” and organize them into a “Native Christian Church.”12 Once the native church reached the point of “self-support, self-government, and self-extension,”13 the missionary should move on to new mission fields and leave the new congregation under the care of its own native pastor. Venn called this “the euthanasia of a mission.”14
The Church Principle
The CMS—like the Clapham Sect—was staunchly Anglican. Years before, Venn’s father John Venn wrote that the CMS was to be founded upon “the church principle, not the high-church principle.”15 By this, the society was to maintain both its Anglican identity and Evangelical character. Subsequently, Henry Venn’s letters of instruction to his missionaries did not depart from this principle.
He advised the CMS to pay the salaries of European missionaries and native catechists in their employ, but not the pastors of native churches. These, he insisted, should be determined by a native church committee.16 However, these pastors were to remain under the missionary’s superintendency, a result of Venn’s meticulous step-by-step process for the maturation and eventual euthanasia of a mission.
It began when the missionary won his first few converts and formed them into a “Christian Company” lead by a “headman.” Multiple of these companies could then be joined together into a congregation under a “schoolmaster.”17 Next, “one or more congregations are formed into a Native Pastorate, under an ordained native, paid by the Native Church Fund.” These pastorates in turn come together to form a “District Conference” and ultimately a “native Episcopate.” Venn himself likened this hierarchy to “the Parish, and the Archdeaconry, under the Diocesan Episcopacy” of England.18
In Retrospect
According to modern DMM/CPM strategists, “those in movements believe that ‘every believer is a disciplemaker.’”19 They believe that native churches should propagate themselves by planting more churches.20 They caution against overbearing foreign involvement for fear of dependency.21 We may think of these ideas as cutting-edge missions strategy, yet they are present at the beginnings of Evangelical missions in Henry Venn. For those who believe in “finishing the task” of Matthew 24:14,22 it begs the questions, why have we still not finished the task? Where is the euthanasia of Christian Mission as a whole?
One answer is that “our precommitments to the Christendom mode of church and thinking restrict us to past successes and give us no real solutions for the future.”23 Venn’s own insistence on an episcopal polity for native churches certainly supports this conclusion. But Bosch notes that churches planted under the philosophy of the three selfs never really grew up. Instead, they merely survived and—to make matters worse—“segregated themselves from the surrounding culture and existed as foreign bodies”24 in order to do so.
This resulted in a fundamental lack of what has been called a theological identity in many African churches,25 which may be seen today in questionable belief systems such as the prevalence of prosperity theology across the Sub-Saharan region.26 To remedy this, Bosch recommends a fourth self: Self-theologizing.27 The ability of native churches to develop their own indigenous theologies, he argues, represents a process of inculturation that allows them to take root and spread within a culture.
Achieving this will take radical flexibility on the part of those of planting churches. Though we—like Venn—may feel more comfortable reproducing church structures familiar to us, we would do well to remember the Pauline movement’s use of the ekklesia as an identity, rather than an institution.28 This allowed them to make their church structures more fluid in shape.29
Like an iron melted down, the process of becoming more fluid—which may helpfully be called ekklesiation—may help a nascent church become more adaptable. Indiginization then follows ekklesiation as the church is set into the mold of its surrounding culture.30
Conclusion
Henry Venn’s ideas led generations of missionaries to value the contributions of native churches. Such legacy alone is commendable enough, but his criteria for discerning the autonomy of new churches set evangelical missions on course towards reproducing movements. Yet his failure to fully trust native believers with their own ecclesial models inhibited their growth and led to churches unable to pioneer indigenous theologies that spoke to the heart of their surrounding culture. In the end, asking whether Venn was ahead of his time or a product of it is perhaps another way of asking the same question of ourselves.
David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (20th Anniversary Edition, Vol. 00016, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2011), https://research-ebsco-com.dtl.idm.oclc.org/linkprocessor/plink?id=8f77cc4e-33c4-300f-ad2b-88c52b45e75a.
In a letter to the Bishop of Kingston, Venn refers to challenges posed by working with those converted by a missionary of “another and superior” race:
Henry Venn, “The Organization of Native Churches,” in To Apply the Gospel: Selections from the Writings of Henry Venn, ed. Max Warren (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971), 78.
Wilbert R. Shenk, Henry Venn—Missionary Statesmen (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books in collaboration with the American Society of Missiology, 1983), 1–2.
Max Warren, “Biographical Details,” in To Apply the Gospel: Selections from the Writings of Henry Venn (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971), 13.
Shenk, Henry Venn, 13.
Warren, “Introduction,” To Apply, 19.
Shenk, Henry Venn, 24.
Henry Venn, “Letter to an African,” in To Apply the Gospel: Selections from the Writings of Henry Venn, ed. Max Warren (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971), 61.
Venn, “The Beginning of a Mission,” 58.
Shenk, Henry Venn, 25.
Venn, “The Work of a Missionary,” 91.
Henry Venn, “Second Paper, Issued July 1861,” in “Minutes on the Organisation of Native Churches,” appendix in William Knight, Memoir of Henry Venn, B. D.: Prebendary of St Paul’s, and Honorary Secretary of the Church Missionary Society (Cambridge Library Collection – Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 414.
Ibid, 415.
By these “three selfs,” for which Venn is best known, the CMS meant that a native church should: 1) Provide for its own financial needs; 2) Ordain and submit to its own leaders, and; 3) Proselytize and convert new members from the surrounding area.
Venn, “The Establishment of a Native Church,” 63.
Shenk, Henry Venn, 20.
Venn, “A Native Ministry,” 65.
Venn, “The Organization of Native Churches,” 69.
Ibid, 70.
Stan Parks, “What Is a CPM?,” in 24:14 – A Testimony to All Peoples, ed. Stan Parks and Dave Cole (Spring, TX: 24:14, 2019), 39.
David Garrison, Church Planting Movements: How God Is Redeeming a Lost World (Midlothian, Va.: Wigtake Resources, 2004), 22.
David and Paul Watson, Contagious Disciple-Making (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2014), 35–37.
Parks, "The 24:14 Vision," 2-3.
Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church (Winnipeg: Manitoba Education and Advanced Learning, Alternate Formats Library, 2014), 85–86.
Bosch, Transforming Mission.
Kwame Bediako, Theology and Identity: The Impact of Culture upon Christian Thought in the Second Century and in Modern Africa (Minneapolis: 1517 Media, 1999), https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1ddcqrj.
Paul Borthwick, Western Christians in Global Mission: What’s the Role of the North American Church? (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2012), 100.
Bosch, Transforming Mission.
Ralph Korner uses the language of a “permanent group designation.”
Ralph J. Korner, The Origin and Meaning of Ekklēsia in the Early Jesus Movement (BRILL, 2017), 153.
Craig Ott and Gene Wilson, Global Church Planting: Biblical Principles and Best Practices for Multiplication (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 102, accessed February 24, 2025, ProQuest Ebook Central.
See also,
Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church, rev. and updated ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013), 64–70, http://site.ebrary.com/id/11058592.
Meeks describes the many forms taken by the early church.
Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 75–84.