Jesus calls the Church to participate in God’s mission to redeem and restore all of creation.
This is what the church is for. Leaders equip their churches to live out this ‘sending’, including making Christ known, communicating the gospel of God’s grace, making disciples, compassionate care for the poor and vulnerable, and pursuing justice and peace.
Therefore our role as Christian people, no matter where we live, work or worship is to share the good news of God’s mission in our words, deeds and character. This is how we participate in the mission of God and how we seek whole-life transformation. So, as Jesus lives in us, we become “presence carriers” into every life situation, conversation and element of our everyday lives.
However, in challenging times it’s tempting to look inwards and focus on ourselves. But we are called in the Lord’s Prayer to bring God’s Kingdom “On earth, as it is in Heaven.” God wants His Kingdom to come on earth, he wants His creation to thrive and flourish and have life “in all its fullness.”
The Church is the largest voluntary network in the world, and it can reach places and people which governments cannot. It holds local relationships. It has a local understanding of need and context. The Church is called by God to bring transformation to each geographical location in the world where it finds itself.
From a practical perspective Christians, as part of Church community, bring a set of resources such as energy, prayer, skills and materials. Such resources are gifts to be shared in the Church and with the wider community.
Thrive Ireland is passionate about enabling the Church and Communities to thrive together as God intended.
We want to enable churches to look at missional development through a new lens.
For many years Christians from the developed world have been travelling to the developing world to offer our support and learning. It's time to "turn mission upside down", humble ourselves, build authentic relationships, listen reflect and learn together so that we can better facilitate new understanding and transformation to churches and communities throughout Ireland.
Thrive Ireland seeks to empower Christians to live out their faith, modelling Jesus's servant leadership, honesty and integrity.
Thrive Ireland bases its work on the following values:
- We are all created as valuable human beings in the image of God.
- God has created us to be in community (and to achieve the full potential he has created in us) and is concerned not only with our spiritual health, but also our physical, social, emotional, mental, economic and environmental wellbeing.
- God chooses the local church as an agent of transformation in communities.
- Peacebuilding is a biblical imperative for both personal discipleship and community transformation.
- Christians in Ireland have much to learn from global development best practice to inform and shape the local context in pursuit of our vision.
- We are called to live and work in a sustainable way, valuing creation and the resources and gifts that God has given us.