Mark Batterson, a pastor and blogger that I follow, has a great summary of St. Patrick’s life here.

I was profoundly impacted by the life and influence of St. Patrick and his followers during the spring of 2008. I was taking Basic Evangelism, a required course for my seminary degree program.  A class I entered with great cynicism because the approach many in my denomination take to evangelism often resembles the attitudes latent in jihad and the tactics used in drive-by shootings. (Okay, so maybe I am exaggerating…but we definitely have shot ourselves in the feet on this one plenty of times).

My professor, Allan Karr, a brilliant man with a background in church planting and a doctorate in sociology, shattered every one of my cynical pre-conceptions.  The foundational text for our class was this small little book (always be wary of small books).  The small little book was entitled The Celtic Way of Evangelism.

This small book walked us through the way in which Patrick had taken the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of Ireland in a way that actually moved through their fears, reservations and barriers to Christians.  The book also described these unorthodox methods and the harsh reaction Patrick received from his superiors in the Church who felt like he was conforming too greatly to the Irish culture and leaving the faith behind.

The most profound concept in the book was the idea that Patrick’s communities were welcome and open to anyone, regardless of whether they believed in Jesus Christ.  People were invited in to share life with and observe the practices of the community of faith.  The faith community was convinced that offering belonging would open the door for a person to begin to become a part of those practices when they saw their value, meaning, power.  They believed that a person would begin practicing what it meant to follow Jesus before they even fully understood what faith in Christ meant. The final result would be the shift from unbelief to belief in the life of the guest.  The guest would then become a member of the faith community.

This process of “BELONG-BECOME-BELIEVE” was and continues to be the anti-thesis or opposite approach that most Christian communities take.  We demand that people believe like us and act like us (another way for saying “become”), before they can belong with us. Yet, the culture of Ireland in the Fourth and Fifth centuries resembles our own in remarkable ways, and this approach to engaging the world offers a powerful alternative to modern evangelism.

I will be forever marked by the courage, creativity, imagination, and faith of Patrick. His willingness to be excommunicated from his own church to see the nation of Ireland come to Christ is a powerful legacy and a reminder of the cost we must be willing to pay to share the message of hope latent in the Resurrection Story with others.

I am celebrating the powerful life of St. Patrick today, and if you are looking for a good book to read, I strongly recommend this one.