in the early 5th century around the time where the church of the east is sending a bishop to merv in turkmenistan thousands and thousands of miles to the west on the shores of the british isles there was a young 16 year old boy who was the son of a roman magistrate and he was captured by irish raiding pirates this young man would become a slave and a shepherd in the northern part of ireland ireland to a chief named and he would spend six years as a slave in the countryside of ireland but there was a turning point in the story he had a conversion experience living in the countryside of ireland taking care of pigs and sheep and he returned to the faith of his parents because we find out later from his biography that his grandfather was a priest and his father was a deacon in a church in a roman british church so he becomes a christian while enslaved in ireland and he has a dream about a boat on the shore of ireland that would be his vessel of risk so he escapes slavery and walks 200 miles to a port where he actually sees the boat that had in his dream gets on the boat and sails to france and that's where the story ended it'd be a really interesting story about a runaway slave who gets to escape but no one would remember it we only remember this story i'm only telling you this story because that runaway slave went back to ireland god called him back to the land of his captivity in week one we looked at the spread of the church north south east and west of jerusalem along jewish diaspora lines in week two we look at the spread of the gospel east of jerusalem to the ends of the earth literally the pacific ocean via the silk road and you may be more familiar right with the spread of the gospel west along roman roads roman trade routes we're actually going further west whereas people are familiar with the story of the spread of the gospel uh to the major roman cities we're going to go literally beyond the roman empire further west to the ends of the earth on the atlantic ocean and we're going to talk about saint patrick and the celtic missionary movement some of you may be more familiar than others with the story of st patrick i kind of told you the basic outline of his life but let's just sketch it he was born in the late fourth century the dates were pretty vague and he lived into the well into the fifth century think he's a contemporary of right saint augustine uh he lived shortly after the roman empire becomes christian but again ireland britain was in the roman empire he was a roman citizen but ireland is beyond the roman empire it is literally the farthest away you can be they didn't think there was anything beyond the atlantic ocean there's an island right north and west of the british isles of britain so let's think about patrick's life and as i said he was a roman britain he was from a local noble family his father was a magistrate and a deacon right he was raised as a local noble probably a well a wealthy family and he was raised as a nominal christian he admits in his biography that he was raised a christian but really did not come to faith until he was in slavery in ireland when he was kidnapped by irish raiders i wanted us to get uh just an image in our mind of what we should think about right for the celtic people first they were seen as kind of these barbarians beyond the roman empire right they were raiders they would come in ships across british isles and capture uh slaves typically women and children they would burn villages down right and they were known for being very violent i'll just give you a couple examples right they are famous for deca and i'll talk a little bit more about the violence in a little bit uh they are famous for decapitating their enemies and then putting their heads on poles all around their camp so when you came to their camp you would see heads sitting on poles uh they're also famous for sort of if they would you know take the head the decapitated head down to a skull they would wear the skulls on their belts as trophies feel they had killed very very violent warring tribes in ireland so when patrick's kidnapped it is it is the the worst thing you can he could possibly imagine happening to him but his six years of slavery in ireland was significant not only did he become a true christian he talks about how he was kind of in solitude with the animals uh as a shepherd had very little food uh he lived outside a lot working as a shepherd for this tribal chief he had after he became a christian he had many dreams and visions during his time there he said he would pray all day long he'd memorize the psalms you kind of almost imagine uh you know david out there in the countryside but not only did he have a remarkable encounter with god during this time in slavery but he also right did not realize it but god's preparing him to be a missionary right he endured significant physical and emotional hardship at a young age right and a lot of time in solitude kind of learning who he was who god called him to be but also he had a significant cultural and linguistic training right he's a british roman but he learns the irish language or languages of the area right he learns about the culture and kind of the he would have been from again a romanized area that was connected with with sort of manners and the civilization of rome but he's in a place beyond that but he learns that culture there he also learns the knowledge of the land right he doesn't live in cities he lives in sort of the countryside of this island and he's remember his 200 mile journey to a port city he gets to kind of learn the ways the routes the peoples the groups that are in this very rural very wild land of ireland we don't know for sure many believe he joined a monastery when he returned to france when he when he you know took the ship and escaped and ended up in france he probably took a few years to actually get home but people if he joined a monastery in france to kind of receive further training but it's a little bit vague the details of his life but when he's home finding him with his family he receives a life-changing dream a vision from god where almost like the man from macedonia the apostle paul describes but he sees these people in detail pleading with him to return to ireland to bring the gospel to them his family was outraged that he considered going back after he had finally made it back home after his his young adulthood had been stolen from him he decides to go back and he's actually sent as a missionary bishop by the bishop of rome to ireland and it's interesting we often think he was the first christian there there were already some christians in ireland and there had already been perhaps some missionary efforts there but it wasn't significant and it hadn't hadn't really produced much growth most of the people's experience with missionaries would have been slaves who were captured with christians i mean there would have been christians in ireland they may have been slaves or there may have been some small christian communities on the coast kind of facing great britain you think about the context that patrick was going into the culture that he had learned uh when he was a slave right the celts were pagans they were non-roman they were not romanized or cultured by roman culture they'd never been conquered by the pagans their language and culture was celtic there have been would have been many different dialects but they were um a people that was quite different and it's quite a cross-cultural move again patrick had the experience there this time as a slave but he was a different culture linguistically they were polytheistic led by a priestly class of druids and everyone kind of in the new age world loves talking talking and thinking about druids we don't know very much about druids in their practices we have some of the ancient we have ancient fragments and texts and sort of sites or worship happen we just don't know a lot but these would have been the priestly class that that had a significant spiritual hold over this land who had connections with the chiefs and the tribal leaders and to give you a sense of the of the sinfulness of the place where petra is coming right this is a society that practice slavery uh against slavery is common in the in the ancient world but significant practices of slavery typically through um capturing people in raids from other from other islands or other tribes and they also practice human sacrifices we'll come back to that in a little bit it was quite a terrifying people to think about especially as a christian as a roman but when patrick gets there and there are many legends about patrick's life we'll just kind of sketch some of the main things that we know and i'll refer to a few of the legends patrick's main strategy when he would get to ireland was first he would reach out to the local tribal leader and think a tribal leader they might call him a king but he wasn't a king over like some large swath of territory he would often be a leader of a clan or a family that had maybe 12 other families around they're pretty small areas where they rule right so i think more like chief or tribal leader or clan leader he would reach out to the local chief and he would basically say hey can i have safe passage through a territory can i speak with you about this new message of christianity what's interesting is there they believe there are about a hundred chiefs or sort of tribes in ireland at the time and patrick really worked his way methodically through the island right coming first to the the leader of the clan and asking if he could preach the gospel some would say yes someone say no some would uh reject him some would embrace him some were converted some tried to kill him some arrested him he had many different experiences often he understood he understood the culture that often he would bring gifts he would actually pay them uh kind of in this gift-giving culture of saying hey i'm coming to you here's my gift to you as the leader here one of the things we learned about patrick is that though some tribal chiefs were converted often the the real significant work he did was among the sons and daughters of tribal chiefs right they might say all right you can come and you can have my son who you might think him as a prince uh but again there weren't that who they were leading right he was just the next in line to lead the the clan um but he said you could have my son he can be your translator he can be your guide or he can kind of be the person who you work with and often it was the sons and daughters of tribal chiefs who became christians and that was really the generation that patrick significantly impacted during this time then what would happen is once there would be a a collection of disciples right pastor would disciple them he would train them sort of in the basics of the faith then he would appoint a deacon or a priest and then he'd move on to the next place right so he established churches and ultimately monasteries all throughout ireland working his way there they're unlike right the gospel moving along the silk road and ending up in major urban imperial centers like tessaphon or like xi'an unlike those massive mega cities the biggest cities in the world at the time where the gospel is spreading and along these significant ancient traders like the silk road ireland is a rural marginal backwater outside of the roman empire completely rural think of sort of clan based pastoral i don't mean like ministry i mean like raising sheep and goats and pigs so patrick's working his way basically these tiny villages tiny communities reaching out sort of the chief discipling often the sons or daughters of those chief and leaving behind a small christian community and he would ordain a deacon or a priest to do communion and baptisms and they'd often begin to start monasteries along the way people believe patrick probably started 300 churches during his lifetime doing this methodical kind of wandering missionary bishop kind of thing so remarkable thing when you kind of put together the pieces patrick was adamant about preaching the gospel everywhere he went again he knew the local language and he wanted to preach the gospel in new places he never just didn't just stay in one place he would keep moving he'd preach the gospel he'd make disciples need planet church and move on and it's interesting patrick in numerous writings of his there are two major writings of his that are still extinct because it's quite a crazy thing to think you know writing from over 1500 years ago still exists two of patrick's writings exist one is his confessions or his autobiography the other is a letter he wrote to a king who he was pretty mad at for doing some slave stealing capturing christians making them slaves but patrick refers himself multiple times taking a spin on jesus telling the disciples they'd become fishers of men patrick in his contextualized way communicated the gospel to these people called himself a hunter of men which is quite an interesting thing uh how patrick saw himself how he contextualized christianity to this very very aggressive and violent tribe right he said i'm a hunter of men and he himself personally baptized thousands of irish people right and his disciples baptized many many more thousands so he talked about with his own hands baptizing thousands as he traveled from village to village trying to try preaching the gospel it's also important notice that patrick preached a message of peace in the midst of warring tribal conflicts right he wasn't armed he didn't come with an army or a king even if there was a tribe that would convert he would always with every tribe sort of say hey can i have safe passage hey can i preach the message here and he was persecuted there are assassination attempts on his life he was imprisoned many times he had lots and lots he sort of exposed himself to the vulnerability of putting himself at the mercy of the people he was reaching another another uh another unique thing here right he's he's working in the midst of sort of these very small tribal conflicts and feuds so the tribes don't see themselves as irish right they see themselves as part of this clan or this clan and they would fight one another but patrick gave them a language right to view themselves as christians so you could be from this tribe or this tribe or that tribe and they may have hate each other but if your christians know you're not part of a larger community right the body of christ and there was a unity in sort of a reconciling tone that patrick brought to this island of sort of this island of sort of small warring kingdoms one final thing that patrick or two final things that patrick is well known for or are the signs and wonders following his preaching many of them are kind of spun out into legend but we know they were healings there were miracles there were power encounters there were significant moments in relationship in relation to evangelism where the holy spirit shows up right and the the power of the holy spirit defeats the powers of the demonic right patrick the priest of god defeats the druid priests you have significant power encounters going on already it's unimaginable that gospel would spread without these kinds of things considering the strength of the influence of the pagan religion at the time there are many many stories i'll just give you a couple right first when they did baptism and this is something that's really intriguing me right now we'll talk about it offline maybe at intensive one day uh when celtic people would baptize they believe that was your moment of exorcism you had been under the power of demonic spirits you've been worshiping evil spirits this whole time you had been sacrificing the evil spirits perhaps eating non-human sacrifice evil spirits there's a recognition that you were literally in the hand of the powers of darkness and when you are baptized it's a moment of exorcism it's a moment where you're being liberated not just from your sin but from the powers of darkness and there's a significant theology of deliverance that patrick and his disciples had because they were in such a demonic a spiritually dark place where it was not only acknowledged but it was seen as an integral part of their lives so there's we could go so much more on there we'll just keep going uh one of a later celtic disciple not patrick's director but a generation or two later columba who's a a rather famous missionary monk sent out of ireland we'll talk about the missionary movement in a few minutes there was this well right that was believed to be imbued with evil spirits and the belief was that anyone who drank from that well would get very sick and columba wanted to demonstrate the power of god over any evil spirits in the area came prayed for the water consecrated the well and he washed his hands and drank the water to demonstrate to the locals that the demonic spirits had no power to make him sick and there had been stories we were getting sick whenever they drink the water and then not only did he break the curse but for generations later there was this belief and perhaps even the experience of people who were sick coming to drink from that well and being healed again so much is is is so old it's sort of uh is sort of a cloaked in legend and mystery but you have significant stories of power encounters going on whether it's with patrick or later disciples in celtic christianity there's even a story of colombo raising a boyfriend that it sounds very much like elijah uh or peter or paul razorfield from the dead so you have remarkable signs and wonders going on here um i could go on i'll i'll stop there the final sign the final thing that we see with patrick is not only does he travel from place to place preaching the gospel making disciples blinded churches but he also establishes monasteries right where people are trained discipled and sent out we can't imagine a celtic missionary movement or transformation of ireland with we can't imagine just in the lifetime of patrick right things happen beyond his lifetime and it's this movement he sets up where they have monasteries and churches as places not just to minister to local disciples who are saved but they send out people beyond and we'll talk more smither talks a little bit and that that's a that's a good place to jump off smither when he's when he reflects in the textbook he reflects on patrick's missional perspective like his missionary understanding right first it's important to note that patrick placed a significant emphasis on dreams and visions there are multiple times in his life whether it's the call to escape ireland the call to return to ireland where his life is transformed by a dream or a vision they're very very vivid they're very specific and they have a significant part in his story and they have a significant part in this missionary movement you'll see this in other places but not in all places like we i we it probably happened we don't know of the patriarch of baghdad saying well i had a dream to send someone to india uh we know that he did it may have it may have been more strategic it may have been more well we have some christians there but patrick has quite a mystical element to his story which sort of begins to imbue celtic christianity and and the celtic missionary movement so the role of dreams and visions but patrick also had a really global scope in his biography he writes his automotive he writes this and i quote he felt predestined to preach the gospel even to the ends of the earth right jerusalem judea samaria into the ends of the earth he felt that going to ireland was not just a well god calling his people he felt that he was quite literally bringing ireland was the end of the earth not metaphorically literally and he felt that there is this geographic thing that god had been doing right this is the same time the gospel spreading deep into central asia and china in the east he doesn't know that but it's happening at this exact same time the gospel is in africa the gospel is going north in other parts of europe but he goes this is the end of the earth there is a reason why god brought me here as a teenager as a slave this is what this is me fulfill it was a very whereas silk road missionaries may have just been preaching the gospel making disciples kind of along the way they were doing business and god had other plans for them right patrick saw it as a intentional cross-cultural bearing of the gospel message to the ends of the earth but one step further and this is you'll see this throughout church history not for every christian generation but several of you know many of them have this patrick believed he was quite literally living in the end times he had an eschatological urgency because he thought hey at least as far as i'm concerned the gospel has gone as far west from jerusalem as it can possibly happen and we know when the gospel preached to the ends of the earth then the end will come and he may have been that first christian who's like well here we are at the atlantic we can't go any further he took that literally um in the same way maybe some of the historian missionaries got to the pacific i thought well i guess there's nowhere else to go i mean there's lots more to do but he had both this sense of great commission uh great commission strategy but also an eschatological urgency about him living in the end times and there was something obviously he was wrong you know we here we are 1500 years later it wasn't in the end times there are a variety of reasons why he might have thought that right the fall the roman empire uh there was a lot of things disintegrating and kind of falling apart but the gospel was continuing to spread so we thought this might be it right this is the end a lot of people at that time thought that and then finally as we've as i've repeated right he saw himself as someone yes he was from uh britain yes he was living in ireland but he saw himself as a soldier as a wanderer that was that's many ways that's the ethos of celtic missionaries right we are people who god sends and we go and we don't we don't really ever land anywhere stay anyways he stayed in ireland but he went all over ireland he didn't just build a house you know build a vineyard and everyone came to him he kept going when you think about the impact of patrick's mission and then subsequent generations right we've talked about thousands upon thousands of irish baptized we've talked about hundreds of churches and monasteries planted even in patrick's lifetime unless not you know beyond that it kept going but then and this gets us to our missionary movement uh thing we've been talking to the groundwork a lot right there are missionaries sent from ireland back into europe right so ireland is on the fringes of the world literally the ends of the earth it's outside the roman empire it's a complete backwater the most uncivilized place people can possibly i'm not saying that they were um they were people who god loves and god valued but as far as any roman was concerned that is as far afield as you can imagine culturally uh and they were they were uncivilized to a roman right they had bizarre uh a bizarre culture and lifestyle and there was sort of a brutal barbarism to the way they lived right human sacrifice warring warring with your neighbors and taking them as slaves right there's a lot of a lot of dark things in the culture but god uses this marginal far a far afield place that's on the fringe of the roman empire and he used it to become a missionary center even though the gospel had spread in france and england and around great britain and scotland it hadn't really penetrated and god uses missionaries from ireland who go back to scotland and then england and then france and then italy can you imagine that kind of vision that patrick's disciples had it was beyond his lifetime actually where they have a pattern of a particular commitment to uh leaving everything behind and preaching the gospel and then behind you you you right you establish churches and monasteries that become others you become centers for more sending we'll talk more about it in just a minute but the the fruit of that right was the spreading of literacy right when you plant monasteries in churches you have bibles right you translate the bible into local language you spread literacy just by teaching the bible it requires a certain level of literacy that did not exist in ireland at the time right and the monasteries would not only spread but preserve uh literature and documents and be places centers of learning for many many centuries there's also the building of towns and cities right you end up with larger clusters of people uh clustering around monasteries and churches and they become these stable places uh think about the the major cities of europe particularly in ireland they were it they were missionary outposts for patrick many many centuries ago they were even in this time changes of law right we know against the generation after patrick but there were new laws put in place for women's rights were completely unheard of anywhere else even in christian europe right where women were given legal um the their their testimony in court was given legal force right where they were given property rights where there was ad there was there was um patrick in one letter he advocated for female slaves who'd been kidnapped he demanded that a certain tribal chieftain let them go because of their commitments they had made to jesus or they were some of them were nuns so there's significant um women's rights element to the story and the significant patrick is one of these early and it shouldn't surprise us and since because he was a slave he was an early advocate for um abolishing slavery and for fighting to advocate for tribal leaders to stop taking slaves especially if they are fellow christians um and it may be shouldn't surprise that that happened because patrick had been a slave one of the only letters we have for me he writes to a a chief chieftain and he he brings upon him the most uh strong curse you can possibly imagine and he was supposed to be a christian king for his treatment and for his kidnapping of christians to become slaves finally during this transformation of ireland human sacrifices end right and sacrifices usually came from prisoners of war or babies depending on what god you're sacrificing to but this practice completely ends in ireland and when we think about sort of the multi-generational mission sending that comes as a result of this celtic christian movement i'll just tell you one story about colombian not columba there's two different guys have very similar names colombian was a is two generations after patrick didn't know patrick but he's part of this this larger movement right and there had been sort of slowly monasteries go from ireland to scotland to england and columbian was a celtic missionary who had been in england but he was inspired by genesis 12 right where god tells abraham right leave your family leave your people leave your nation and go to somewhere where i'm going to call you to go colombian is moved by this and he and 12 other monks cross the english channel to gaul which is modern day france and they began and this is sort of the first move into continental europe that these irish missionaries made but during colombian's lifetime right in the 6th century in 7th century he travels all around modern day france and similar to his spiritual grandfather patrick he plants 60 monasteries throughout france establishes them preaches the gospel to a place that had had a christian presence but really it didn't take very strong root so he brings the gospel back to france in many ways he continues traveling and preaching and at the very end of his life he ends up in northern italy and plants a monastery in babio just before he dies um and what's remarkable we could talk a lot more about the role of these monasteries in continuing the spread of the gospel throughout europe as part of this consistent witness for centuries to uh a value for the scriptures and a value for mission but i'll just say this his monastery in babio in northern italy it was established in 614 and lasted over a thousand years right it was taken over in 1803 during the napoleonic wars of course the french and the british the french and the english uh for different reasons dissolved monasteries in their area in their domains many of those monasteries never returned they became museums or other things and some of them were repopulated by monks later on in the modern period but imagine 1200 years and i think it's it's something that really should uh inspire us and convict us whether we're you know we've talked about christianity spreading all the way east pacific ocean during the same time period these are these are happening around the same time in the ancient world but you also have right a slave who goes to what as far as he knows is the ends of the earth to this very very marginal place in the geopolitical sphere but something remarkable happens there where there's disciples made there are people baptized their churches established and they don't just say way great ireland's christian they start a movement where they go back into europe back into the places where they had originally received christians from back to the places they had originally think about this it's a remarkable thing right that an island of pagan uh human sacrificing raiders becomes a place known for sending missionary monks all over the world when you used to have irish show up on your shores you thought you were going to get kidnapped and perhaps sacrificed now when you have irish showing up your shores you know they're coming to spread the gospel that's a remarkable testimony and i think we're beginning to populate our imagination for the kinds of ways whether it's through kinship networks of jews whether it's through economic trading routes right on the silk road or whether we're talking about uh slaves becoming apostles to their slave masters and then those communities going back to bring the gospel into europe there's so many ways that god uses missionary movements uses people uh who are redeemed and filled with the holy spirit to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth so let's pray all right thank you for this opportunity to look back i thank you for this opportunity to see what you do and how you redeem even dark things like slavery even dark things like displacement or exile thank you for patrick's life i thank you for the work of the holy spirit in his heart and i thank you for all the subsequent thousands of disciples and leaders and churches that came out of that movement on the fringes of the known world i thank you that you work in uh dark places i thank you that you work in places that are outside of the center that are outside of the places of power and you use the simple and weak things of the world to shame the wise so i pray that you would continue to do that in the 21st century but i pray that uh people from all over the world who are hearing the story of patrick or begin to see opportunities and see analogs and see ways that they can learn from and apply the lessons we see all the way from the fifth and sixth and seventh centuries although i pray that you would inspire us by your holy spirit jesus name amen [Music] you