Orthodox Reflections

Once upon a time, when coffee fellowships after liturgy existed, I took an informal poll. Like most urban areas, our corner of Florida is a big city surrounded by little suburbs. Out of curiosity, I asked 10 people which city they lived in and got 6 different answers. Interestingly, not one of those 10 people actually lived in the city in which our Greek Orthodox parish was located. After discussing the situation, as a group we were able to come up with a few families that actually did live in the local city. A few families out of over 400, that is. The priest’s family was not one of those, he lived a couple of cities over. Better schools there and more value for your housing dollar.

Of the people in the conversation, many drove upwards of 20 miles one-way to attend church. One older couple drove almost three hours each Sunday round trip. And almost all of them had a canonical Orthodox parish closer to them than the Greek one we were sitting in. Usually, it was a lot closer. But it was the wrong ethnicity. Or it was too small. Or it had the wrong liturgical language. Or the icons were not as pretty as they should be. Or there weren’t enough activities for the kids. Or the priest was foreign. Or it was Western Rite. For whatever the reason, it seemed quite a few parishioners would drive past a parish closer to them on the way to the Greek Church.

So here was this parish, sitting in the middle of a city of around 20,000 people, and it essentially had no connection to the local community. It might as well have been floating in space. Because of the travel distances, most parishioners came only on Sundays. Weekday liturgies and vespers were mostly empty, with the exception of Lent when everyone made special efforts to come. There were social events, in those pre-Covid days, but they could be hit-or-miss unless they were on weekends. Driving over an hour in heavy traffic after work, with kids, was a harsh thing to do unless it was a very special occasion.

Coffee hour and catechism classes were great, of course, and post-Covid (God willing) they will be again. My family has some great friends in our parish, but we see them once a week at best. Not one family lives anywhere close to us. None of the kids at church go to school with our kids. No common sports teams, no common karate or dance classes. Many of our kids’ friends at church are not even in the same county. In fact, families from four different counties attend the parish. We all live in very different local areas with very different lives.

Prior to Covid-19, those with an Orthodox heritage (Greek, Russian, Serbian, etc.) tended to just go to whatever “ethnic” church was most convenient, even if that was an hour or more drive. For non-ethnic Americans interested in Orthodoxy, the situation was a lot more confusing. Assuming you have choices, which flavor of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is for you and your family? When I was first inquiring into Orthodoxy in the late 90’s, I actually had four parishes from different jurisdictions within roughly the same 25-mile driving distance from home. For regular Americans searching for the original Church, just trying to pick a parish to visit can be a daunting task. We ended up in the Greek Church only because we had been to a Greekfest once, and so we knew where it was.

This not really how the Orthodox Church is supposed to work. A parish is supposed to be local and you attend it with your neighbors. I saw this clearly enough living in a Catholic Eastern European country for a few years. I lived in a little neighborhood on the edge of a city of almost one million residents. The local Catholic parish was the community center. Everyone seemed to know everyone from church. The local priest was a young guy who functioned like a sort of local mayor. The ladies of the community organized around the parish to help those who were ill or out-of-work. People stopped off at the Church on their way to and from work to pray. Kids took time off school to attend important feast days during the week.

I am sure it is no different in Orthodox countries. This kind of life has almost nothing in common with what we call “church life” in the United States.  To be honest, we govern and treat our parishes more like clubs than communities, which is because rather than a daily presence in our lives the parish is a weekend hobby.

People don’t realize it, but once upon a time the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist Churches were all about equal-sized in the American South. During the latter half of the 19^th Century, the Baptists took off and, eventually, came to dominate. How? They trained their clergy locally, in large numbers, and planted churches everywhere they could. The Methodists and Presbyterians sent their clerical candidates off for a seminary education, and most of them found other prospects than running start-up churches in the sticks. People joined their friends and neighbors at the local Baptist Church, which in many small towns was often all there was.

100 years later, in the little town I grew up in, the normal question in school was, “Which Baptist Church do you go to?”

The Russian Church is on fire with this model of local growth as well. We tend to think of Russia as an Orthodox Country, but after 70 plus years of official atheism, the Church is actually dealing with a massive mission field rather than a functioning Orthodox society. To that end, the Church is opening an average of 3 new parishes a day, over 30,000 in the past 30 years. This was how Metropolitan Hilarion discussed the process, “We should not forget that most of the 30,000 temples built were created on people’s money, which is money from ordinary believers, businessmen or big companies, but never was a church built that stood vacant. They are never built simply as a monument of architecture or art. A church is always built for people, moreover – first a community appears, and only then collects funds for a church in the area.”

In a time of riots, pandemic, and lock downs, we need strong local communities. To build those communities, perhaps we should go to the people instead of expecting them to drive to us? Any community of any decent size in the United States should have a canonical Orthodox parish. The Faithful should be given the opportunity to attend Church where they live. With local parishes, we can concentrate on evangelizing local communities so that that neighbors can attend church together.

How can that be done? Distance learning and mentoring options already exist in the United States for forming candidates for the priesthood. With face-to-face learning so constrained, could this be an opportunity to expand cost-effective, locally based programs to produce more clergy? If expenses are low, and a man can keep a secular job during his priestly formation and into his early ministry, does that not expand greatly the number of potential priests? And if we can save on priestly salaries, could we not afford more missions? Is it possible to get the costs of starting up a parish low enough that even a few local families can be enough to begin?

But what about the “ethnic” situation? Will ethnic Orthodox support a local parish that is not of their ethnicity? That is a valid question, and once that could have been an insurmountable problem. But Covid has really affected things. From controversies over communion to financial struggles to church lock downs – a time of great change is upon Orthodoxy on this continent. All kinds of assumptions we took for granted have been over-turned this year. Perhaps this is God giving us an opportunity to finally pursue true evangelism, if we can but overcome our tired cynicism and divisiveness?

Not possible you say? Too bold a vision? The Church that evangelized the pagan Roman Empire and outlasted Communism is right here. The Gospel hasn’t changed. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Orthodoxy is not some kind of exotic philosophy. It is the foundation of all Western society. Orthodoxy is for all Americans and all Canadians in every city and every town. It is our job to bring the Gospel to them, and live streaming on the Internet is not the way to do it. They must be able to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Which means we need parishes. A lot more parishes. And those parishes need to be integrated into local communities, running local food banks, bringing neighbors together around the Chalice in true communion one with another.

Nicholas – member of the Greek Archdiocese of America