How to fill every church seat in America

A lesson from St. Patrick

Patrick was born in difficult times. Historians place his birth somewhere around the start of what we refer to as the “dark ages,” in the 5th century A.D. He referred to himself as a Roman, and a Briton. Ireland, at the time, was populated by pagans. By the time Patrick had finished his work, Ireland was on fire for the Gospel, and became the main source of missionaries to the rest of Europe during the dark ages. Historian Thomas Cahill went so far as to claim the Irish saved civilization.

How did St. Patrick do it?

St. Patrick preaches to the Celtic High King of Ireland. Stained glass, St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Macon, GA., Image by Andy Coan

It’s simple. Patrick accepted Christ, after having been captured at the age of 16 from the British Isles by Irish raiders and made a slave. He escaped and returned to Britain, then to France to conduct his studies. He was not held as a studious man, but a man of action. Patrick was given a vision from God, in which “all the children of Ireland from their mothers’ wombs were stretching out their hands.” He answered the call.

Patrick preached holiness, chastity, and consecration to Christ. The pagans used feasts, sexual acts, and sacrifices to please their gods. Patrick was opposed by the druids and their priests, but many of the local kings granted him protection. He founded monasteries, ordained priests, and grew the indigenous church organically, imposing a diocese system and councils to govern the proclamation and teaching of the Christian faith.

There’s plenty of history to read about St. Patrick, and I’m not here to go deep into it. It should suffice to say that over 1500 years later, we still celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and do it with joy. The history endures as more than myth.

People in the days of St. Patrick were no more stupid or easily led than we are today. The difference between those people and us is that we have technology, and a highly specialized system of capitalism where even the simple manufacture of a pencil is beyond the ability of any one person to complete alone. The onset of the dark ages was the result of the cataclysmic end of the Roman Empire and its authority. Might made right, and all kings vouchsafed their authority in raw power.

I don’t think it’s hard to translate some of the problems in St. Patrick’s world to our own. The Romans had many advanced technologies for their time. And today, we’re questioning, in an actual test, the ability of marvels like Measles vaccines or water fluoridation to protect our children. Many see the world reverting back to a might makes right doctrine. And mind-altering drugs, sexual perversion, and experiential discovery has replaced the Gospel as the pursuit of meaning and fulfillment.

St. Patrick would know what to do, and should we do it, every seat, in every church in America would easily be filled. Our nation would burn with the Gospel, and instead of other nations sending missionaries here, we would rededicate this nation to the proclamation of freedom, and the Gospel, to a world starving for solutions and meaning.

Let me give you just a few points that I’ve seen in American churches that illustrate St. Patrick’s method.

To lead others to holiness, be holy

Christianity is not transactional, in the sense that we make payment for something and receive it. No, the Gospel and salvation are free, and nothing need be done to earn it, other than to receive freely. But once received, those who want to see the Gospel spread must be holy. God can work through a donkey, of course, but God cannot work through people who only pretend to have accepted Christ. Whatever fruit those people produce will be short-lived and one day will rot. Pastors and preachers who fail to adhere to holiness—humility, patience, gentleness, kindness—in their personal relations, and in their accountability, will fall to pride.

St. Patrick was humble, and endured the criticism of his contemporaries at his lack of sophistication. But that won him support and friendship with those who had political power in Ireland, because they didn’t see Patrick as a threat to their rule. The Kingdom of God is not of this world, and seeking political cover through power is a counterfeit work, not the work of God. Holiness and humility are necessary to commit to the work of the Gospel.

Listen for the call, and heed it. Do not quit.

God calls those for whom He has set aside a task. It might be something the person who receives the call isn’t prepared to do. It might be something that takes years or decades to fulfill. It might be a labor without public recognition. It might be difficult, or unsafe.

Patrick received a vision from God in a dream, and it energized him for the rest of his life. He was 22 when he returned to Britain after enduring slavery and escape. It took another 21 years before Patrick was consecrated as a bishop in the church. Even St. Paul, the apostle who met Jesus on the road to Damascus and experienced a radical conversion, took 13 years before he left Syria to preach as a missionary.

The call, to a person, or an organization, takes time.

I heard several times over this weekend at a men’s conference I attended that God can use a failure; he can work through someone with a checkered past; he can raise up someone who could not complete their calling on their own; but God cannot use a quitter.

One time in my own life God gave me a dream of a 24-hour/365-day prayer room. It sat in my drawer for five years before God brought it to my attention again. And despite my own reticence, He brought it to completion. My only talking point is that I did not quit. That prayer room lasted over five years, without the doors being locked a single time, and I have no idea what the fruit of it will be, short of when I get to heaven.

Ministries tend to be in a rush, so they enact programs, outreaches, and various methods to “increase engagement” or “attract seekers.” That might a good career goal for a pastor looking for financial security, but it’s not the mission of a Christian sharing the Gospel.

Go where the sinners are

This seems so simple. But it’s so easy to ignore, isn’t it?

Every city and town in America has “all the children…from their mother’s wombs stretching out their hands.” There are widows, orphans, drug addicts, prisoners, the homeless, those with mental and physical challenges, the elderly, and teenage pregnancy, the pagan.

God will open the doors to any of these groups, because that is His heart. Standing at ceremonies and funerals with signs of protest is not the way God calls those doors to open. It’s the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, that opens all doors.

There is no brighter light or hotter fire for the Gospel than the person who was saved out of the fires of hell. There is no cheering section for any church in America louder than the drug addict who is no longer addicted, or the homeless person who is no longer homeless, or the mother who was on the cusp of abortion who celebrates their child’s birthday.

You want joy in your church? Open the doors to the cheering section. Go out and “compel them to come.” Bring them in. Feed them. Clothe them. Love them. Do not judge them. Shower them with dignity and worth. In other words, be like Jesus.

I saw, returning this weekend to visit the church I attended for years and was married in, the cheering section. That church has increased attendance, filling every seat, in the seven years since I was there. I asked friends how it happened. They went where the sinners are, and shared love, and the Gospel. Those people sit on the front rows now. They will be the missionaries for a new day when the Gospel spreads from that church.

St. Patrick went back to Ireland, not as a slave to men, but a slave to the Gospel. He went where he was called, and went where the sinners were.

Prepare for opposition

There is an enemy, an accuser of our souls. Mankind deserves an accuser, because in the Garden of Eden, we sinned. The enemy will fight us like the devil (I know what I did there). Any advance of the Gospel will bring opposition.

When I worked to set up the prayer room, it experienced many days of despair. The builder who owned the property had every single one of his building permits revoked by the city. All work stopped. Months went by. The men of my church showed up to pray and anoint every metal stud, door, and frame with oil. We spent hours praying over an empty shell. Opposition was not overcome by fighting city hall. It was overcome by the Spirit of God (and by not quitting).

One of the key ministries at my old church is Celebrate Recovery, which ministers to people afflicted by addiction. This ministry has been around for years, and I know the people who stuck with it as it bounced from church to church over that time. And my old church gave it a home and resources. The first “graduate” of CR was a family member of my wife’s. He relapsed. and on a July day four years ago, he took his own life. I wrote about it. It was devastating, and it still is.

Since that time, CR has grown by the hundreds, and it has filled the seats of the church that fed it and gave it resources. Opposition came. It still comes. Those who work in CR experience supernatural levels of attack, on themselves, their families, their careers, and even their health.

St. Patrick spent more time praying than studying, or even preaching. Jesus went to mountaintops to get away and pray, to pray for his disciples, who he knew would experience difficulty. In order to overcome opposition, only prayer works consistently.

Preparation for opposition means prayer. Constant prayer. Prayer in the small hours of the night. Organized prayer. My current church has 6:00 a.m. prayer every weekday, and at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday. A church in revival, 2819 Church in Atlanta, has hour long lines to every service. They’d outgrown their venue, and needed a new one because the neighborhood was complaining about traffic and noise.

While people wait in line to get in, the congregation at 2819 (named for Matthew 28:19 “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”) prays for those attending. Out loud, over the microphone in the sound system. The first thing new visitors hear is themselves being prayed over. The enemy does not like this, and is doing everything to stop them from growing, including hardening the hearts of those who have property to rent, suitable for their use. It is prayer that will break and overcome the opposition.

God’s will

This isn’t a point, but a closing—a summary.

It is God’s will that the world hear the Gospel. Jesus said in Matthew 24:14, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” It’s not that we want the end to come, though we await the “great and terrible day of the Lord” when Jesus returns. We want to see the Gospel preached.

In order to see it preached, we need to learn from St. Patrick, who filled the seats of every church in Ireland, during the dark ages. He prepared a church to preserve and spread the Word of God through the darkest times that western Christianity ever saw.

These times today can be pretty dark in places for the Gospel. Europe is particularly secular. Even Ireland has moved away from the faith. America seems to be leading the world, politically, back to “might makes right” where kings and emperors ruled by conquest. Or maybe we’re following where Europe has led, I don’t know. But none of it is good for Christianity, which cannot spread by man’s power, only by God’s.

America’s church can easily fill every seat in every church, instead of closing churches and abandoning ministries. We can do this instead of deconstructing the Gospel and the Bible, conforming it to the world’s view of existence. We can return to holiness, love, and the raising of those who are the lowest. We can put aside our pride and walk in humility.

We can’t do any of those things by ourselves. It’s only by prayer and the Holy Spirit’s power that any of it can happen. I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes.

It is God’s will that it happen. If you want to see it happen, ask God to help you. It’s that simple. Anyone can be St. Patrick, because St. Patrick was nobody special. He was just Patrick, who heard from God, listened, and did it. That can be you. That can be your church.

That’s the real message of St. Patrick’s Day.

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