Why Storytelling has Always been Central to Missions, from St. Patrick to Today
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God is a storyteller.
The first words of the Bible say, “In the beginning …” Fairy tales would say, “Once upon a time …” The Bible understands what it is: a massive arc, from Creation to the Fall to Salvation to New Heaven and Earth. God’s a storyteller, and he’s telling us a story. Scripture invites us into this story.
The Western church has struggled with this. In the noble pursuit to have right doctrine, as the Bible encourages us to do, we often over-intellectualized Christianity to the detriment of the inspiring epic narrative we were born to participate in.
Frodo takes the evil ring to Mt. Doom. Luke Skywalker does the impossible and destroys the Death Star. Epic stories make tons of money because they remind our hearts we’ve been called to such a journey. Coming back to the ultimate God-story transforms the stories of individuals, families, local churches, cities, nations, and all humanity.
Telling great stories, therefore, point us to the gospel story.
Tragically, our celebration of St. Patrick in March often misses the great lessons he has to teach us in Christ. St. Patrick evangelized and converted an entire nation. And one of his tools to do so was being a storyteller.
Related article: How Do We Find Elements of the Gospel in Movies?
How Did Jesus and the New Testament Use Story?
The four Gospels themselves function as missionary documents, written to teach people about Jesus. And each Gospel reveals Christ through narratives about where Jesus came from, who he his, what he taught, how he lived, suffered, died, and rose again.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John don’t primarily present abstract theology (although John does this more than the others), they invite readers to the right person and his story so they can encounter Christ. These apostles understood the role narrative structure served in fulfilling the Great Commission. They learned to tell the stories as the Old Testament did, combining truth with historical experience.
Jesus didn’t only teach through stories, but he never taught without one. He constantly used parables to communicate the reality of the Kingdom in everyday images like fields, seeds, weddings, workers, and more. Through storytelling, Jesus made eternal truth accessible to ordinary people. Jesus revealed how complex, simple, and deep parables could uniquely teach and connect us to the eternal. The apostles repeat these stories.
The New Testament continues the pattern in the book of Acts. What does fulfilling mission look like? Luke tells us the stories of a great movement in Acts, showing us mission through God reshaping broken people to become Spirit-led and empowered missionaries. We see a persecutor who becomes a preacher, a businesswoman whose heart opens to the gospel, a jailer and his household finding salvation, and more. The gospel spreads through public testimonies, personal encounters, and miracles, all by the power of the Spirit.
Even the sermons in Acts take the form of retelling God’s saving story, from Israel’s history to the cross and resurrection. In Acts, Paul’s salvation story is told three times because Paul himself keeps repeating it. Why? Because his individual story reflects God’s epic story and points us to the Father’s will.
Finally, Revelation tells us we overcome by the blood of Jesus and the word of our testimony — our God story flows from the washing of the blood and empowers us to overcome unto glory (Revelation 12:11).
How Did St. Patrick Use Storytelling?
Fifth century Ireland already treasured spoken poetry, heroic sagas, and symbolic art. Bards and storytellers preserved history, a national identity, and moral teaching through stories rather than intellectual texts. Patrick didn’t fight against this. Biblically, he worked within it.
Instead of presenting Christianity as a foreign set of rules, Patrick told the story of God. He communicated the Christian message as a grand story of creation, fall, rescue, and redemption, one greater than Ireland’s epic tales in meaning and hope. Because he knew their culture and language, Patrick spoke in patterns the Irish could comprehend. This allowed the gospel to spread through Ireland like wildfire.
We also tell stories through visual arts, a picture speaking a thousand words, as it were. Patrick used the visual and symbolic culture of Ireland to communicate spiritual reality. Irish culture valued symbols, signs, and complex meaning. Patrick adapted this by explaining Christianity through images from nature and daily life. Through this, he presented God as the living and active Lord who steps into human history and individual lives for transformation.
Like Paul did (and we should) Patrick told his own story as part of his mission. In his autobiography, the Confessio, he recounts how Irish raiders captured and enslaved him, his years of slavery, his new faith, his escape from slavery, and his call to return to the very people who once oppressed him. He presents himself as a broken, rescued man whom God sent back with mercy and the blood of Jesus instead of vengeance.
By honoring Ireland’s artistic culture and biblical example, Patrick showed us how mission works best when we tell God’s epic redemptive story and recount our own transformation narrative as part of it.
How Did St. Patrick Leave a Legacy of Irish Storytelling and Missions?
After Patrick, Irish and Celtic leaders became missionaries and carried the same story-based approach into Europe. They made mission personal, symbolic, poetic, and rooted in lived experience.
Celtic missionaries formed communities that became storytelling centers. From Iona Abbey and Lindisfarne Priory, monks trained people to retell the gospel through narratives, poems, and preaching Scripture. They taught new believers to understand God’s work as part of one great unfolding story. Their mission was about story, not a new building.
As Patrick did in Ireland, the Celtic missionaries did in the lands they reached out to. They adapted local cultures through story. When Columbanus planted monasteries across France and northern Italy, he taught around biblical stories addressing fear, shame, and forgiveness. These themes mattered to warrior societies. Instead of attacking their cultural identities, he re-framed the ideas to build warriors of love for the Kingdom.
Irish missionaries recounted the lives of Abraham, Moses, David, and the apostles as dramas about courage, failure, repentance, and redemption, getting people to relate their own stories within those men and women. Then they would invite the audience to shift their own stories into God’s.
And like Paul and Patrick, Celtic missionaries shared their own testimonies. Monks shared accounts of calling, hardship, sacrifice, danger, and God’s rescue. Their miraculous God-stories reflected the epic redemptive narrative and revealed how anyone can join Jesus’ path.
Along with the spoken narratives, art and symbolism undergirded the story-based approach. Celtic Christianity has a striking visual component. They illuminated manuscripts, carved crosses, and sang prayers. These methods were central to many people who were still illiterate and reliant upon oral communication. With this, the Irish re-evangelized Europe after the Fall of Rome.
How Did Christian Missions Use Storytelling from St. Patrick to the 20th Century?
The Roman Catholic church came back into Europe and reestablished their dominance, even taking over works planted by these Irish missionaries. However, the mission still advanced in part through sharing the story of God’s saving work, despite not being the same level as the Celtic model.
When Boniface preached among Germanic tribes in the 8th century, he narrated the biblical story of creation, sin, and Christ in ways that challenged the fear of local gods. He invited his audience into a new story. Other priests and bishops used plays and commissioned art and music to help explain and spread the Good News.
For the modern missionary age, story remained central as the printing press changed methodology. William Carey used Bible translations, biographies, and missionary letters to tell the story of God’s work in India to gain support from churches in Britain. The missionary movement grew because believers could picture real people in real places experiencing struggle and transformation.
Hudson Taylor inspired people by publicly telling stories of his dependence on God, his cultural adaptation, and God’s miraculous provision in inland China. His writings communicated mission not as heroic success but a very real, lived journey with God, trusting him alone.
By the 20th century, the church started using mass media to tell stories. Radio, magazines, films, and music allowed the gospel to express biblical and missional narrative more than ever. As one major example, the Jesus Film Project has spread the story of Christ by dramatizing the New Testament Gospels, translated into thousands of languages. Mission teams would connect the public screenings to local Christian testimonies, helping people hear the Scripture and their neighbors’ transformation.
From Irish monks to modern media, Christian mission has depended upon storytelling – first with the story of Jesus, then using personal transformative stories to show how God’s redemptive narrative changes everything. And it still does.
How Does Modern Missions Make Use of Storytelling?
Moving into the 2000s, modern missions continue the long pattern of spreading the gospel through story. Missions doesn’t depend only upon physical travel. It moves in a myriad of different ways.
Wycliffe Bible Translators support oral Bible storytelling, audio Scripture, and other dramatized media for cultures that learn through listening rather than reading. Platforms like the YouVersion Bible App distribute Bible stories through reading plans, and their kid’s app does an amazing job recounting Bible stories through animation.
The advent of social media has become another mission field. Short form posts or videos on various platforms help missionaries and believers to share conversations, stories, testimonies, prayer requests, and other moments of transformation with a global reach. Story has become more immediate and interactive.
Podcasts and livestreams have also revolutionized mission storytelling. Mission teams host conversations about faith, doubt, suffering, persecution, miracles, and hope. They invite listeners to listen to journeys and conversations rather than a one-way presentation. Old and new believers get encouraged and discipled through these organic narratives.
Recently, The Chosen has become a famous example of applying excellent storytelling to help people relate to the struggles and fears of the people who actually interacted with Jesus. Instead of rushing to the famous moments, it builds relational scenes to reveal grace and truth through conversation, humor, and tension. By showing the journey of the disciples through Christ’s three-year ministry, The Chosen invites us to recognize the reality of those characters and to recognize ourselves in the story. The Chosen helps lower barriers, builds curiosity, opens meaningful conversations, and leads people back to the Bible as the authoritative word of God.
In an increasingly skeptical world, story becomes the most effective gospel tool. Rather than beginning with arguments (which begins a conversation as enemies), evangelists begin like the Bible teaches us: with stories about the person of Jesus and our own transformative experience. These testimonies make friends, build trust, and become great entry points for those who would believe.
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/RoterPanther
