An Ancient Model for Modern Mission: Lessons from the Life of St Patrick

The Context

It is the 5^th century AD, and the gospel has followed the roads of the Roman empire across north Africa, the middle east and continental Europe. Merchants and diaspora Jews have been significant in taking the gospel to Ethiopia, Armenia and the western coast of India. Everywhere that has roads and ships for trade, the gospel is carried.

But what about mission where empire and its infrastructure hasn’t gone? Mission in places where there are no roads, no trade routes across seas with ships to journey on, where the terrain is difficult - mountainous, boggy, and unmapped.

Mission where there are no towns or cities, no urban centres to draw a crowd, or carry the gospel from. Mission where there is no written language, only an oral tradition. Where letters cannot be sent to new churches. Where there is no knowledge of the Jewish God, or Greek gods or Roman gods. Where there is a worldview that is spirit-orientated, filled with an invisible spirit world which is more real than the material world and yet so entwined with it, it is hard to separate the two.

What about the unreached, illiterate, unsophisticated people of the lands at the ends of the earth? God wants them at his banquet for all nations. Whom shall he send to the land so dark and cold that the Romans call it the land of winter - Hibernia, now called Ireland, who will go?

The Call

The answer comes in the unassuming form of a parish priest serving in a church in Romanised Britain. He is motivated by a dream he had years previously. In his dream Priest Patricius hears a voice from Ireland pleading “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.” In response he has studied the scriptures, trained in ministry and reached the point where his church considers him ready to send.

But Patricus is old, possibly in his forties which is a good deal beyond the average life expectancy at that time, of 31.

And he well knows the challenges he will find in Ireland.

At the age of 16, Patricus was taken prisoner by a group of Irish raiders who were attacking his family’s estate on the west of Britain. They transported him to Ireland where he spent six years in captivity working as a shepherd, outdoors and often away from people. Lonely and afraid, he turned to his religion for comfort, becoming a devout Christian.

After more than six years as a prisoner, Patricus escaped. According to his writing, God spoke to him in a dream, telling him it was time to leave Ireland.

Now many years later, he would be returning.

The Ministry

He was going back as the missionary and bishop who would become known as Patrick.

He would be going to Ireland as an outsider, to do cross-cultural mission. The Romanised culture in Britain was very different from that in Ireland. Yet, this would help him see things which perhaps the Irish people were blind to and therefore never questioned. He could bring an outsider’s perspective.

Despite this he was also to some extent an insider. Someone who had spent 6 years in the most difficult circumstances in the country. He knew the landscape, its challenges, its people, their language, festivals and traditions. He would thus be able to bring the good news in a way appropriate to the people.

There were many different aspects to the ministry of Patrick and the group of people who ministered with him which stand out. We see these same aspects are also evident today in places where the church is growing.

The Model

The first of these is a commitment to prayer.

Patrick’s mission was planted with deep roots of prayer. Like the desert fathers in north Africa, hermits would withdraw to live on isolated crags, on mountains, in forests and on tiny islands, where they could focus on God and live a very simple life of contemplation and intercession. They were called green martyrs as they gave up every comfort of life to give themselves to worship and prayer.

For those who were ministering amongst the local people many written prayers are recorded which show a strong awareness of the presence of Christ in every aspect of life. Lives that were linked closely to land and weather and seasons. The God they prayed to was a God who was near and cared about the details of their lives.

Even today wherever the church has seen great growth, it has been borne out of great prayer. In Kenya the Kesho, an overnight prayer meeting, was very common especially among young people and in South Korea the practice of withdrawing to prayer in the mountains preceded and fuelled church growth.

A second aspect of the ministry of Patrick and his companions was their engagement in spiritual battles.

The people of Ireland were decidedly spirit-orientated and had many gods. They were captive to these, needing to placate them with sacrifices and ritual. The activities of these spirits brought fear, anxiety and often terror. The spiritual dimension of Christianity was something that fitted into their worldview, God was spirit – a spirit that was good, the Holy Spirit, that was more powerful than any other spirit and could overcome any other spirit. This was indeed good news. The writings of Patrick and others in this movement tell of the supernatural power of God, demonstrating his love, provision, and power, but also telling of the danger involved in calling the pagan Irish away from the worship of false gods and turning to the one true God.

In much of the world this awareness of the spiritual realm is also very real and can be a source of fear and related responses of appeasement. The good news of God’s power in defeating evil as manifest in the form of the spirits is transformative, and in believers there is a great emphasis on the presence, power, gifts and workings of the Holy Spirit. When Indonesia experienced revival in the 1960s it was with signs and wonders.

Thirdly and finally Patrick lived among the people he ministered to.

Though there were no significant urban centres, clan chiefs had influence over groups of people. The missionaries asked to live beside them and this enabled engagement and modelling. They had strict rules about piety and lived simply, witnessing to their faith in how they lived.

With time they built houses which could provide shelter to the sojourner, care for the sick, provide literacy for the learner, gardens to grow medicinal herbs and vegetables, and a place to gather together for worship. In essence these early monasteries were mini towns, providing the services that you might find in a European town, but modelled on the monasteries of north Africa and the middle east.

Living in priestly proximity to people, brought opportunity for the gospel to be shared in one direction and the questions that culture was asking of the gospel to be shared in the other direction. Allowing for a Christianity shaped by its context to be formed. A Christianity which responded to the culture it was in. It used art to tell Bible stories on stone crosses and in illuminated literature. It took the stories of the people in their heart language and put them down in writing, it recognised the value placed on things like the number three and showed how this related to the triune God.

World Christianity today tells similar stories, of cultures who have interrogated scripture from their context, who see how their questions are answered and how God speaks to the things which are significant to them in everyday matters.

Our World Embracing God

And so, within a few centuries a people considered uncivilised pagans by the Romans became a people transformed by Christian faith. Slavery and human sacrifice became unthinkable and warfare diminished. The maps that would be drawn of the country would bear thousands of placenames bearing the pre-fix kil - indicating a place of worship. Patrick’s mission nurtured Irish scholarship, and raised a new generation of Irish missionaries who would replace the pirates on the seaways and carry their faith to Scotland, and England and into continental Europe.

Next week we celebrate St Patrick’s Day (17th March), as it is thought to be the day the man who became patron saint of Ireland died.

In so doing, we celebrate a British man, who read the Bible in Latin and whose missional style borrowed heavily from north Africa, yet planted several hundred churches in Ireland, and began a missionary movement to Scotland. A man that enabled an indigenous expression of faith to flourish to the point that some would call it Celtic Christianity.

What an amazing world-embracing God, to use such diversity in this place, for his glory.

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St Patrick’s breastplate (excerpt)