Those of us engaged in Orthodox Christian mission work are aware of the difficulties of obtaining quality liturgical materials in English; differing translation styles, cost-prohibitive volumes, dealing with out-of-print texts, and waiting for as-of-yet untranslated texts to appear can be frustrating. Nevertheless, fifty years ago, such materials were even rarer, and the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline, Massachusetts has been a pioneer in making these texts more readily accessible.
Recently, the monastery has released a website to give a “behind the scenes” look at their publications and to detail upcoming projects. So far, I’m impressed, and encourage you all to check it out.
My godson recently posted this reflection on his blog: Seeking for More. He notes for instance that:
[R]outines and the sticking to the status quo can also have drawbacks. In our life as Christians, we might be able to do more. Maybe we could be doing more to help the poor and the sick, or it could be as simple as maybe needing to be there more for a friend or family member who is need of advice or in need of our love and support…[P]arishes always need help from their parishoners to help keep things running, whether it be helping by sitting on the parish council, cooking food for Trapeza, or cleaning. We should always be looking for more, each according to their abilities. How many of us are eager to look for more when it comes to increasing our financial status, or look for more in regards to advancing in our careers? We should be even more eager to pursue more in regards to our spiritual lives and in regards to our life in the Church.
Orthodox Christian spiritual writings caution us against pride and presumption, and we should not ever try to do spiritual things for our own glory, or without prayer and first consulting our priest/spiritual father. However, we must not go to the other extreme and become inert, never acting to progress, never feeling empowered to step up, or worse, never noticing the things around us that need to be done because of too much of an inward focus.
Let’s be clear: the floors at Church need swept, the chanter needs someone else to step up and help him, the priest needs more altar servers, and the person in charge of coordinating a charitable event needs someone to relieve him or her when they become overburdened.
You’re reading this because you are the person God is calling to help. Whatever you are thinking right now that you could be doing to help at your Church is probably what you should go and volunteer to do next Sunday!
Today, I saw an interesting Tweet (Twitter message) shared by a friend:
The great commission wasn’t given to a missions organization, it was given to the Church.
This is a great quote, and one which I wanted to share with my readers, most of whom are Orthodox Christians. Our context may be different than the Protestant world in which this quote was uttered, but it nevertheless provides a platform to discuss a critical topic.
Mission organizations in modern times and in the Protestant context are generally para-Church organizations that seek to coordinate the efforts of training and supporting foreign missionaries. From what I can tell, these are usually distinct from Church planting or evangelistic organizations, which seek to reach the lost in one’s own nation.
This type of organization is mostly indigenous to Protestantism, while Orthodox missions are generally under the guidance of the hierarchy of the Church. Commissions were made at various times to various peoples, but there was not, until recently, any effort to create a permanent missions department or structure.
In the last century, however, the New Calendar Greek Church created the “Orthodox Christian Mission Center” to support foreign missions in various parts of the world, such as its sister Church in Albania, which was emerging from communism, and local missions departments have been created in various jurisdictions to facilitate the establishment of new Orthodox parishes domestically. In one sense, greater organization and cohesion is a benefit to missions, but there is a potential drawback, which the above quote illustrates.
In the Protestant world, missionaries have mostly “gone professional.” A person or family feels a call to serve, researches a way to accomplish his goal, and selects the missions organization that is the best fit for them. They are trained, serve abroad, and occasionally return for support trips. Some do this as their career, while others serve a pre-set term and then return to their country of origin to assume a “regular” life. Church planting is likewise professionalized in many cases.
This is not always the case; there are certainly some bi-vocational ministers and Church planters out there, along with missionaries who are working secular jobs in their host countries. I do not want to give the impression that I think it is a problem to have a professional, trained, full-time missions team or evangelism team, per se. However, there are some potential pitfalls as this model of mission has become dominate.
One problem is that these mission organizations often act more like businesses than as a faithful group of believers united and acting together locally, knowing each other intimately, as a family. Another problem is that they make it easy for others to see missions and evangelization as someone else’s job. Because a Church member cooks for Church functions, or cleans the Church, or serves as the secretary, perhaps he or she feels that this is his or her role, while it is someone else’s role to share the Gospel and invite new people to the parish, or go abroad to serve. Sometimes, it is assumed that it is the pastor’s primary job to bring in new members, and Church boards will often have serious “sit downs” with pastors who are not getting the numbers up in a way that hits growth targets.
In an Orthodox Christian context, it is the priest who is often assumed to be in charge of bringing new people in. Of course, it is also the priest’s job to teach, to minister to the sick, to serve the liturgies, conduct correspondence, and represent the parish at important ecclesiastical and civic functions. Laypeople often imagine their only role is to support the Church financially and do things around the Church that need to be done such as cleaning, cooking, and managing the finances.
In reality, the priest’s primary responsibility is to equip the people, to teach them and guide them, so that they grow in Christ and go out and live as Christians, sharing the Gospel in both word and deed. Yes, a priest has a natural advantage in inviting others to Church since he is often recognized in public due to his specific priestly garb, but people expect a priest to invite them to Church. People don’t always expect their family members, friends, or neighbors to invite them, and often they will come, if just asked.
People also tend to expect that a priest will explain the Christian faith in some official manner, and it is almost as if they can tune it out because they already know what he is going to say. For instance, if a layperson begins discussing the latest spiritual fad to appear on talk shows, and a priest criticizes it, even constructively, some people assume he’s biased or it’s his job to say things like that. When a concerned and educated lay member of the Church engages someone with such ideas, though, often one’s guard is let down, and hearts can be changed.
Instead of acting as if it were someone else—be it a department, an organization, or a clergyman—who is responsible for doing the work of sharing our holy faith, let us grow in Christ ourselves, becoming spiritually mature. St. Peter instructs us thusly: “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).
We may not be the most articulate, knowledgeable, or experienced at this, and in fact we might find the prospect frightening at first. However, if we are open to Christ’s will, are enthusiastic, and we develop a genuine love for those around us and concern for their salvation, we will be given many opportunities to minister to and witness to them, in ways that we will be able to do so successfully. If we all share in the work, we will find many more people added to the rational flock of the Great Shepherd, and will have multipled the talent that was given to us (c.f. Matthew 25:14-30).
When we hear the word “missionary,” we often think of one being sent to preach in a far-away land. Certainly, Christianity has a rich history of such people being sent away from the comforts of their homeland in order to work for the salvation of others. However, there is an equally great need, especially in today’s modern Western world, to conduct such efforts at home. There are a great number of people whom we might describe as “post-Christian,” who have been raised in a “Christianesque” culture. Such people have a familiarity with the Christian faith, often attended Church when they were younger, and either reject the Gospel outright, or give lip service to Christian faith while not actually living it day-to-day.
Also, as Orthodox Christians, we believe that our Church is a unique Church, the original Church, in fact, and which has something to offer Americans. As the culture at large goes more and more toward relativism, and some Churches respond by watering down the Christian message in a misguided effort to reach such people, Orthodoxy presents a corrective, a living witness of the faith that never changes, and which has the power to save people in all generations and all walks of life. Orthodox Christianity is not just an ideology, but is something that can be known by experience. We have Holy Scripture, the lives of the saints, and the writings of Fathers to confirm our faith, but it is imperative that each and every Orthodox Christian live as a missionary in his own community, sharing the Gospel with relatives, friends, and neighbors. This involves both sharing the faith and living the faith ourselves to the utmost extent possible, so that we radiate Christ and prove that His grace is effective.
When looking for Orthodox precedents for foreign missions, we are quick to think of the Apostles to the Slavs, Saints Cyril and Methodios, who in the 9th century brought Christianity to the pagan Slavs living in the area now known as the Czech Republic and Slovakia. However, we may have a harder time calling to mind a saint who was engaged in domestic missionary work, or more specifically, the re-evangelization and strengthening of one’s own people, especially in modern times. Yet there were several remarkable individuals who contributed to the modern spiritual reawakening of the Orthodox faith in Greece after centuries of degradation under Ottoman rule, and the most beloved of these has to be Saint Cosmas the Aetolian.
Saint Cosmas (1714-1779) lived at a time when Orthodoxy was on the decline in what is now Greece and Albania. After the Turkish conquest of the area in the 15th century, various pressures led to conversions to Islam, and restrictions on the practice of the Orthodox faith among those who remained Christian. Education suffered, and in many areas, people ceased to have a connection to the Greek language, which had a detrimental effect on understanding the faith. By the time of Saint Cosmas, there were countless adults in the northern regions of Greece who were unbaptized and completely uncatechized.
Saint Cosmas the Aetolian Preaching
Our saint originally sent out to become a monk on Mount Athos, and accomplished his goal, living in peace for nineteen years. Eventually, his concern for his fellow Greeks led him to request a blessing to go back into the world to help educate and enlighten them. The Patriarch of the time in fact gave him a blessing to preach everywhere he wished, and to accomplish his work as best he saw fit. He would go from village to village, and set up a Cross in the square. Various Christians would come to hear his teachings, which he presented in simple language so that most could readily understand him. Saint Cosmas established over 100 schools in his years of struggle. His work provoked jealousy among the rulers, and he was put to death on August 24, 1779. His earthly body was silenced, but his work outlived him, and not only helped thousands of Christians to improve their faith and avoid apostasy, but helped bring the Greek nation into the modern era.
Saint Cosmas burned with a love for his fellow Greeks in the 18th century, that they might know Christ and be saved. In a like manner, we burn with love for our fellow Americans, and specifically North Carolinians, that they might experience the blessed life and joy that accompanies repentance, surrender to Jesus Christ, and baptism into His Church. We travel from place to place, building up missions and teaching the people how to properly give glory to God (Orthodoxy is a Greek word meaning “right glory,” or the proper way to worship God). We are provoked by the degraded spiritual state of modern man, a state where questions which were considered solved centuries ago by revelation and experience are now openly questioned again, as man has lost touch with the sources of the Christian faith, the anchor of Western civilization, resulting in many today walking along lost, engaging in do-it-yourself spirituality and bouncing from ideology to ideology. The setbacks and struggles in our work do not cause us to quit, but instead strengthen our resolve.
A Methodist Circuit Rider
This work is, in fact, not something new to American culture. Shortly after the time that Saint Cosmas struggled to enlighten the Greek nation, Methodist circuit riders began working to re-evangelize and minister to Americans, especially those in rural areas. By combining the spiritual teachings, examples, and disciplines of our Father Cosmas with the methods of these early American evangelistic pioneers, and adding in the aid of modern technologies such as the Internet, we hope to follow God’s call and spread our faith through our own homeland, the beautiful state of North Carolina (and may others reading this be inspired to work in their own communities). As we labor, may we be guided and protected through the prayers and intercessions of Saint Cosmas the Aetolian!
A Hymn to Saint Cosmas
By teaching the Divine Faith, thou hast richly adorned the Church and become a zealous emulator of the Apostles; for having been lifted up by the wings of divine love, that hast spread far and wide the message of the Gospel. O glorious Cosmas, entreat God that He grant us His great mercy.
Cavarnos, Constantine. St. Cosmas Aitolos : great missionary, awakener, illuminator, and holy martyr of Greece. 3rd edition. Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1985. (available for purchase here: http://ibmgs.org/lives.html)
Every year around this time, as the joy of Pascha is still fresh in my mind, my thoughts return to an old YouTube video. Back in 2006, I was new to YouTube, as were a lot of people. The novelty factor was still strong; it was fun to see what kinds of silly or stupid things people would post, and I came across one video in particular that featured a grown man in a bunny suit singing about “Eastern Orthodox Easter.”
At the time, I thought it was silly, and not altogether original or that good even, but almost as it is impossible not to look at the aftermath of a car accident on the side of the road while driving by, I have found it hard to resist the temptation to look at this video around each Pascha (no offense to the guy who made the video, if he happens to find this article—he did look like he at least had a lot of fun making the video!). Perhaps it’s a waste of time to watch it every year, and something I should confess…
That being said, this year I was thinking about this video again, and it struck me that the video is unintentionally useful for missionary purposes. That’s because this video shows one view of how the common man, the average Joe, views the Orthodox Church here in America. Listening to the lyrics of this, err, song, I realized that it gives us some insight into how we are perceived by many of our fellow citizens here in America (and probably other parts of the Western world).
The video opens with the performer stating: “Easter Bunny here. Y’all think Easter’s over but I’m here to tell you about a little something I call ‘Eastern Orthodox Easter.’” The performer then announces that most people think that Easter is just one day in April, but if you look, you will notice that actually there is another Easter—Eastern Orthodox Easter.
The reason for two dates is because approximately two out of every three years, the Orthodox date of Easter is different than the West’s date, due to a difference in calendar. I remember seeing the same thing on some calendars throughout my life, just as I remember reading in my middle school textbook that “in 1054, the Eastern Orthodox Church was formed, when it broke with the Pope.” Naturally, we dispute that version of the events, but it left the impression in my mind that the Eastern Orthodox were kind of like Roman Catholics, but a popeless, Greco-Russian cultural variety thereof. Thus when I left the Protestant Church, I didn’t even consider Orthodoxy, but went straight to Roman Catholicism. It was some time before I finally gave Orthodoxy a fair shake, and thank God, I found out that Orthodoxy is not just for Eastern Europeans and Middle Easterners. The video’s performer thus highlights the exotic and “other” feeling that allows people to gloss over Orthodoxy without investigating it; it’s just “too exotic for me” I suppose most people say to themselves, without ever delving deeper.
He continues: “Whatcha know about Eastern Orthodox Easter? Yeah, didn’t think so. You ain’t even ready for this.” Indeed, most people have no idea what the “Eastern Orthodox” Church is. Even the name Eastern contributes to the exotic feeling mentioned above. Some ask if Greek Orthodox is the same thing. I never introduce myself as Eastern Orthodox, preferring to self-identify as an Orthodox Christian, but most of the time, this elicits a blank stare, which is usually alleviated when I say, “you know, like Greek Orthodox?” Then follows the look of acknowledgement…
The video continues: “stomach sore from thousands of crunches?” Obviously used as a filler, something to rhyme in this quickly-composed song, the performer doesn’t realize how close he comes to the truth. Pascha, the Orthodox word for Easter, follows the Lenten period, when we fast and do many prostrations in repentance for our sins. We mortify the body in order to help cure the soul, while the modern world often exercises to maintain illusory beauty. Thousands of crunches, no. Thousands of prostrations? Hopefully. Yet how many people know about the saving medicine of Orthodoxy, the path to spiritual cure that has saved many of us from destruction? How many people in the world would benefit from the Church, the Hospital of sinners, where they could find their cure? Yet they do not know about it, or dismiss it, because it is so poorly understood.
“When you feel like you’re a week behind…” Orthodoxy uses a different calendar; it’s outdated many think. We must explain why we use a different calendar, why we celebrate some things at different times than our Western Christian friends. We must show why Orthodoxy is relevant to the modern man, going deeper and beyond the surface differences. The best way to do this is for Orthodox simply to be good Christians! Orthodox, know your faith! Read the Scriptures daily, pray, fast, and live the life that is made available to you through the grace of God. Do not throw away the grace that is given, and leave outsiders with no impression that you are in any way different from society at large. Otherwise, our different calendar and our incense and our Eastern looking Church buildings will remain a symbol of our inaccessibility instead of something that stands apart, and draws the curious inquirer in, or worse, they will give the impression that we are attached to our faith because of our ethnicity, and not because our faith itself matters personally. This applies to converts as well as those from historically Orthodox cultures, who can easily be perceived as contrarians or those who are just interested in exotic things.
“Just another day to find the money egg, fool!” Easter is not about bunnies, and chocolate, and eggs, although such things can be used to teach some aspects of the feast. No, it is about Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. Pascha, as we should call it, is the culmination of the Savior’s work, the victory over death and sin. Do we live the resurrected life? Have we died to sin and death, and arisen with Christ, through Holy Baptism? Then let us not mimic the ways of this world, and let our celebration of Easter “Eastern-Orthodox style” not simply be a remix of the first one that “normal” people celebrated a few weeks before.
We Orthodox have to take a large share of the responsibility for how we are perceived. Yes, those who are truly seeking the Truth can find Christ and His Church, despite the shortcomings of our witness, but this is no excuse. The persecutions of the communists, the poverty under the Turks, are all understandable reasons why the Orthodox Church did not expand as much as other Churches in the Early Modern Age, but these days are gone. There is no longer any material or physical reason why Orthodox cannot and should not expand as far and wide as possible. Thankfully, in many places, this is exactly what is happening, but the need is great. We must show other Christians that we are not an exotic “other” but are rather the eldest Christian Church, with something to offer all peoples, a perspective that provides continuity and balance in a sea of relativism, in the face of shifting sands of the whims of man. While other Churches are caving theologically, Orthodoxy is a witness stretching back into antiquity. It’s up to us to live our faith as a faith, to explain it to others, and invite everyone we can to Church with us!
The performer closes by stating: “We got eggs, Easter bunnies…you ain’t never seen anything like this…Easter, Eastern Orthodox style.” Well, as explained, the bunnies and eggs are missing, but he and anyone else who gets past the superficial exoticness will be led to agree that they have not seeing anything like Orthodox Pascha. It is the most beautiful religious service, beyond anything that most people would imagine, and it is accessible to all people! In addition, we Orthodox proclaim that every Sunday is a kind of “little Pascha” because every Sunday we commemorate the Resurrection of Christ, and sing the hymns that talk about His Descent into Hades and arising on the third day.
So for those non-Orthodox reading this, come and see Pascha, or any other Orthodox Christian liturgy. Don’t assume we are exotic or culturally distant. And Orthodox brothers and sisters, let us make our Churches welcoming to all peoples, open, and welcoming. Let us not put any barriers up that would prevent the seeking heart from finding its true home.
One thing I’ve noticed about Christian life here in North Carolina is that many, if not most, of the Protestant Churches in the area are still racially segregated. In contrast, most of the Roman Catholic Churches in the area are racially diverse (Masses in foreign languages do technically divide people up, but all are still members of the same parish).
It seems to me that the trend towards ever-more contemporary worship styles will probably continue to functionally keep people divided, because different ethnic and cultural groups in America tend to enjoy different styles of music and expressions of worship, in general. Those who advocate the use of contemporary worship music and practices often cite the generally unchurched nature of most young Americans, and contend that this approach gets seekers and inquirers into the Church while traditional Churches seem increasingly foreign to each succeeding generation. I do not wish to disparage the non-Orthodox people who are living their entire lives trying to preach Christ to those who know Him not; I count several such people as my friends, in fact. This article is not an evaluation of their methods, which I believe could find a way into a broad program of Orthodox missionary work, perhaps with some modifications (para-liturgical, of course). These Christians are mentioned here only to further the article’s main point.
The Orthodox liturgy, in contrast to contemporary worship, is worship that was established by the Apostles, and was passed down from them to each generation, through the succession of bishops that continues from the Apostles to our own bishops (a direct chain of ordination, all the way back). This liturgy, while having developed organically over the centuries, maintains the same structure as the earliest attested liturgies, and has changed little over the centuries. No committee or worship team ever sat down and decided how to “do” liturgy in the Orthodox Church.
Thinking in terms of an axis, there are both vertical and horizontal components to the unity of Orthodox worship; vertically, in the sense of time, having been passed down from the Apostles, and horizontally, in geographic terms, knowing that all Orthodox are worshipping in virtually the same way, whether in Uganda, America, or Greece. This unity is powerful. We fallen sinners enter in to this stream of worship, which has been going on since before we were born, and which will continue long after we are gone, which is bigger than any one of us.
Orthodox worship is timeless. It is never old-fashioned, or modern. It simply expresses a heavenly reality, a glimpse which the Holy Prophets, Apostles, and Fathers of the Church experienced and transmitted to us. Their divine visions gave much substance to the liturgy, which is also going on in Heaven continuously, as the Angels worship the Holy Trinity on the throne of glory. It is thus God-centered worship, and not created to appeal to the cultural whims of any given, short-lived generation.
Roman Catholics, having once been part of the Orthodox Church, and having a Mass which, while drastically emasculated by the “reforms” of 1969, is nonetheless still foundationally pattered on this same liturgical structure. Their insistence on there being one Church structure and one form of worship has allowed for a much greater integration. Thus, a visitor to a Roman Catholic Mass will notice people of all ethnicities together. This much better reflects the vision of the Holy Scriptures, where “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
Orthodox mission work in Eastern Carolina faces a challenge. A faith that was initially brought here by mostly Eastern European and Middle Eastern peoples, and which has expanded to include American converts initially mostly of Caucasian background, could easily fail to substantially reach all segments of the community. But this would be a failure, for all people deserve the chance to receive baptism for the remission of sins in the True Church of Christ, the Orthodox Church, the only Church with an unbroken link back to the Apostles and unchanged doctrine. Therefore, we are constantly evaluating our mission strategy, and looking for ways to invite people of all backgrounds in our Church. We desire to be a multi-racial, multi-ethnic community. In Greenville, we have already achieved an atmosphere that is welcoming to visitors of all backgrounds, and we seek to continue to develop this.
The Divine Liturgy is thus the catholic, or universal, form of worship for Christians. Orthodox hymnography is full of expressions such as that when Christ was raised on the Cross, He lifted “all men” to Himself, not just for instance His fellow Jews. It brings people of all backgrounds together. It does not, however, force us to abandon who we are, racially and culturally speaking. Thus, we can imagine that from that unified assembly, members would continue to express their Orthodox faith in ways comfortable to their own background, and in their own neighborhoods. The universal will thus bring fulfillment to the particular.
If you believe that Churches should be places where all people worship together, and not a religious reaffirmation of long-standing ethnic divisions in the community, then contact us and learn how to become part of our work, to further the Gospel and Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
