THE CELTIC APPROACH: Part 1

In my first class of the day on Wednesday mornings, at the bleary-eyed hour of 8 a.m, I am digging into various perspectives on World Missions. The assumption, of course, as a follower of Christ, pursuer of God, and seeker of truth...is that we who know the hope and grace of being reconciled with God through Christ should be sharing that hope and grace with others.

As one studies the efforts to bring people into relationship with the Creator across the historic eons (perhaps an exaggeration)of mankind’s existence, it is obvious that some of those efforts have been more successful than others. When looking at the approach to missions from the time of Christ until about 1500 AD, one might observe two basic approaches. The Celtic approach, exemplified by Columba and Patrick in Northwestern Europe (Ireland, Scottland, & Great Britain) sought to contextualize the message of Christ within the cultural environment. The Roman approach to missions sought to colonialize and bring other cultures into conformity with the Roman church. Unfortunately, the Roman model was the dominant method practiced for most of the history of Christendom.

Now, I have not read George Hunter’s Celtic Way of Evangelism (though I certainly plan to soon), but I would imagine that the lesson we need to learn from history is that it is possible and quite preferable to contextualize Christ in ways which reveal the relevance of the gospel to current culturally-informed individuals and communities. I was reading someone’s tirade against relevance the other day, however, and would partially agree with the critique that “relevance” is sometimes played as a trump card in inappropriate situations. We must not simply seek relevance for its own sake. To be relevant without being revelatory would be remiss! Historically, we may identify syncretism as the unhealthy result of being overly relevant. This in fact often happened in some of the areas where Roman Christians failed to fully disciple new adherents to Christianity. So in South America, for instance, many expressed forms of Christianity are co-mingled with animistic and superstitious native and pagan religions. In the North American context, syncretism looks like a mixture of anemic Christian convictions with the passionate pursuit of materialism and secularism.

Before I go on...I’d love to hear some feedback in order to turn this into a bit more of a dialogue or threaded discussion! What are you thinking??!!