Where is the Church? No.4

The Celtic way of evangelism involved storytelling and other imaginative means of communication in contrast to the Roman dialectic style usually used today. Again I reproduce the following quote as part of the basic material I will comment on in a later blog.

The following is directly quoted from
THE CELTIC WAY OF EVANGELISM HOW CHRISTIANITY CAN REACH THE WEST . . . AGAIN
By George G Hunter
Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2010


We do not know precisely how the apostles to the Celts engaged in emotional appeals because we have no transcripts, or even elaborate summaries, of their discourse to the pagans. We can infer four insights.

First, apostles like Patrick "had to find their deepest concerns." You cannot engage people seriously without engaging their motivational and emotional agenda.

Second, in contrast to the indifference of their capricious gods, the people discovered that their feelings mattered to the triune God of Christianity.

Third, their experience of God's providence gave them victory over terror and other destructive emotions.

Fourth, Christianity gave them outlets for expressing their constructive emotions through indigenous oratory, storytelling, poetry, music, dance, drama, and so on in God's service.

So, the Celtic Christian movement was effective, in part, because its leaders took the pathos of the Celtic audience seriously. We have seen that much of the communicative power of the Celtic Christian movement was attributable to the ethos of its communicators, who affirmed and engaged the pathos of the Celtic audience. Turning now to the logos of the message, we see that while Patrick, Columba, Aidan, and the others could reason quite effectively with people, their genius (compared to the Romans) was in the imaginative communication of Christianity's message.