pat loughery

I’ve finally made time to read a book that’s been languishing on my bookshelf for a while. Here ya go:

The Celtic Way of Evangelism by George Hunter III looks at the remarkably effective history of evangelism, discipleship and church planting in the time of St. Patrick in the late 4th and early 5th centuries A.D. It contrasts the Roman and Celtic forms of evangelism as they grew throughout northern Europe.

Under Patrick’s mission efforts, some 700 churches were planted , 1000 priests were ordained, 30-40 of Ireland’s 150 tribes became substantially Christian. Patrick was the first public man to speak against slavery, and within his lifetime, the Irish slave trade came to a halt. His communities modeled the Christian way of faithfulness, generosity, and peace. (p.23)

The book ends with two great quotes.

First is this ancient Chinese poem:

Go to the people.
Live among them.
Learn from them.
Love them.
Start with what they know.
Build on what they have.

The final paragraph of the book reads this way:

The supreme key to reaching the West again is the key that Patrick discovered – involuntarily but providentially. The gulf between church people and unchurched people is vast, but if we pay the price to understand them, we will usually know what to say and what to do; if they know and feel we understand them, by the tens of millions they will risk opening their hearts to the God who understands them.

That’s the summery. For more details, click thorough:

The book begins with a look at Patrick’s conversation and call to return to Ireland.

The book is excellent, brief, readable, and a good mix of history and missiology. But the book is more effective to us than simply as a history of Celtic Christianity in teaching us how to be missionally-minded in the culture surrounding us.

Lessons in Missional Thinking from the Celtic Way of Evangelism::

– The effective missionary studies and speaks the language of the audience’s culture
Patrick’s story personally illustrates effective missional work. Kidnapped at 16 from his home in (what is now) northeast England by Celtic pirates, he was sold into slavery in Ireland to a druidic tribal chief named Miliuc. Before his enslavement, Patrick (culturally Roman and not Celtic) had been a nominal Christian.

As a slave to Miliuc, Patrick tended sheep in rural areas. During this time he began to see the Christian God in the Creation, and began to pray more and more constantly. Patrick writes in his autobiography that he eventually was praying a hundred times a day, more at night. He became a devoted Christian.

His devotion and the changes Patrick experienced in the process were noticed by his captors.

He learned their language, culture, customs and priorities. He began to identify with them, and saw them as his own people. Patrick grew to love the Irish people who enslaved him.

After six years of slave captivity, Patrick had a dream in which the Lord told him it was time to return home. He escaped, walked to the coast, boarded a ship and left Ireland.

The next twenty-five years of Patrick’s life are hazy. Patrick likely went to Gaul and perhaps Rome, and likely spent time in a monastic community in Gaul, Rome or England while studying for the priesthood. He served for some years as a parish priest in England and had a successful career.

One night, Patrick received another vision – this time seeing an angel approach him with letters from his former captors, with the message “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, come and walk among us.”. Patrick viewed this as his Macedonian call, remembering Paul’s story in Acts 16:9.

As effective missionaries, we must study those we have a mission to. What values are important to the culture? What stories are told as cultural touch points? What types of people are celebrated? How does the language and communication system work?

The fact that Patrick understood the people and their language, their issues and their ways, serves as the most strategically significant single insight that was to drive the wider expansion of Celtic Christianity, and stands as perhaps our greatest single learning from this movement. there is no shortcut to understanding the people. When you understand the people, you will often know what to say and do, and how. When the people know that Christians understand them, they infer that maybe the Most High God understands them too.

p.19-20

– Begin by seeing the goodness in people
It’s extremely important to Celtic evangelism forms to accept people where they are. Roman forms required people to be “civilized enough” to be evangelized: to speak the Roman language, to have a basic social societal level. Those converted to Roman Christianity were expected to worship in the Roman style. The Celtic forms were much more effective at evangelizing “the barbarian hordes” and allowing the gospel to be contextualized in a broad variety of cultures.

“It is often more effective to begin with people at the point of their goodness, however latent, than to initially engage people as sinners” (p.90)

One of the points of transition between a Christendom and a post-Christian society is that many people in our culture do not have the basic touch points of the Christian story: the Christian understandings of Easter, Christmas, Jesus and other elements of the faith story simply have no resonance. In our church plant’s experience, we find more people who simply don’t have the framework from which to view Christian story elements. The process of evangelism, connection, discipleship, assimilation (;-)) must include “beginning at the beginning”, not assuming any understanding of Christian faith and being patient and looking at the long-term view of Christian discipleship.

One post-Christian narrative point connected with religious plurality is the absence of a foundational belief that humankind is sinful. Even after a century of history including two major world wars, genocides in Germany, Rwanda and now Sudan, many of the people we meet hold to a belief that we are inherently good. Beginning to tell the story of the Gospel from the perspective of “here’s the way to cleanse you from sin and enable you to be forgiven for your evil past” simply doesn’t resonate with many listeners.

One unique flavor of Celtic Christianity included a de-emphasis of the depravity of mankind (especially when contrasted with Augustine’s theology of depravity and grace), and a stronger emphasis on mankind’s sense of incompleteness, being out of relationship with the Creator of the natural world (humanity, plants and animals, etc).

The Celtic Christian missionaries were working with peoples who predominantly practiced a Druid form of paganism. In this form of Druidism, the elements of nature were highly respected (and in some cases worshiped),

Fill the middle spaces between the earthy and the spiritual
Paul Heibert wrote an article called “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle” which described how people live life, explain life and face the future on three levels: the bottom level deals with the natural world that our senses can detect; the top level is the transcendent or sacred world in which we consider the ultimate issues of life and the world beyond our senses(p.31). The middle level deals with the unknowns of the past, the uncertainty of the near future, the crises of everyday life.

In the western world we have tended to exclude the middle layer of understanding. Celtic Christianity focused on these issues, making an everyday-livable faith that included everybody from all walks of life.

Work in teams

The basic missional team in Patrick’s time and in following generations was well thought out. The Celtic Christians under Patrick’s leadership evangelized as a team
[…]by relating to the people of a settlement; identifying with the people; engaging in friendship, conversation, ministry, and witness – with the goal of raising up a church in measurable time.

(p.47)

Generally a mission team would visit a Celtic settlement, befriend the people, and engage in conversation and some presentation of the Gospel. In time, they would invite the people to confess faith and form into a church, but there was no manipulation, coercion, or force; they believed Christ wanted peoples’ free response. […]

Celtic missionaries seemed to have believed that God’s prevenient grace had preceded them and prepared the people for the Gospel.

p.92

The main team form
Differences between Roman and Celtic evangelism styles

bluntly stated, the Roman model for reaching people (who are “civilized” enough) is:
1) present the Christian message
2) Invite them to decide to believe in Christ and become Christians
3) If they decide positively, welcome them into the church and its fellowship

The Roman mode seems very logical to us because most American evangelicals were scripted by it.

This is contrasted with the Celtic model:

1) You first establish community with people, or bring them into the fellowship of your community of faith.
2) Within fellowship, you engage in conversation, ministry, prayer and worship.
3) In time, as they discover that they now believe, you invite them to commit.

(p.52-53)

The book argues convincingly that we are shifting from a Roman cultural model of evangelism to a Celtic model. Belonging comes before believing. Evangelism now becomes “helping people to belong so that they can believe. (p.55)

The Celtic evangelism model was highly effective at reaching people tha thte Romans thought were to uncivilized to convert. They used native art forms and language to communicate.

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On the whole, this is a fascinating and challenging book. It’s remarkable how similar the missiology and culture transitions mirror our own today, and there’s much to be learned from this portion of history.