Spontaneous Expansion

I'm going to try to organize some thoughts about the books I'm having to read for class, and generate ideas of my final paper... this will be from The Sponaneous Expansion of The Church by Rolland Allen, if anyone decides to read for themselves.
Chapter 1. The Nature of Sponaneous Expression
When a person experiences the life changing power of Christ, they will naturally desire to share that experience with those around them. That person will share with with their peers, and I really like how Allen writes this... "He speaks from his heart because he is too eager to be able to refrain from speaking. His subject has gripped him. He speaks of what he knows, and knows by experience."
This really makes me wonder about how evangelism in the U.S. that became all about huge numbers of people praying to receive Christ, saying a prayer... don't get me wrong, I know the Holy Spirit can totally speak to people at rallies and conferences, and change their lives for Christ... but should we wait to count converts until actually seeing their heart and life changed? It seems like more of us here would share our faith naturally, eagerly, which also makes me wonder, how many of us actually have experienced God's deliverance and power and healing in our hearts and lives? It's just, this makes sense to me, we will share what we experience, and grow deeper through our sharing of that experience... I don't know... but I am certain that there are many who profess Christ here in the U.S., who know about Christ but do not have a vibrant living relationship with him, and there are also many who get so entrapped in sin and blinded by Satan's lies that they never do experience the freedom, deliverance, and full abundant life that Christ promises! So... what is my own testimony, what am I eager to share with my co-workers and friends and family of how God is working in my life?
The power of this tesimony is that it is voluntary and spontaneous - that is, if you are not being paid to share the gospel. I have friends in the ministry, and I want to go into the ministry myself, but we all know this is true to a certain degree, both here and overseas. I mean, if people think it is my profession to share the gospel, well, they know it is not my faith alone compelling me to share. Once I begin full time seminary studies, will the power of my testimony be affected because those non-beleivers will think I am simply gaining a new degree for a new means of employment? And, at my work right now, I feel a certain attitude would arise among co-workers that those in the full time ministry are so divorced from the stresses of normal everyday life, and that if they were not ministers of a paid profession, maybe their own faiths would dissolve over time as the demands of their family and career took over. I'm thinking particularly about my boss, who seems amused at my own faith, and Bible study, and desire to share Christ with the world, and has made comments that imply one day, I'll grow up, get married, have a family, and the pressures of life will not allow me time for Bible study and outreach and church. I cannot say that this could never happen. I see how it has happened to her, and many others, and it makes me pray that I will cling to God's Word as my life through all stages of my life. My boss also though does not beleive in the inerrancy of scripture, which would in the end make the surest difference in anyone's faith - if you stop believing God's word to be truth that is relevant to your life, well, why would you make studying it and fellowship around it a priority? All this to say, though, that our attitude that you need to be a trained minister to be able to share the Gospel is really a hindrance to the growth of the church, and that your own testimony might truly be a more powerful witness to a co-worker and a friend than the best sermon the best preacher can preach.
We distrust this "spontaneous expansion" process, for a lot of different reasons. We cannot control it, for one, and that is true, if the Holy Spirit is moving from person to person, that is certainly not something in our control! However, if we try to restrict that movement we can quench the movement of the Spirit and kill the spread of the gospel for all our good intentions. But should our fear of spontaneous expansion to become disordered be what dictates our missiology? I'm thinking the only fear we should have is a fear of God, and if in the end God holds us accountable for our desires to keep things in our control, to the detriment of the Gospel being spread, we need to take that seriously indeed.
"We cannot possibly open the door to an unrestricted freedom for the expression of the natural instinct and spiritual grace without opening it also to the expression of self-will; and that we dare not do." Wow. Missions during the time of expanssion and colonialism sometimes was really muddled, and I hope that at this point in history those out there spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth have a more noble goal for God's glory and name to be spread to the ends of the earth, for the planet to shout in worship to Him for our salvation.
Allen points out that actions that hold self will restrained also will restrain the zeal of a new beleiver, and that zeal and fervor is what would naturally compel the Gospel forward, goodness why have we ever gotten in the way?
If we fear that there will be disorder and rebellion against the Gospel and the church if we do not keep it under our control... we really miss a greater danger of an even greater rebellion that Allen points out... that, our efforts to control which diminish the zeal of new converts, eventually will be recognized by those foreigners we've tried to reach, and when their intellectual capacity allows them to see that foreigners used a Gospel message to keep them under control - they will resent the message we present and rebel. Whoa.
I'll begin chapter two later, but I will say this... these critiques Allen puts forth on how we've done missions (and granted his book was written 45 years ago and today the world of missions has grown and taken heed of many of his warnings and debated the ideas he writes about in this book...) but it makes me think, if this is how God works through the rest of the world, how has the church grown in such a different way here in the West, and has our church growth been of a lasting addition to the body of Christ, or merely been inflated numbers for us to be able to count and judge our progress in ways we can count and organize and see... I will have to keep thinking about this, and this class makes me want to take church history as well... when did church start also becoming about church buildings, not just fellowship between beleivers, and how that transition from focusing on the spiritual to the material has affected our understanding of what church, and the body of Christ, should look like. Hmmmm...