Every year in America, the creativity of new moms and dads is put on display on the maternity floors of local hospitals. Before newborns can be released to head home to the family, there’s a decision that will last a lifetime that must be made: what’s his/her given name going to be?

Last year – on the boys’ list – Noah, Liam and Oliver captured the top three spots. Patrick landed at #218. Popularity is only one measure of significance, though: yesterday – March 17^th – Patrick was #1, with no close second. How does a man of antiquity maintain recognition and reverence sixteen centuries later?

Patrick was born in 385 and raised on the west coast of England. His father was a deacon – and his grandfather had been a priest – in the Christian faith. He was 16 when he was captured from his home by Irish raiders and taken in the hold of a pagan king’s slave ship to Ireland.

He was kept as a slave – owned by a tribal chief who was a practicing druid – for six years. During that time, his remembrance of the Gospel that he had heard as a child became real and personal, and he became a changed man and follower of Jesus. He lived herding sheep – away from regular social contact – while experiencing a deepening spiritual connection with the unseen God.

In his autobiography Confessio, Patrick recounted an angelic vision in a dream telling him that it was time to return to England. He escaped and walked across 200 miles of peat bog and forests before arriving at the port of Wexford, where he was able to secure passage back to his childhood home.

He immediately began study for the ministry. He then served 20 years pastoring a parish in Britain, but he never forgot the people and culture he had encountered during his years in Ireland.

At the age of 48 – already past life expectancy in the fifth century – Patrick had another dream. A voice captured his attention: “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.”

Irish Celtics were considered barbarians, and Christian missionaries had not targeted the isolated island for evangelism. Patrick would employ a different and disputed strategy: instead of seeking to convert the Irish culture, he would work to see the Gospel penetrate the Irish culture and become an indigenous movement, ultimately led by Irish converts who became followers of Jesus.

According to church historian George Hunter, “No other religion could have engaged the Irish people’s love for heroism, stories, and legends like Christianity. Some of Christianity’s values and virtues essentially matched, or fulfilled, ideals in Irish piety and folklore. Irish Christianity was able to deeply affirm, and fulfill, the Irish love for nature and their belief in the closeness of the divine.” (The Celtic Way of Evangelism).

Parades and four-leaf clovers were the rage yesterday, from Dublin to New York City, but in Patrick’s day, his ministry contemporaries were not celebrating his efforts: “The British leaders were offended and angered that he was spending priority time with ‘pagans,’ ‘sinners,’ and ‘barbarians’”

Despite his rejection by the religious establishment, he took the Gospel to the uncouth, unreached Irish. He gave 28 years to the evangelization of Ireland; he died on March 17^th, 461.

Heroes of mythical proportions are often remembered based on tales of fantasy. Did Patrick drive snakes out of Ireland? History offers no validation for that old-wives tale, but one thing is certain: his Gospel-centric invasion of Ireland countered the work of the Serpent of Old and is remembered today as a valid account of Kingdom conquest made possible by the Calling of Patrick to give his life in service to those who had acted to take his life as a young man.

Thomas Cahill’s great book, How the Irish Saved Civilization will expand your understanding of the impact that just one person can make by pursuing their Kingdom Calling…

Bob Shank