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BOOK NOTES: THE CELTIC WAY OF EVANGELISM

● Title: The Celtic way of Evangelism – How Christianity can reach the West...again
● Author: George G. Hunter III
● Publisher: Abingdon Press (121 Press)

Chapter 1: The Gospel to the Irish

● Patrick (who was a “Briton” from the North-east of England) understood the people, their
language, their issues
○ There is no short cut to understanding the people
■ When you understand the people, you will often know what to say, what to do, and
how.
○ When people feel that you understand them, they might infer that the Most High God
understands them too.

● In this Christianity the people saw that it was “open to all”, kept no secrets, and had as its
aim the happiness of the whole population.

● Patrick's entourage would have included a dozen or so people, including priests,

seminarians, and two or three women.
○ Upon arrival at a tribal settlement Patrick would have engaged the king and other opnion
leaders hoping for their conversion, or at least their permission to camp out near the
settlement and form a community of faith there.
○ The 'apostolic' (In the Greek sense of 'sent on a mission')team would meet the people,
engage in conversation and in ministry, and look for people who appeared receptive.
They would pray for sick people, and for possessed people, and they would counsel
people and mediate conflicts. They would engage in some type of open-air speaking,
probably employing parable, story, poetry, song, and perhaps drama, to engage Celtic
people's remarkable imaginations
■ Sometimes Patrick would receive the people's questions and address these
collectively.

● The apostolic band would probably welcome responsive people into their group fellowship
to worship with them, minister to them, converse with them, and break bread together.
○ One band member would probably join with each responsive person in order to reach
out to family and friends

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○ The apostolic band typically spent weeks or months as a ministering community of faith
within the tribe.
■ The church that emerged within the tribe would have been astonishingly indigenous.

● If God blessed their work, they built a church in that tribe

● As the movement grew, more of Patrick's time was spent in administration, preparing and
ordaining priests and visiting the churches he had previously planted
○ By this time, other leaders were leading apostolic bands in missions to Celtic
settlements.

Chapter 2: A new king of community, a new kind of life

● What was the difference between the Eastern monasteries and Celtic monastic communities?
○ Eastern monasteries organized to protest and escape the world
■ Monks withdrew to save and cultivate their souls
○ Celtic monasteries organized to penetrate the world and extend the church
■ Monks were organized to save other people's souls

● Celtic monasticism was essentially a lay movement

○ Populated by priests, teachers, scholars, craftsmen, farmers, families, children as well as
monks/nuns – all under the leadership of a lay abbot or abbess.

● Celtic Christianity addressed a “zone” of human concern that Roman Christianity essentially
ignored.
○ “The excluded middle” - People explain life, live life, and face th future at three basic
levels:
■ The bottom level is the stuff that our senses deal with
● Normal daily life and life skills
■ The top level deals with “ultimate” and transcendent questions
● Sacred realms that religions deal with
■ Middle-level issues of life:
● The uncertainty of the near future
● The crises of present life
● The unknown issues of the past

● This Celtic Christian faith and community addressed life as a whole and may have addressed
the middle level more specifically, comprehensively and powerfully than any other Christian
movement.

● Celtic movement appreciated “contemplative prayer”

○ Contrasts with praying at fixed times and fixed places, and petitioning prayer
■ It is the opposite of controlling prayer
■ It is praying without ceasing
■ Very frequent opening of the heart to the Triune God, often whilst carrying out daily
life experiences.

● Celtic Christian Movement proceeded to multiply mission-sending monastic communities,

which continued to send teams into settlements to multiply churches ans start people in the
community-based life of full devotion o the Triune God

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○ Movement as fuelled by the burning zeal of the apostles of the country

○ Monastic communities became “mission stations” from which apostolic bands reached
the “barbarians” of Scotland, England and much of Western Europe.

Chapter 3: To the Picts, the Anglo-Saxons, and other “Barbarians”

● The emerging strategy of Aidan and his people:

○ First they multiplied monastic communities
○ Second, they sent apostolic teams to reach settlements within the region
■ The monastic community was led by an Abbott
■ The apostolic team was often led by a Bishop
● Above all other concerns and responsibilities, the Bishops were the leaders of
evangelistic missions into surrounding countryside and secular leadership
● The team would engage in sustained group visits to settlements where they
would minister with the people, interpret the Gospel in indigenous ways, and
plant churches.

● Those who stayed behind in the monastery played an indispensable role:

○ They worked in the scriptoria to copy the learning of the past
○ They preserved much of the classic literature of Greece and Rome
■ Thomas Cahill – How the Irish Saved Civilization
○ Resourcing the movement?

Chapter 4: The Celtic Christian Community in Formation and Mission.

● First theme = In stark contrast to contemporary Christianity's approach of the lone-ranger

type of one-to-one evangelism, or confrontational evangelism, or the public preaching
crusade, Celtic Christians usually evangelised as a team:
○ Relating to the people of a settlement
○ Identifying with the people
○ Engaging in friendship, conversation, ministry, and witness
■ The goal = raising up of a church

● Second theme = how the monastic community prepared people to live with depth,
compassion, and power in mission.
○ Celtic Christianity seems to have prepared people through fivefold structure of
experiences:
■ 1. You experienced voluntary periods of solitary isolation – normally in a cell
near nature.
● Drawing on the wisdom of the desert fathers and mothers of the eastern church,
these leaders advised, “Go sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you
everything”.
■ 2. You spent time with your anamchara – your soul friend (Not a mentor but a
peer with whom you were vulnerable and accountable)
■ 3. If the monastic community was large, you sent time with a group of ten or
fewer people – led by someone known primarily for their devotion.
■ 4. You participated in the common life – meals, work, learning, biblical
recitation, prayers, and corporate worship.

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■ 5. Through your small group, and the community's life, and perhaps as a soul
friend, you observed and gained experience in ministry and witness to pre-Christian
people.
● The community's purposes for you through this fivefold structure were:
○ To root you in the gospel and scriptures
○ To help you experience the presence of the Triune God
○ To help you discover and fulfil your vocation
○ To give you experience in ministry with seekers.

● Third theme = the role of imaginative prayer in all the settings of life within the monastic
community:
■ In solitude
■ With the soul friend
■ In the small group
■ In the community
■ In ministry with seekers

○ Celtic Evangelism leant heavily and was focused towards right-brain activity
■ They made the Gospel's meaning vivid
■ Engaged people's feelings
■ Energized their response by engaging their imaginations

○ Celtic Christians often sang or prayed thirty Psalms a day

● Fourth theme = the role of the community's Hospitality in ministry with seekers, visitors,
refugees, and other “guests”
○ Celtic approach to Pre-Christian people involved a team from the monastic community
penetrating the natural community of the target population.

● Fifth theme = the role of the seeker's experience of the Christian community in the process
of conversion

○ Roman model for reaching people:

■ 1. Present the Christian message
■ 2. Invite them to decide to believe in Christ and become Christians
■ 3. If they decide positively, invite them to church and into fellowship
● Presentation
● Decision
● Assimilation

○ Celtic model for reaching people:

■ You first establish community with people, or bring them into the fellowship of your
community of faith
■ Within fellowship, you engage in conversation, ministry, prayer and worship.
■ In time, as they discover that they now believe, you invite them to commit.
● Fellowship
● Ministry and conversations
● Belief, invitation to commit.

● Celtic model reflects the old adage that the faith is more caught than taught.

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● Both Roman and Celtic models are contrasted in the following table:

Roman model for reaching people Celtic model for reaching people

Presentation Fellowship
Decision Ministry and conversations
Fellowship Belief, invitation to commitment

● Celtic model more closely resembles how people actually come to faith in Christ
○ As a gradual process rather than a single event
○ By belonging (relationships) before believing

Chapter 5: How Celtic Christianity communicated the Gospel

● Celtic monastic communities, and teams from these, engaged and reached pre-Christian
populations who, in many cases, had no prior knowledge of Christianity's message and were
widely thought to be unreachable.
○ Understanding the target population was indispensable
■ The people were more responsive when they knew they were being understood
■ When seekers were welcomed into the fellowship, faith was more “caught” than
“taught”.

● Aristotle – persuasion takes place in an interplay between the speaker, the message, and the
audience, within a (cultural and historical) context.
○ He taught that persuasion occurs from the interaction between the ethos of the speaker,
the logos of the message, and the pathos of the audience.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion
Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. [...]
Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so
spoken as to make us think him credible. [...] Secondly, persuasion may come
through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. [...] Thirdly, persuasion is
effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth
by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.

Ethos
Ethos is an appeal to authority. It is how well the speaker convinces the audience
that he or she is qualified to speak on the particular subject. It can be done in many
ways:
By being a notable figure in the field in question, such as a college professor or an
executive of a company whose business is that of the subject.
● By having a vested interest in a matter, such as the person being related to
the subject in question.
● By showing impressive logos that shows the audience the speaker is
knowledgeable on the topic.

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● By appealing to a person's ethics or character.

Pathos
Pathos is an appeal to the audience’s emotions. It can be in the form of metaphor,
simile, a passionate delivery, or even a simple claim that a matter is unjust. Pathos
can be particularly powerful if used well, but most speeches do not solely rely on
pathos. Pathos is most effective when the author connects with an underlying value
of the reader.

Logos
Logos is logical appeal, and indeed the term logic is derived from it. It is normally
used to describe facts and figures that support the speaker's topic. Since data is
difficult to manipulate, especially if from a trusted source, logos may sway cynical
listeners. Having a logos appeal also enhances ethos (see above) because
information makes the speaker look knowledgeable and prepared to his audience.
However, data can be confusing and thus confuse the audience. Logos can also be
misleading or inaccurate. When all three modes of persuasion are used together, a
speaker or writer can create very strong arguments.

● Much of the unusual communicative power of the Celtic Christian movement was
attributable to the ethos of its communicators and its communities.
○ Audiences look for the “authentic sign” of a speaker
■ Three principles of the communicator's ethos:
● Intelligence: Knowledgeable/Competent/Wise
● Character: Honesty/Virtue/Integrity
● Goodwill: Must be “for” the audience/On their side
○ Ethos is almost the controlling factor in persuasion.

● Some audiences need to experience a speaker's dynamism

○ They have to receive “energy” from the communicator
■ If speaker exudes energy, this amplifies audience’s perception of speaker – positive
or negative.

● Celtic Christians engaged the audience’s pathos:

○ Kierkegaard's suggestions – useful in most apostolic settings:
■ 1. Engage and speak as though personally speaking, to individuals, not to a mass
audience.
■ 2. Speak imaginatively rather than in abstractions
■ 3. Speak to yourself as well as to the audience
○ The audience has to overhear the speaker addressing the speaker
■ 4. Stress possibility – what the person's life can become
■ 5. Reject all temptation to pressure people to decide now
○ Respect their freedom and encourage a free response in measurable time.

● Celtic Christianity reached one “barbarian” population after another by

○ Welcoming seekers who were looking for the “authentic sign” into the close fellowship
of their monastic community.
○ Seekers observed how the Christians lived day by day
○ As seekers spent time in the community, they typically found themselves believing what
the Celtic Christians believed

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● Considering now the logos of the message, these men were effective at reasoning, but their
genius was in the imaginative communication of the Gospel
○ They were predominantly right-brained in their approach to reaching people
■ Roman main reliance is upon reason, theological abstractions, propositions and
concepts.
■ Celts were rooted more in imagination than intellect and spoke in images more than
concepts

Left Brain Right Brain

Logic Intuition
Concepts Emotions
Abstraction Imagination
Rational Art, music, poetry, experience

■ Celtic speakers were not as interested in apologetics as the Roman branch of the
church
● They believed that you should make a Christian truth clear to the hearer's
imagination and the Holy Spirit would take it form their.
○ Analogies were widely used
■ Shamrock to explain the Trinity
■ Water – Ice/Water/Steam
● Storytelling and poetry were widely used
○ Narrative theology?
○ Use of multiple “media” in communicating the message

■ Vincent Donovan (Catholic Apostle to Masai tribe of Africa) once noted

that Protestants only seem to rely on the sense of hearing to communicate
the Gospel – Celtic Catholics believe that God can use all five sense to
speak to people.

● Thomas Chahill:
○ Patrick's emotional grasp of Christian truth may have been greater than Augustine's.
■ Augustine looked into his own heart and found there the inexpressible anguish of
each individual
● This enabled him to articulate theory of original sin without equal – the dark
side of Christianity.
■ Patrick prayed, made peace with God, and then looked not only into his own heart,
but also into the hearts of others
● What he saw convinced him of the bright side
○ Even slave traders can become liberators, murderers can become
peacemakers, and barbarians can take their place among the nobility of
Heaven.
■ Looking for the Gold in people?

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Chapter 6: The Missionary perspective of Celtic Christianity

● Their contextualization of Christianity's message:

○ Biblical revelation was primary
■ Their understanding of the people helped them to know what in scripture to highlight
first, and how to “translate” it to the people
● David Bosch: The Christian faith only exists as “translated” into a culture.

● They believed in the goodness of creation infected - but not destroyed – by sin and evil.
○ This was matched by a similar believe in the goodness of man – you could appeal to this
in evangelism
■ Calling-forth the gold in people
■ Falling short of the glory of God – destined for glory
● What about fallen nature? - Infected?
○ They did not so much see fallen nature as intrinsically corrupt and degenerate, tainted by
sin and evil, but as imprinted by God's image, full of potential and opportunity, longing
for completion and perfection.
■ For Augustine, Jesus saves us by rescuing us from sin and the consequences of the
fall
■ For the Celtic apostles , Jesus also comes to complete his good creation.
● Some observations are warranted:
○ 1. Celtic Christianity's optimism about human nature cannot really
account for evil in the world – the Holocaust, etc.
■ Augustine's doctrine of human nature does account for depravity
○ 2. People normally have sin AND goodness
○ 3. For most people, becoming a Christian involves experiences of being
rescued as well as experiences of being completed.
○ 4. Celtic Christian movement suggests that it is more effective to begin
with people at the point of their goodness rather than engage them as sinners.
○ 5. Celtics perceived God's possibilities in the “Barbarians” and they
engaged in mission to these peoples.

● Celtic apostles sometimes had “power encounters” with local gods or leaders.
○ They relied heavily on the spiritual gift of discernment so they were very sensitive to the
presence of good or evil in people and places.
■ They sensed what was good in a people or place and blessed it, or they sensed evil
and they combated it by prayer.
○ Nowhere did you see an aggressive ecclesiastical machine moving forward against
reluctant individuals.

● A mission team would visit a settlement and engage in conversation and some presentation
to make known the gift of God
○ In time they would invite people to confess faith and form into a church
■ But there was never any coercion or force – they believed Christ wanted people's
free response.
○ They affirmed and built upon every indigenous feature they could
○ They believed that God's prevenient grace had Gospel.
■ They seemed to believe that just as Jesus did not come to the Jews to destroy the law
but t fulfil it, so He comes to every people group not to destroy but to fulfil their
religious tradition.

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Chapter 7: The Celtic future of the Christian movement in the West

● Celtic story is highly relevant to much of what Christianity faces in the west.
○ Post-Christians are the “new barbarians”
■ No Christian memory
■ No church etiquette
■ Tattoos etc
■ Some have substance addictions
○ These populations are increasingly like the ones the Celts evangelized as they become
more post-modern
■ Increasingly suspicious of people/institutions that claim authority
■ Increasingly dubious of Ultimate Explanations (No meta-narratives?)
■ They own and trust their feelings more (Recovering their intuition)
■ They take in their world through all of their senses, not just hearing
■ They explore spirituality and the supernatural.
■ We are seeing the re-tribalism of much of the west.
● Peer groups, sub-cultures and ethnic group produce much of an “I belong,
therefore I am” source of identity

● Celtic way that you help people find faith by bringing them into community, and engaging
the ministry of conversation has been strongly validated by the following three major
insights from Peter Berger's The Social Construction of Reality:
○ A person's view of reality is largely shaped and maintained by the community in which
he was socialized
○ The possibility of conversion to a new reality is opened up through conversations with
people
○ One adopts the new reality through re-socialization into the new community.

● A culture is the software of the mind of a people group.

○ There are macro-cultures and micro-cultures

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