The Center Coracles

The Center Coracles Corporation is organized exclusively for charitable, educational, social and civic purposes within Sec. 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The Center Coracles purpose is to create, organize and operate initiatives for social and educational progress to equip, train and encourage people of all ages to responsibly serve the community where they live, work and/or play with the hope of accomplishing stronger communities, values and greater human advancement.

What’s a Coracle?

History tells us of the Gaelic monks from Ireland and the western coast of modern-day Scotland, who re-Christianized Britain and Western Europe after the fall of Rome. They were wild people from a wild land, who harnessed their considerable passions and energies into Christian devotion.

Rather than undergoing complete personality transplants, the Gaelic monks disciplined their passions without extinguishing them. They retained their sense of rowdiness and their love of the wild. They harnessed their love of drinking, singing and storytelling only to direct it toward their first love, Jesus. They practiced radically hospitality, welcoming all who came.

They were deeply shaped by their faith and saw the Trinity as a framework for all human interactions, highly valuing community, reconciliation and partnership. As a result, their monasteries weren’t the cold stone castles of the later Medieval period, but Christian villages of agriculture, study, safety and meaningful relationships.

But above all they were missionaries - ‘sent ones.’ When the head of the monastery considered certain monks to be ready for missionary service – after years of learning and habit-forming – they would be sent out to take the Good News to those who had never heard it. This was done in a most bizarre fashion. The Gaelic monks were commissioned by their village and placed in a coracle – a small, circular boat made of wickerwork, covered with a watertight material – and pushed out from shore with the prayer that the Lord of the wind and the waves would take them to the very people He wanted them to save. Coracles were used by fishermen at the time and were propelled with a paddle, but the missionary monks were given no such implement. They were entirely at the mercy of the wind and the tides. Wherever they ran aground, that was where they were to commence their missionary work of brokering peace, preaching the Good News and founding new missional villages like the ones from which they’d come.

These weird monks saved Europe from the darkness of constant war, bloodshed, superstition and disease and helped the continent re-embrace Christianity and forge a new era of Christendom. We at the Center look to do the same.The Center is more than a church. It’s a collection of coracles connected with a single goal: Renew Christ’s movement in America.