Week One

Papyrus

Just like papyrus made its way from the eastern Mediterranean to the middle of Ireland — so did the Gospel! Christianity is a movement and it has always moved. And it hasn’t stopped moving. That’s the nature of the mission! As we set off on our month exploring mission we ask: what is our responsibility to God, to one another, and to the earth itself as missionaries of this movement? To this world we have crisscrossed with story, witness and song. Our faith is a moving, living thing that moves people — our mission is to share that.

Seeds to sow: Like papyrus found in an old psalter, what hidden gems from the past are you finding in your life of faith today that you can share with others?

Read Acts 1: 8

To the end of the earth...

So this is the mission! To be witnesses — to the ends of the earth — of all we have seen, all that we know to be true!

What inspires you, excites you, or challenges you about this verse?

Read Psalm 72: 1-14

A different kind of kingdom.

In the ancient words of this psalm we have a vision of a just, fair and flourishing kingdom where the needs of the poor are paramount and oppressors are crushed! We are on a good news mission where the needs of the vulnerable, the abandoned, the oppressed and the victim, are prioritised over that of competing warlords and bigwigs (verses 9-11)! In our modern societies — which often reward the rich, the connected and the powerful — our mission can be a subversive, countercultural one.

We also see that ecological and social harmony are linked. Our mission is for all the world — not just the people on it! Millennia before climate science and modern ecology, God was inspiring people to see the link between a flourishing ecosystem and a flourishing society! So this is not just good news for people — it’s good news for the Planet!

Are people listening to our countercultural mission? If not why not? When they are, what is catching their attention?

Read Psalm 72: 15-20

Filling the whole earth.

A blessing for all nations! God’s Kingdom is bigger than any one culture. Like papyrus found in binding of out Peat Bog Psalter — our movement is a cross-cultural, multi-lingual, transnational one!

God’s glory fills the whole earth, because God’s glory is not static. Like the beautiful words and images that travelled from papyrus to parchment, then to iPads — our mission won’t stay still either.

Do you think people in our neighbourhoods today know that they are intended to blossom (verse 16)? That they can blossom? That it goes with the grain of the Kingdom, the grain of the universe? How can we help the people we live with in our neighbourhoods to blossom?