Before St. Patrick's Day - some 'inclusive' thoughts

Annually, I post something about St. Patrick - that will come tomorrow when we celebrate St. Patrick's Day. It is true that most people know NOTHING about him. Nothing about his youth, his call, and his incredible ministry. He moved in incredible apostolic and prophetic gifting. He changed the course of history. Truly when we talk of the Celtic Church, the churches he and his disciples planted, we are talking about REVIVAL with all caps! Beyond Revival, we could call it an AWAKENING and some would even go as far as considering their legacy to be beyond that - We can't rightfully call it a REFORMATION as there was nothing to reform - the Celts were pagan Druids and the Gospel took root in their culture - displaced the pagan, occult religion of the day and replaced it with a form of Apostolic Christianity. I say "a form" as there was quite a bit of Apostolic diversity in the earliest centuries - especially as we got into the 4th and 5th centuries.

It has been argued, and I believe persuasively, that the Celtic model of evangelism needs to be revisited and reapplied into our Western cultural context today. As most in the West are truly post-Christian and quite often more pagan than Christian in their worldview and their practice (think of the New Age and other occult practices that are considered normal; i.e. meditation, channeling, energy healing (Reiki), crystals, Astrology, Yoga, auras, fortune-telling/Tarot, etc. The list goes on and on).

The argument for Celtic evangelistic strategies is that the West today is similar to the pagan Druid Celts of Patrick's day. He employed a number of Apostolic strategies to win them to Christ - including directly challenging their counterfeit supernatural religion - through Apostolic signs and wonders - and when we say "wonders", we mean things that everyone could see and know that the faith of and the power demonstrated by Patrick and his Apostolic teams was superior to the faith of and the power of the Druids. The miracles are well-attested regardless of the fact that many modern readers consider them to be purely mythological. The strongest argument for their authenticity is the fruit of Patrick's ministry. He revolutionized Ireland. He changed history - even the history of Europe. And like many true Apostolic men/women, he gets very little credit for the impact of his life.

One other strategy is that the Celtic Apostolic communities welcomed seekers into their midst. They set up monastic communities (that included families and singles) right on the edge of Celtic tribes and would preach the Gospel amongst pagan Druids and then invite those who wanted to know more to come INSIDE of their monastic family communities. In short, they allowed pagans to "belong BEFORE they believed" (or at least in the process of their 'believing').

The more normal evangelistic model of that time was that people had to 'believe before they belonged'. In today's world, where the concept of 'inclusivity' is almost sacred, the wisdom of the Celtic approach could very well be all the more relevant in this day and age. While their approach was inclusive, their message was radically exclusive - meaning there was salvation nowhere else but in Christ and His Church. They were in fact inclusively exclusive!

These Celtic believers weren't reckless or unwise. They had boundaries; they exercised wisdom. In short, they welcomed the lost inside their communities without compromising and/or being negatively affected. The HOW they did that is for another discussion. But the fact that they did it - that they enabled the lost to see what "family life" in the Kingdom was like, and to participate in some way is not in dispute.

Tomorrow for St. Patrick's Day, we will go into this topic even more.

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