Ministry Lessons from the Real St. Patrick

It was by far the worst education course I have ever endured.It’s not that I wasn't interested in the history of Christianity and it wasn’t that Dr. Smith wasn’t knowledgeable. There was just something about his teaching style, or lack thereof, that made sitting through one of his lectures practically unbearable. Still, a measure of my gratitude is due to Dr. Smith and his History of Christianity course, because it was through them that I was introduced to the real St. Patrick. As he talked, I began to see similarities between these Celts and the skater kids I was attempting to connect with through my position at Youth for Christ. I noticed parallels between the establishment Patrick was upsetting and the inadequacies of “church norms.” I realized that the real St. Patrick had something for me, that maybe he had something to offer youth workers in the twenty-first century. St Patrick was a cutting edge missionary who brought the good news to an emotionally volatile people who were by and large written off (I don’t know about you, but this is a pretty good description of my middle school group). He would have, to be sure, made a great youth worker.

The Real St. Patrick

St. Patrick was a remarkable individual whose intrigue had nothing to do with leprechauns and rainbows. Though Patrick was ethnically a Celt, culturally he was a Roman whose primary language was Latin. He grew up in a Christian home with a deacon for a father and a priest for a grandfather. As a youth Patrick was what some might call a “lukewarm” Christian; saying of himself, “At the time, I did not recognize the True God.”¹ According to Patrick, it was this rejection of God that lead to his life being turned upside down when a band of Celtic pirates invaded the region, captured Patrick, and sold him into slavery. During his years as a slave, Patrick experienced two major changes.

First, Patrick experienced the revelation of God through nature and became a devout Christian.

[block quote]

. . . after I reached Ireland I used to pasture the flock each day and I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the love of God, and my fear of him and faith increase, and my spirit was moved so that in a day [I said] from one up to a hundred prayers, and in the night a like number; besides I used to stay out in the forests and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in the snow, in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill nor any slothfulness, because, as I now see, the Spirit was burning in me at that time.²

[end block quote]

Second, Patrick came to understand and accept the Celtic culture of his captors. This was the kind of understanding only possible by one immersed in the culture. It was this deep understanding of the Celtic world that later allowed him to effectively reach the “unreachable” with the good news of Christ. After six years of captivity God told Patrick in a dream to flee from his captors.

The next twenty-five years or so of Patrick’s life are unknown; but at the age of forty-eight, Patrick had another dream where an angel named Victor spoke to him. During that dream Patrick was called to bring the “good news of Christ” to the Celtic world. Patrick returned to Ireland as a bishop with the mission of  bringing the gospel to the Celtic world.  Patrick’s twenty-eight years of ministry to the Celts, and the movement that followed, forever changed the western world.³

1.      St. Patrick, The Confession of St. Patrick (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), http://www.ccel.org/ccel/Patrick/confession.pdf. This first section of his writing is St. Patrick’s own account of his life and the events that lead up to his mission in Ireland, though that is not its primary purpose. Patrick’s Confession is a defense of his life and ministry.

2.      Ibid., paragraph 16.

3. This is an opening to a hopeful article (perhaps to be      published in the Immerse Journal)