Missionary Stories: A story of how one man saved civilization

This is the first post in a series of stories, both past and present, of people living as missionaries to change the culture around them. I hope they both encourage and educate each of us in how to be effective missionaries of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Let’s take a look at a story about a group of people who stepped out of the institutional mold a long time ago to do something extraordinary, and ended up changing their country. It started with a young kid…

This kid was sixteen years old when he was kidnapped off the northeast coast of present day England by Celtic pirates, and sold into slavery in Ireland. He tended livestock in the green foothills of Ireland for six years before escaping the island and eventually making his way back home to England. Twenty-six years later, in the year 432AD, God
appeared to him in a dream, and asked him to leave the civilized, Romanized people of Northern England, and cross the Irish sea to serve the same barbarian tribes who had robbed him of his youth. God was asking him to be good news to a people who were nothing but bad news.
His name was…St. Patrick.

I’m amazed he went. I’m even more amazed at what he and his band of believers accomplished. It’s estimated that within his lifetime, he and his followers planted over 700 churches. And within two centuries of St Patrick’s death, the movement he birthed had blanketed Ireland with over 6,000 churches, and had sent bands of likehearted believers throughout the European continent to plant churches. But they didn’t plant churches…not the domesticated kind of churches we often think of. They planted holistic, life-on-life Christian communities that, in the words of Thomas Cahill, literally saved civilization.

How did they do that? What did these communities look like? What did St. Patrick intuitively grasp about being the people of God that we can learn from? What happened in and around those Celtic communities? There are at least 5 things that set them apart from the traditional model of church:

1. They created a common life.
They prepared and ate meals together. They worked side by side. They worshipped together, memorized and studied Scriptures together, and they prayed together. Life and ministry merged into an integrated whole. They typically spent a year together before moving on to plant new communities.

2. They helped “barbarians” feel at home.
Unlike Roman monasteries, which were typically built in quiet, remote locations, the Celtic communities were planted right alongside the tribal settlements where the Irish commoners lived and worked. The Irish barbarians, who nobody else wanted anything to do with – especially the church – were invited into spiritual communities to taste and participate in a different way of doing life. Patrick knew that most people need ti belong before they would believe. They need to be listened to and understood, because when people sense that someone really understands them, they begin to believe that maybe God can understand them too.

3. They were strengthened through “soul friendships”.
Everyone in a Celtic community was assigned a “soul friend”. No one was alone in the group. If the community was large, it was broken down into smaller groups. And within those smaller groups there was always someone who encouraged you and challenged you to a life of obedience.Through soul friendships they fulfilled the Biblical mandate to “care
one another’s burdens”.

4. They created space for solitude.
Somewhere near the community, usually in the surrounding countryside, was a place for voluntary isolation. The Celtic communities understood that no community can live well together for long if people didn’t regularly get alone with God. So the built solitude into the rhythm of the community and they nurtured personal dependence on God.

5. Every community birthed new communities.
They came as a community to start a community that would give birth to many more communities. They lived with a purpose. They lived on mission. Patrick’s missional communities were never an end in themselves. Instead, the grew, developed and multiplied. Within ever Celtic community was a group of believers who would remain, and on or more groups-often 12 people per group-who would move on after a year to take new ground. They never got too cozy or settled in one place too long. The Celtic Christians always lived as a people called to step out and give themselves away.

Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” (John 20:21).
The Celtics lived as a sent people…as a missional community…and they changed the world! We look at the Celtic movement as both an ancient and a future model of how a sent community can live missionally. Interestingly, the Celtic way of doing ministry had many parallels to Jesus’ way of doing ministry….

Links on St. Patrick and the Celtic Movement:

http://www.undertheiceberg.com/2006/02/01/the-celtic-movement-and-apostolic-ecclesiology/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick

http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Saved-Civilization-Hinges-History/dp/0385418493

http://books.google.com/books?id=IY1eugBuZ9EC&dq=How+the+Irish+Saved+Civilization&psp=1