Now that I’m on vacation, I get to read!!! I’m finally working through “The Celtic Way of Evangelism” by George G. Hunter III. Subtitled, “How Christianity Can Reach the West… Again.”
Since I come from a tradition in ministry that values quantifiable numbers, I appreciated the following paragraphs talking about St. Patrick’s missionary efforts to the “barbarian” Irish Celts.
What had Patrick and his people achieved in his twenty-eight-year mission to the “barbarian” Irish Celts? The question cannot be answered with mathematical precision, but estimates are possible. We believe there were some Christians, perhaps Christian slaves or traders and their families, already living in Ireland by A.D. 432, but there was no indigenous Irish Christian Movement before Patrick. Patrick and his people launched a movement. [Emphasis mine] They baptized “many thousands” of people, probably tens of thousands… The tradition has Patrick engaging in substantial ministry in northern, central, and eastern Ireland, with some forays beyond… Louis Gougaud offers this assessment:
Most certainly he did not succeed in converting all the heathens of the island; but he won so many of them for Christ, he founded so many churches, ordained so many clerics, kindled such a zeal in men’s hearts, that it seems right to believe that to him was directly due the wonderful out-blossoming of Christianity which distinguished Ireland in the following ages. (p. 23)
Later in the book, Hunter notes that Celtic Christianity took on a different “feel” from Roman Christianity largely due to the distance and isolation of these lands.
What would a visitor from Rome have noticd about Celtic Christianity that was “different”? The visitor would have observed more of a movement than an institution, . . . This movement, compared to the Roman wing of the One Church was more imaginative, and less cerebral, closer to nature and its creatures, and emphasized the “immanence” and “providence” of the Triune God more than his “transcendence.” (P. 26)
As the Celtic “monastic communities” formed, these semi-monastic communities included some monks and nuns who pursued a traditional monastic track, but also included scholars, craftsmen, artists, families and children. “all under the leaders of a lay abbot or a lay abbess. They had little use for more than a handful of ordained priests, or for people seeking ordination: they were essentially lay movements.” (P. 28)
I’ve written elsewhere that as the church begins to navigate into the challenging waters of rapid discontinous change and a shifting worldviews, it really needs to recover a sense of being a movement. Not just movement in name or by way of a label. Instead a movement that takes its model and leadership in Christ.
Hunter is doing a good job showing how Patrick’s isolation from Rome allowed him to contextualize the gospel in such a way that its expression was both Christian and Heathen. It did not utilize institutional ways, but took on forms that made sense for the Celtic settlements. It took on forms that was shaped by an understanding of mission, and not the extension of an institution.
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