Storying to Postmoderns: The Celtic Way…

May 31, 2007 | 8:00 AM

According to The Complete Evangelism Guidebook: Expert Advice on Reaching Others for Christ, Colin Harbinson, in his chapter “Arts: The Role of Creativity in the Expression of Truth,” contends that “approximately 75 percent of Scripture consists of narrative, 15 percent is expressed in poetic form, and only 10 percent is propositional and overtly instructional in nature. As we retell the gospel story, we have reversed this biblical pattern. Today an estimated 10 percent of our communication is designed to capture the imagination of the listener, while 90 percent is purely instructive.” [18] Therefore, to effectively communicate the gospel, narrative and story should be used.

George Hunter, in his book The Celtic Way of Evangelism, explains the story of St. Patrick and his efforts to spread Christianity throughout Ireland in the 400’s AD. “Celtic Christian advocates especially engaged barbarian imaginations through storytelling and imagination. The several Celtic peoples revered their oral traditions; their bards told stories and their poets recited poems that communicated the people’s beliefs, history, and folk wisdom through entertainment.” [19] If the barbarians were receptive to stories and bards, poems and other forms of imagination, then the Celtic Christians used that to their advantage. Not only was it important for the Celtic Christians to speak the local language, but likewise they had to know the best methods to present the story.

If argument absurdium is no longer the lens through which postmoderns see the world, as Stetzer suggests, and only 10 percent of the scriptures are propositional, as Harbinson suggests, then today’s culture is similar to that of the barbarian culture the Celtic Christians encountered in Ireland sixteen hundred years ago. “Celtic Christian communicators spoke from their imaginations to the imaginations of their hearers. They were less interested than the Church’s Roman wing in ‘apologetics’; that is, rationally proving the validity of Christianity’s truth claims; they seem to have believed that if you could make a Christian truth claim clear to the people’s imaginations, the people and the Holy Spirit would take it from there.” [20] Today the attitude seems the same. Whereas modern thought primarily viewed Christianity (and religion as a whole) through the lens of science and reason, postmodernity sees religion through the lens of personal experience.

The goal in communicating the gospel to postmoderns is to engage their imagination and help them experience the gospel themselves. Hunter explains that “The theme of imagination thus helps us to see that the Celtic Christian movement took an intentionally ‘redundant’ approach to communicating Christianity. They did not rely, as some traditions come close to, upon preaching alone to communicate the fullness of Christianity. They seem to have employed as many different ‘media’ as they could to get the message across, and to get people involved with the message.” [21] Diverse methodology was key to transmit the gospel across Celtic Ireland, and it is useful today. Just as Jesus used parables to communicate, the Celts used analogies, “as in the tradition’s belief that St. Patrick used the small shamrock plant to show how God could be both three and one.” [22]

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, in The Shaping of Things to Come, describe the shift in attention span of the average individual in America.

Movies have changed expectations about how we receive communication. With the average American seeing around one hundred movies a year, not to mention TV programs, MTV music videos, and the Net, preachers are forced to compete with multi-million-dollar film budgets in their efforts to get a message across. Sadly, in the communication of the gospel up until now, we have generally relied on one single tool—the monologue sermon. Will future generations be so over stimulated (is there any doubt that postmodern people today are extremely so?) that they will no longer be able to access a thirty-minute monologue in the same way their parents and grandparents did? [23]

Stetzer contends, “Postmoderns are accustomed to stacked narratives—narratives that move in and out of varying stories. The typical television show provides three or four interwoven plot lines in one episode.” [24] With the popularity of serial dramas on television (ABC’s Lost and NBC’s Heroes are prime examples) that have multiple plots playing out simultaneously from varying viewpoints, inside and outside of linear time, one can see that Stetzer’s comments about stacked narratives are true. These shows are the culmination of postmodern thought- filled with mini-narratives and their connectedness in one community.

In order to communicate the gospel clearly to a postmodern culture, diversity in media is key. Story is the primary mode of transmission, but how that story is told varies. Beyond contextualizing the story so that each individual understands it in his or her own language (as already discussed, this includes verbal language, worldview, and primary modes of reception), it is important to diversify the transmission of the message. That is to say, parables, movies, television shows, music, the visual arts (such as painting, drawing, and the like), theatre, and many other arts should be used to communicate the gospel to postmoderns in addition to the sermon.

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[18] Colin Harbinson, “Arts: The Role of Creativity in the Expression of Truth,” The Complete Evangelism Guidebook: Expert Advice on Reaching Others for Christ, Scott Dawson, ed., (Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerBooks, 2006), 163.

[19] George G. Hunter, III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West… Again (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 2000), 73.

[20] Ibid., 72.

[21] Ibid., 74.

[22] Ibid., 72.

[23] Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 151.

[24] Stetzer, 146.
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Part 1 [05.26.07]: Introduction…
Part 2 [05.27.07]: Defining Postmodernity…
Part 3 [05.29.07]: The Gospel We Preach…
Part 4 [05.30.07]: The Story of the Gospel…
Part 5 [05.31.07]: The Celtic Way…
Part 6 [06.04.07]: Story Living…
Part 7 [06.06.07]: Bibliography…

Posted in Life, Missional, Missions, Pomo Storying Series