First and Last

The Final Letter in the Polycarp Series

On December 1st 2023, I began writing a series of letters to my friend Tim Suffield from Nuakh.uk all based on a letter written almost 2000 years ago to the church in Philippi. The writer, Polycarp, was a disciple of the Apostle John, a Bishop from Smyrna, and was martyred for his faith not long after he wrote this letter. The idea was to write open letters to one another, similar to the way that letters were sent and subsequently distributed in the early church, and we invited you to listen in, and to read Polycarp’s letter along with us.

Today, Tim released the final letter in that series, and I wanted to share that with you. You can also find the links to all of the articles in the series so far by clicking right here:

Here’s a great summary of the series so far from Tim’s letter, I hope that you’ll go and read the rest of his letter too:

I’ve been thinking about how to summarise the letter and our writing on it. The nature of summaries is that they miss things out, but in the context of leadership failure I think Polycarp would commend three things to his readers.

Firstly, in the face of others not living like Christians, live like Christians.

Secondly, we should teach others to live like Christians too.

Thirdly, the most important thing is our virtue or character.

Easy to say, difficult to do, but worth pursuing in all things. Would you pray for me that these three charges would characterise my own life?

Grace and Peace,

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