In the Coracle
“It’s almost like you’re writing a book one post at a time” - Kedge
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Missional orders as ways to start new churches
Here’s a very, very interesting video of a talk by David Fitch about using missional orders as a church planting strategy.
“The way we used to plant churches (in the Christendom era) was as organization. An established church structure … paid somebody… with the distinctives of the denomination, the tags, the franchise…”. But that doesn’t work anymore. “I do not believe you can plant a church in less than three years in post-Christendom.”
I’m filing this under “if/when I plant another church”…I really gotta read me some Fitch. I’ve got a couple of his books, and I’ve heard that _The Great Giveaway_ is fantastic.
“The Celtic Way of Evangelism”, Chapter 2
Here’s a summary and responses to chapter 2 of George Hunter’s The Celtic Way of Evangelism.
In chapter two, Hunter describes the form of community life that was shaped in early Celtic Christianity.
In general, Celtic Christianity was more a movement than Roman Christianity’s tendency to institution; it incorporated more laity in ministry and less ordained clergy; it was more imaginative and less cerebral, it identified more closely with nature, and it emphasized the immanence of God more than His transcendence.
The communities themselves drew from the monastic communities found in the Eastern church and Gaul, but the Celtic communities were distinct from those forms in several ways:
- While Eastern monasteries emphasized protest and escape from Roman materialism and the corruption of the church, the Celtic monasteries were organized to penetrate the pagan world and expand the church.
- Eastern monasteries were established in isolated locations, and Celtic monasteries were created in high-traffic locations
- Celtic monasteries included monks and nuns living ascetic lives, but also lay people doing everyday work and included men, women and children
- Celtic monasteries produced a less individualistic and more community-oriented expression of faith
- Celtic Christianity sought to impact not just the transcendent issues for a person, but also everyday issues. Prayers were formed and taught for the simplest of everyday tasks - sowing seed, milking cows, prayer for a new baby. Instead of fixed-hour prayer, Celtic Christians practiced a constant state of contemplative prayer.
Ray Simpson has two books referenced in this section: “Exploring Celtic Spirituality”, and “Celtic Blessings for Everyday Life”, which I need to pick up. Another resource is the Carmina Gadelica, a collection of folk Christian resources collected in the nineteenth century by Douglas Hyde who documented the oral tradition still alive in rural areas.
Celtic monasteries emphasized three practices: worship, study and work. Prayers accompanied each of these activities, and everybody in the community was expected to participate in all three practices.
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Justin at Radical Congruency blogged on this topic a short while back. His suggestions for prayer topics and the comments to the post are helpful.
“The Celtic Way of Evangelism”, Chapter 1
Chapter 1 of George Hunter’s “The Celtic Way of Evangelism” sets the historical framework for Patrick’s interaction with the Celtic peoples in the British isles.
As you’re perhaps aware, Patrick’s story goes like this: An Englishman born into an aristocratic Christian family, Patrick and other villagers were captured in a midnight slave raid by Irish pirates and sold into slavery. Patrick served as a slave in Ireland, learning the language and customs, while also experiencing a deepening relationship with his God amidst the beauty of creation. Six years into his slavery, he heard a voice in a dream telling him that he was to go home; his ship was ready. Patrick escaped, walked a hundred miles to the coast, negotiated his way onboard a ship, and after some time, finally returned home. He settled into a the priesthood in England.
At the old age of 48 (ha!, but also past the life expectancy of a 5th century person), Patrick received another dream calling him back to Ireland. Patrick was ordained a bishop to Ireland and returned.
Patrick’s return to Ireland was remarkable for many reasons: first, that he would willingly reject a life of comfort and return to the people who had enslaved him; second, that the Church would allow him to go to a “barbaric people”. From the second century until this event in the 5th century, no mission had been sent to the “barbarian” peoples. They were presumed to be impossible to reach; the Celtic peoples - like the Goths, Visigoths, Huns and Vikings were illiterate, uncivilized, uncultured and unpredictable. And Christianity, the Church believed, required a civilized host.
Somehow, Patrick was able to convince his superiors that the Celtic peoples were worth reaching. Without a doubt, Patrick’s experience among the people was a positive factor - he knew the language, culture and customs. Quite probably as well, Patrick’s career path, having begun late after missing out on the traditional education, made him expendable.
Several factors probably had to do with Patrick’s remarkable success. The Irish philosophy was accustomed to paradox, which prepared them for Christianity’s central truths. They were fascinated with the number three, allowing discussion of the Trinity to embed into the cultural consciousness. They felt deep love for heroism, stories and legends. The Irish deeply loved nature and felt the closeness of the divine. And while Druidism was infused with secret knowledge, as opposed to the open wisdom of Christianity which was available to all hearers.
Patrick’s mission presented Christianity to a culture prepared to receive it. His method appears to have been something like this: travel with an entourage of a dozen or so people, including priests, seminarians and women. When arriving at a tribal settlement (note that Ireland at this time had no central authority but was comprised of regional tribal kings), Patrick would engage the king and other leaders, camp near the people, and form a faith community adjacent to the tribal settlement. They would meet the people, have conversations, pray for people who were sick or possessed, counsel people and mediate conflicts. Frequently the team prayed for natural events, such as the restoration of ruined wells, or for streams to produce harvests of fish. Patrick’s team practiced the way of peace. They incited the peoples’ imagination with art, songs and stories. They would often receive the peoples’ questions and collectively discuss those questions. The team would spend time with people who were receptive and with their friends and families.  Patrick’s team would usually spend weeks or months in each community before moving on.
If receptive people were found, a church was built in the community; one of Patrick’s disciples would stay behind to continue the spiritual formation of the new community, and often one or two people from the community would join Patrick as they moved to the next location.
The churches which were planted were remarkably indigenous.
Patrick used this basic methodology for 28 years until his death. they baptized many tens of thousans of people, planted about 700 churches, ordained some 1000 priests, and in Patrick’s lifetime, 30-40 of Ireland’s 150 tribes became substantially Christian.
In addition to the planting of churches, Irish society changed. Murder and intertribal warfare decreased. Patrick was the first to speak out against slavery, and within his lifetime, the Irish slave trade ceased.
Blogging through “The Celtic Way of Evangelism”. Again.
I’ve been looking forward to re-reading George Hunter’s excellent book “The Celtic Way of Evangelism” as soon as I saw it on the reading list for my Celtic Trail course at Bakke. I blogged a summary of this book previously, and pointed to an interview with Hunter in this brief post.
I deeply resonate with this book. I re-read the first two chapters tonight (in my newest ‘happy place’, the hammock in my back yard overlooking the mountain). I wanted to blog through the book in a bit more detail, to make me slow down and savor the experience. And also to give what few readers I still have left something to actually read through :-)
So, if you’d like to join in, I’d love to have you along for the ride. Pull out your own dogeared copy or if - may God forgive you for this - you don’t have a copy, pick one up. The book is here at Amazon, though I can’t recommend highly enough that you order it from Bean Books. You’ll get a fine deal and help out a genuinely good business run by a great guy.
So, on with the summary.
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