In the Steps of St. Paul

I have just started reading Roland Allen's "Missionary Methods - St. Paul's or Ours". Allen was an Anglican missionary in China from 1895 to 1903. He then returned to England to take charge of a parish, but also spent the next 40 years writing about missionary principles. He himself recognised that he was ahead of his time - but that didn't stop him from posing some challenging ideas. Allen suggests that we can learn a lot by looking at Paul. The apostle achieved a tremendous amount and Allen suggests that his approach was more planned than we sometimes think. Allen suggests that our tendency to regard Paul as exceptional is misleading and that we rather ought to be looking to his methods for guidance as to what we should be up to. Paul's approach is certainly challenging - but isn't that what we need?