I’ve found that most evangelism books can sap the passion right out of the Good News. Not so with The Celtic Way of Evangelism, which presents an intriguing look into the missional practices of St. Patrick and the subsequent generations of Irish Christians. According to George Hunter III, these ancient Celts provide us with an especially relevant paradigm for “engaging the West’s emerging mission fields.” (10) After all, fifth century Ireland and twenty-first century North America both exhibit barbarian cultures yielding extremes of spiritualism, secularism, and relativism. (9)
For example, Hunter suggests that “in pre-Christian and post-Christian contexts, the advocate cannot assume basic Christian knowledge in the minds of the audience, so clarity is an absolute requirement for engaging most of the people.” He notes that friendship building, narrative story-telling and “other appeals to the imagination” worked effectively in the pre-Christian contexts of ancient Ireland and would work well now in the post-Christian environment of North America…(click here for rest of posting…)
