We very quickly began to discover that those congregations under a voluntary local ministry of this kind [village churches in India, led by laypeople immediately after their inception] were far more spiritually alive than those under the oversight of the paid agents of the mission… In this way I have seen the gospel spreading from village to village, so that in this particular area where there were only thirteen congregations ten years ago, there are now nearly sixty entirely as a result of this kind of voluntary spontaneous expansion of the Church, and without requiring the addition of further burdens to any kind of mission budget.
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| — | Lesslie Newbigin, A Word in Season pp27,28 |
