Patrick's Mobile Missionary Village

I bind unto myself today

The strong name of the Trinity

By invocation of the same

The Three in One, the One in Three.

 -The breastplate of Patrick (A.D. 389-461)

Knowing that I have come to the strong conviction that the ultimate goal of all mission activity should be the planting and establishing of healthy churches, a friend once asked my opinion about whether I thought there was any role, therefore, for missionaries who are not church-planting pastors. In response, I thought of Patrick. The kind of model for mission work I really have come to believe in I actually have never seen anybody try. There are, of course, elements of our ideal model for missions we have retro-fitted into our current situation. But what Patrick did was unprecedented, then and now.

First, Patrick spent many years in preparation in the monasteries of France before he was ordained to be a missionary to Ireland. When Patrick finally left Roman-abandoned Britain to bring the gospel to the barbaric Gaelic-speaking Celts and Picts of the wild frontier of Ireland, the land of his former enslavers, he took with him an entire entourage. He is said to have encouraged his co-laborers on the ship along the way to Ireland's shores with the words, “Let us fish well, for the Lord called us to be fishers of men and to preach the gospel to every creature.”[1] This group of gospel-preaching fishers-of-men was like a traveling micro-village comprised of not only clergy but smiths, farmers, and at one point even whole families. They were a nearly self-sufficient village of their own and their plan was to set up camp adjacent to a pagan village or cluster of villages. Once in place they would not only preach and teach, but also live out the gospel in their daily lives before the neighboring pagan village. Almost immediately after their arrival to Ireland a local tribal chief converted and gave them a piece of land upon which stood an old a barn. Patrick converted the barn into a church meeting place. Through trade and relations over time the Christian community would begin to absorb and transform the pagan community. A new entourage would then be formed and be sent out to set up shop next to another village until it too was completely evangelized and it went like this for decades until the whole region (long after Patrick) was won for Christ. For an inspiring synopsis of Patrick’s approach check out The Celtic Way of Evangelism by George Hunter. I don't agree with all of Hunter's concluding applications but the history is fascinating. I think this is a good model for a mission or church-planting team today. Only, things might operate differently in an urban setting. Likewise, in contexts where there are existing established churches, it is important to get as many believers involved in the initial church-village as possible. In contexts where the church-planter is a foreigner they ought to take a back seat and thrust the national believers into the leadership roles as much as possible. That's not always immediately possible and it means a lot of extra work at training and constant conflict resolution, but it is ideal. This is why we have moved to Dearborn to labor at church-planting. In Dearborn we are indigenous. And it is why we moved out of the role of "church-planter" when in the Middle East and into a role of national leadership development and training putting Middle Eastern national pastors and hopefully potential national church-planters at the head of the work.

 

So, of course, not everyone participating in the church-planting endeavor is going to be a pastor. There are needs to be met in any context within and outside the believing community (only that farmers, smithies, and laborers may translate to administrators, techies, and developers). When those needs are met by the church-planters as a ministry of a new local church community (village) it really puts the church on the map and helps to bolster the gospel message which must be primary. There are a variety of gifts, skills, and tasks, but everyone should have the same goal - to see the gospel preached and the church established and thriving and planting more churches.

[1] Richard Hanula, Trial and Triumph. Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press. 1999. p. 48