Saint Patrick and Evangelism

You might celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day this Saturday by wearing green and patronising your local Irish Pub, but to really celebrate the man, you might want to bring a friend along and tell them about Jesus!

Patrick is the apostle of Ireland – credited with most of the population of the island embracing Christ within his lifetime. There are some who would say that he is the first true missionary since the apostle Paul: if not, he is surely the first missionary to venture outside of the Roman Empire.

By the time Patrick died at the ripe old age of 115, after 60 years of ministry, the vast majority of Ireland would have adopted his very indigenous, very vibrant Christian faith.

In many ways it was best explained as a conversion not to Christianity, but to Christ. Patrick was not spreading a religion: to have more people under the control of the Church; but he was spreading the Good News that the Creator wanted to have a relationship with them through his Son. It was the good news of inviting people to live the life that they were created to live, in the family of the One that they were created in the image of.

Patrick’s message was good news that pulled people out of fear based, and often-oppressive religious systems and beliefs. Patrick himself recognized that the gospel was good news as he suffered as a slave on the hills of Northern Ireland. He returned to Ireland not to conquer it for Christ, but to woo people into Christ’s love.

Patrick was a missionary unlike many others. Patrick was not Irish (gasp!), he was born in Roman Briton. But he didn’t reach the Irish as his “target audience.” In his writings he speaks of “we Irish:” he sees himself as one of the Irish. Because of his enslavement, he already had an understanding of the culture and ways of the Irish, and he felt no need to “civilize” them into Roman ways.

Even the Celtic cross is a sign of the marrying of the Celtic culture and Christian faith – The circle was an important symbol to the Druids, and instead of destroying it as evil and devilish, Patrick placed the cross over it. This doesn’t mean that he adopted the traditional religion into his Christianity: there was much to be discarded it was a fear-based religion that included human sacrifice and fearsome and arbitrary gods. But the Celtic Christian faith was one that spoke to the same earthy “felt needs” of the people, and it adopted much of what was good and pure from the traditional culture.

George G. Hunter III writes about Patrick’s method of spreading the gospel in “The Celtic Way of Evangelism:” “Patrick’s entourage would have included a dozen or so people, including priests, seminarians, and two or three women. Upon arrival at a tribal settlement, Patrick would engage the king and other opinion leaders, hoping for conversion, or at least their clearance, to camp near the people and form into a community of faith adjacent to the tribal settlement. The “apostolic” team would meet the people, engage them in conversation and in ministry, and look for people who appeared receptive. They would pray for sick people, and for possessed people, and they would counsel people and mediate conflicts. On at least one occasion, Patrick blessed a river and prayed for the people to catch more fish. They would engage in some open-air speaking, probably employing parable, story, poetry, song, visual symbols, visual arts and, perhaps, drama to engage the Celtic people’s remarkable imaginations. Often, we think, Patrick would receive the people’s questions and then speak to those questions collectively. The Apostolic band would welcome responsive people into their group fellowship to worship with them, pray with them, minister to them, converse with them, and break bread together. One band member or another would probably join with each responsive person to reach out to relatives and friends. The mission team typically spent weeks, or even months, as a ministering community of faith within the tribe. The church that emerged within the tribe would have been astonishingly indigenous.” - p. 21

Patrick’s is a great model for evangelism today in our post-Christian world. Some of the people who walk in his spirit today are The Alpha Course, Ed Silvoso & his model of Prayer Evangelism & the people involved in the MoveIn movement.

Wish someone a happy Saint Patrick’s Day & tell them about the Jesus that Patrick loved!

Saint Patrick and the End of Slavery

We’re a few days away from Saint Patrick’s Day, and it will be a day of grown men marching in funny green hats, drinking way too much green beer & inviting anyone to kiss them because, for today, they are Irish. Like many of our Saints’ Days, the celebration has taken over, and it has become much less than the actual person we are celebrating.

Contrary to popular belief, Saint Patrick looks nothing like the guy on the front of Frosted Lucky Charms cereal! Patrick was born in Roman Briton in 387. At the age of 16 he was captured by Irish raiders and sold into slavery in Ireland. In slavery, he embraced the Christian faith he was born into. Through dreams and visions from God, Patrick was able to escape back to his family.
He was trained as a priest and, through dreams from God, he was called back to Ireland to be an apostle to his former captors. Patrick was an amazing evangelist: in his lifetime, Ireland was converted to Christianity.

Patrick preached a holistic faith that encompassed every area of life. Thomas Cahill says in How the Irish Saved Civilization; ”Patrick is the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against slavery. Nor would any voice as strong as his be heard again till the seventeenth century.” By Patrick’s death, slavery was completely abolished as a practice in Ireland – way better than driving out the snakes!

We have two writings from Patrick that have survived into our time. One is his “Confession,” which is a brief autobiography; the other is his letter to Coroticus. This public letter to Coroticus is a powerful statement against slavery.

As the Romans pulled out of Briton, the Romanized Britons had very few ways to support themselves so some of them took to piracy, raiding the neighbouring counties for booty and slaves.

You can imagine how horrified Patrick was to hear of the tables turning and British Christian raiders coming to make slaves of the Irish. One of the raiders was named Coroticus. Patrick describes how he had just baptized and confirmed a large group of young men and women, when on the very next day, the chrism “still gleaming upon their foreheads, they were cruelly cut down and killed.” Those that resisted faced instant death; the remainder were taken prisoner – the men into slavery, the women to endure a lifetime of sexual abuse at the hands of the pagan Picts.

Patrick writes a hasty letter and sends a delegation of priests after Coroticus and his men to call them back from their wicked ways and return their Christian brothers and sisters to their homes. The priests were rebuffed and laughed at. So Patrick wrote a second open letter; a great rebuke, calling Coroticus and his men to repentance. If they do not repent, the letter calls all other Christians to excommunicate them and have nothing to do with their company or their wicked ways. In the letter he derides Coroticus and his men as “dogs and sorcerers and murderers, and liars and false swearers… who distribute baptized girls for a price, and that for the sake of a miserable temporal kingdom which truly passes away in a moment like a cloud or smoke that
is scattered by the wind.”

Today, slavery is as great an issue as it ever was in Patrick’s day. In fact, there are more slaves today than there were at the height of the African slave trade or any other time in human history! This March 17, you can honour Saint Patrick by doing something to end slavery in our generation. You can become part of advocacy organizations like Not For Sale, rescue organizations like International Justice Mission, and after-care organizations like Ratanak International. And pray for the 30 million people enslaved today, that they would see justice and freedom in our time.

Saint Nicholas and National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women

December 6 is Saint Nicholas Day! In Germany, children put out their stockings (or shoes) on the eve of Saint Nicholas and he fills them with fruits & candies (or coal). In my house we celebrate Saint Nicholas Day because we have our own Saint Nicholas (our twelve-year-old). I usually just wish him a happy Saint Nicholas Day and buy him some chocolate. Lately I’ve taken him out for lunch to celebrate his saint’s day.

Another “tradition” that we’ve had on Saint Nicholas Day is to wake up to the radio reminding us that it is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. December 6 marks the anniversary of the murders in 1989 of 14 young women at l'École Polytechnique de Montréal. I’ve always had troubles reconciling the fun celebration of the patron saint of children with the remembrance of that terrible crime.

Today, as Matt Galloway reminded me of the memorial this morning, it seemed to make more sense. Saint Nicholas isn’t the Santa Claus of Coca-Cola ads, nor is he even Father Christmas. He was a real person living in the early fourth century A.D. As Bishop of Myra, located in modern day Turkey, he attended the Council of Nicea from which we have the Nicene Creed. Nicholas was a great protector of women. A story is told of a poor old widower with three daughters for whom he had no dowry. Without a dowry, the girls were destined to be sold into prostitution. In order to save the girls, and retain the widower’s dignity, Nicholas secretly provided the dowries by throwing bags of gold through the family’s window. (The gold supposedly landed in stockings or shoes drying by the fire.) You may have never thought of Santa Claus as someone doing what he could to stop the trafficking of vulnerable women, but Saint Nicholas surely did. He followed the example of his saviour Jesus in protecting vulnerable women and honouring them.

So, we can celebrate Saint Nicholas Day and remember and take action on violence against women on the same day. You can remember Saint Nicholas and wear the white ribbon in his honour; and like Saint Nicholas, you can take action to protect women who are some of the most vulnerable to violence: those who are trafficked, especially in the sex trade. One place to start is where many people at Runnymede Community Church help out: supporting Vancouver-based Ratanak International in their work to restore and rehabilitate Cambodian women and children from slavery in the brothels in Cambodia.

Loving The Enemy

Loving the enemy, Blessing Those Who Curse You

A friend of mine recently returned from the TEDxToronto talks. She raved about them, except for the talk given by a former politician who used the opportunity to give a campaign speech that began with taking pot-shots at our current mayor. My friend rolled her eyes and said the comments were a cheap laugh in the context of the TED crowd. Politicians are an easy target for a cheap laugh. Many of my progressive friends have been taking the opportunity to mock our current mayor on Twitter & Facebook. In the current climate, where we have a right-wing mayor, a majority conservative federal government, and the possibility of a conservative provincial government, what’s a “Left-Wing Pinko Kook on a Bicycle” to do, if not throw mean-spirited attacks and insults their way?

The problem is that this is not the way Jesus teaches us to respond to “enemies,” or people we disagree with. What He says is, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:27-28 NIV) We progressives might feel like we are hated, cursed and mistreated by some of our leaders, but we must respond in love so that we “may be children of our Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:45 NIV)

As a response to the nastiness that has plagued American politics of late, the Christian community and magazine Sojourners has called their people to sign the “Peace and Civility Pledge.” As the nastiness seems to be migrating north, I’d encourage Christians in my city and country to read and commit to it as well.

So what’s a Spirit-filled “Left-Wing Pinko Kook on a Bicycle” to do in Toronto? Put up and shut up? No, I believe that Christians have a call to speak prophetically to our rulers: see my previous post. The prophets of the Old and New Testaments did not just predict the future – they spoke God’s words and His ways to their rulers. John the Baptist was beheaded for calling the king to account. Jesus was not shy of telling the religious rulers where they were going wrong and He generally used very strong language to do so. We are to call our politicians to a better way, but we must do so with respect and humility. Ephesians 4:25-5:2 NIV

Does that mean that we must be humourless persimmon-sucking puritans? No! the prophets have a long history of using humour, drama, poetry and song to get God’s point across. Christians have a long history of turning our enemies’ insults into badges of honour: the names “Christian,” “Baptist” and “Left-Wing Pinko Kook on a Bicycle” were first given as insults!

So, have fun! But as St. Peter said, “Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family. Revere God. Respect the government.” (1 Peter 2:17 MSG)

Rob, Meet Isaiah

Rob, meet Isaiah

I woke up Monday morning to hear about the Fords’ proposed cuts to the Toronto city budget. The bullet points in the newspaper listed what’s on the chopping block:
● new affordable housing
● child care
● long term care
● libraries
● public transportation
● social services
● garbage removal
● police services
● street maintenance
● zoos and farms
● theatres, museums, and other attractions

My first thoughts were not about the “no service cuts” promises in the last municipal election, or how these things are hardly gravy. My first thoughts were about how similar this list is to one of my favorite Scriptures about the city. It’s found in Isaiah 65:17-25. It’s a passage about what the archetypal city (Jerusalem) will look like when heaven comes to earth. It is a picture of God’s dream for the city.

Here it is:
17 “See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.
20 “Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reach a hundred
will be considered accursed.
21 They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the work of their hands.
23 They will not labor in vain,
nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the LORD,
they and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the LORD.

If I were to make bullet points for God’s dream city, based on this Scripture, they would look something like this:

● a people that God delights in. Jeremiah 9:24 says that God delights in people that practice kindness, justice and righteousness. (Is. 65:17-19)
● good health for the very young and very old. This includes good health care, a healthy environment, and, since poverty and illness go hand-in-hand, a good standard of living. (Is. 65:20)
● good housing and home ownership. (Is. 65:21-23a)
● good jobs with livable wages, a connection between work and life and people owning the means of production. (Is. 65:21-23a)
● hope for the future - specifically, hope for our children’s future. This would translate into investment in education and not leaving an inheritance of debt. (Is. 65:23)
● an intimate relationship with God, which no government can legislate, but they can legislate the freedom to have such a relationship. (Is. 65:24)
● true peace and a sense of safety, a reduction in crime and conflict, and unity among all people. (Is. 65:25)

I know the bullet points don’t match up exactly, but they are so close that I couldn’t help but think that the Fords are in danger of de-funding God’s dream for Toronto.
God’s vision for the city is heaven on earth; the Fords’ vision is lower taxes. The two visions seem to be inversely proportional.

Voting Our Prayers

As children, those of us of “a certain vintage” began each school day praying the prayer that Jesus taught us.

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven. …

Most of us prayed without thinking what we were asking for. “What would it look like if God’s reign came?” “What would it look like if God got what He wanted here and now?” I think it is pretty important to ask these questions, especially since God often gets us involved in the answer to our prayers. (See Matthew 9:35-10:8.) As we head to the polls this week, these questions are important if we want to be involved in God’s answers to the prayer He taught us. We can vote our prayer if we understand what we are praying for.

So if God’s Kingdom came, if His will was done on earth as it is in heaven, what would it look like? What are we praying for? What are we shooting for? What does it look like when heaven comes to earth?

I think one of our best pictures of Kingdom Come is found in a prophecy given through Isaiah five hundred years before Jesus taught us His prayer. It’s found in Isaiah 65:17-25. It’s a picture of heaven come to earth.

17 “See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.
20 “Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reach a hundred
will be considered accursed.
21 They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the work of their hands.
23 They will not labor in vain,
nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the LORD,
they and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the LORD.

So how do we pray/vote using Isaiah 65 as a guide? There are themes in these verses that may or may not fit into a party’s platform.

Verses17-19 envision a people that God delights in. Jeremiah 9:24 says that God delights in people that practice kindness, justice and righteousness.

Verse 20 envisions good health for the very young and very old. This includes good health care, a healthy environment, and -- since poverty and illness go hand in hand -- a good standard of living for everyone.

Verses 21-23a envision good housing for all and home ownership. They also envision good jobs with livable wages, a connection between work and life, and people owning the means of production. The end of 22 speaks of retiring with dignity.

Verse 23 envisions hope for the future; specifically hope for our children’s future. This would translate into investment in education and not leaving an inheritance of debt.

Verse 24 envisions an intimate relationship with God, which no government can legislate, but they can legislate the freedom to have such a relationship.

Verse 25 envisions true peace and a sense of safety, a reduction in crime and conflict, and unity among all people.

When we pray “Your Kingdom come,” this is what we are praying for. When you vote on Monday, is it what you are voting for?

Oscar & Mary on Christmas

No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God - for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.
- Oscar Romero

“My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.”
- Mary