Christ is risen!

Thank you. I think at the bottom of all this, I have simply wanted to hear “Sorry, we Orthodox admit that we aren’t perfect either” instead of just “If you Protestants have a problem, it is yours alone.”

But here in this thread:

As much as I can speak for the Protestants, I put my hands in yours and say “Please forgive me, for I am a sinner.” As much as you can speak for the Orthodox, you have already basically said above, “Forgive me as well because I am also a sinner; may the Lord show us both His great mercy.”

This is the rote of Forgiveness Sunday put into action, and this is the ecumenism at its best. May it continue and multiply, one act at a time.

God bless, Drewster

You do me honor by resting on this doorstep. I offer apologies (by way of the story of how “new” Orthodoxy is to the American context and its challenges). I think you’re right about the lack of welcome in some places, and those places sometimes have plenty of converts (I’ve often found “ethnic” Orthodox to be more comfortable with making needed adaptations for ministry). There is not really an excuse for the lack of heart for mission. The context of our consumer culture has created something of a backlash, including within Orthodoxy. But our agenda should never be determined by a backlash. It should simply be obedience to the gospel. Preaching to all the world certainly includes entering all of the world’s pain.

To find ourselves, we must first find God…He will then disclose who we really are…we find ourselves when we stop looking for ourselves and find Him

The consumerism that Father Stephen so accurately describes begins with this belief and almost universal acceptance that we know what we need. As the Psalms describe, when we practice a ‘sacrifice of praise’ by letting go of this belief in what we know and praise and remind ourselves of who God is; we create an openness and emptiness that allows God to transform us and change us…the living sacrifice (of our desires and wants) and renewal of the mind that Father Stephen reminds us about in his earlier comment referencing Romans 12:1-2.

The services are so fundamentally about reminding us of who God is and letting go of this focus on ourselves. Orthodoxy as a daily way of life can then place God in the Center of our lives instead of keeping us in the center with a small (and likely imaginary version) of Him in an orbit around us. Keeping this simple image in mind, that I am nothing without HIm (John 15:5) and that He is my Core and when I discover Him; I really begin to find who I am and what Truth, Light, Love , and Goodness really are. Without Him, all of what I think I know about these are simple my fabrications not His Creations.

So, in a sense, it comes down to the simple idea of who and what are we making our God…ourselves or Him? I suspect this is a question I will answer in my attitudes and actions moment by moment for the rest of my life…as we say in AA, all we have is a daily reprieve contingent upon our spiritual condition

Father, your thoughts are very encouraging. That recognition that what the extended Orthodox family and village has traditionally done within Orthodox cultures is missing in modern U.S. culture is especially significant. We do indeed need to adapt. I like your suggestion to look to be part of the solution and to understand ourselves as Orthodox missionaries in our own culture. It really helps to have understanding and wise Priests/Confessors. I am thankful that in my parish we have three such (it’s a larger parish)!

OK,

I think I can buy it, where it all came from and why perhaps the “need” for small groups is not natural, but then you say:

“asking the Church (or other structures) to replace the family, friends, etc. It’s difficult and artificial (and more than a little insane). We’ve done this to ourselves accidentally, and all in the name of our economy.”

If you ask if the Church has a responsibility to fill that need, that can be debated. But let’s phrase it another way: The church has an opportunity to fill that need.

Keith Miller in “A Second Touch” defines evangelism as “feeling around the rim of someone’s soul until you find the crack – and then putting God in it.”

I remember a story about a Christian missionary group that was trying to gain access to a foreign country (Vietnam?) with no success. But then they heard of an opportunity. No one could be paid enough to clean out the sewage pit beneath one of their state prisons. This group offered to do the job free of charge, with the caveat that they would be allowed to share their faith. They got in.

I am very much on the same page with you concerning the mega-churches and the pandering that a lot of Protestant churches do. Christianity isn’t about getting your so-called needs met.

But it IS supposed to be the hospital, where you get your true needs met. If someone walks into the foyer of the church with a broken arm, what true Christian is going to tell them that Church isn’t a place that deals with this; please go back out and find your way to the hospital?

In North America this need is there, self-imposed or not, whether in the name of the economy or anything else. The needs are there, to be loved, heard, respected, valued. It doesn’t look the same as on the streets of Calcutta. Most of the wounds, diseases, neglect, and abuse are on the inside.

I propose it is not enough for the church to hang out a shingle and give the unspoken proclamation that “if you want the truth, you know where to come.”

Fr. Stephen, blogs like yours and Steven Paul’s have a different tone. They reach out with love and a helping hand. They call to the highways and the byways each in their own ways. But I have not found this attitude so common in the Orthodox church. You are a light to the Gentiles, but for your example, there are ten more that want me to be circumcised before sharing the proverbial time of day.

I don’t expect a church to conform to wants and so-called petty needs, but if I present myself, I do expect them see the pain and reach out to me (and perhaps I can do the same for them). For me attending services alone does not address that pain. I am thirsty and they hand me a book. I’m naked and they allow me to listen to their choir. That doesn’t look or smell like Christ to me. Or even death for that matter.

I don’t argue about this with them, but you’ve made the mistake of giving me and others the time of day, the permission to darken your doorway and rest on your stoop for awhile. So I’ve taken it.

~~~~~~~

I just finished reading your last response. My intent wasn’t to push you as much as to allow you to tell the whole story – which you just did beautifully. As always I am filled with the greatest respect. Thank you for sharing your perspective.

We are what we are and our needs are what they are. I would not expect them to just go away as I mature. But I would like to be “self-aware” in the right sense of the word and not simply be driven by unexamined culture forces.

The helpful approach, it seems to me, is to think carefully and openly about what we feel to be our needs (including discussing this with the priest and others in a parish) and explore creative ways of meeting those needs.

I do not expect to meet needs by changing worship (for example), but small groups are a genuine need – our families are scattered and fragmented – the commonality of our culture is primarily our common consumer-life.

How does a parish structure itself to help meet legitimate needs in a modern, secular culture in which the family is largely fragmented? It’s a missionary question. I live and think as a missionary priest – not all priests do. I’m a convert and I’m very understanding of the culture around me (as much as anyone). I have needs too. Priests are extremely isolated in America, for example, and it’s not healthy. So I do creative things to deal with this.

A number of parishes have been very successful at innovating and meeting appropriate needs. I pretty involved in the community (outside the Church). I lead a class once a week at a local Christian Drug/Alcohol Treatment program, I do the OCF at the local university, and several times a year I teach classes for the general public. Small groups in my parish are more or less informal (we do a weekly class that inevitably becomes “a group”). But there is a “women’s group” and a “men’s group” and other informal groups (mostly by affinity). It’s also possible to fall between the cracks. We don’t do nearly well enough in this – but that is true of many Churches, including the non-Orthodox.

It also matters what size the parish is – how many people are there? How life is organized is one thing for 50 another for 100 another for 500, etc.

In America we have to remember that Orthodoxy has only spoken English since somewhere in the 70′s (and not everywhere). When I began reading about Orthodoxy in the 70′s, I owned everything that St. Vlad’s Press published and it was far less than a small shelf of books. There was no internet, and virtually no converts to talk to. The first Orthodox priest I met told me to stay where I was (as an Anglican). Met. Kallistos’ Ware’s book on The Orthodox Church was first published in 1962 – and was the first accessible writing on the topic in English.

Having said all that, missionary work among the English speaking people has barely begun, and there are many lacunae. Not every jurisdiction of Orthodoxy is equally involved in mission work. Every convert to Orthodoxy should understand their place as a missionary. We have to identify things that are missing and be part of the solution, rather than thinking like consumers and of the Church as an institution that produces things for me to consume.

What is needed? What should it look like? How would it mesh with Orthodoxy and its understanding of God and humanity? How can I be part of making this happen? Will it be possible here, with this group of people? with this priest?

It’s not about ethnicity. One of the most successful mission-minded Churches that I know had a thickly-accented Middle-Eastern priest (this in the mid-west – St. Elijah in Oklahoma City).

It is our mission to modernity – it needs many things – some priests even write blogs!

Your analysis (about the village Church) seems spot on to me. Learning to adapt in a manner consistent with Orthodoxy is new, but is happening in some places.

In our culture, our perceived needs are treated as though they were objective criteria for judging things around us, but that is the mentality of a consumer.

Churches in that context transform themselves in order to respond better to those consumer needs – which has shaped many mega church Sundays into something resembling “live TV.” I well understand the arguments of “becoming all things to all men,” but there are limits even to that.

Orthodox worship, for example, is not designed to meet our needs, but is designed (by Holy Tradition) for the needs that we generally do not perceive, or do not perceive clearly – the need to offer ourselves in worship to the Holy God in the context of the Holy Mysteries. It is transforming of individuals, but is very hard – particularly in that individuals who have been formed and shaped in a consumer culture very quickly begin to behave like consumers and demand that the Church transform itself to meet their needs. They need to read Romans 12:1-2.

The need for small group relationships, however, is genuine (I think) because we have created a culture in which the family and social support structures have been removed (the average American family moves once every 5 years) and as adults are often scattered across the country with siblings being separated and grandparents absent, etc.
Thus we’ve created an artificially lonely world – asking the Church (or other structures) to replace the family, friends, etc. It’s difficult and artificial (and more than a little insane). We’ve done this to ourselves accidentally, and all in the name of our economy.

Churches that are very responsive to the consumerist aspects of our culture adapt well to this, but, in a way, only confirm the worst of our culture’s aberrations. There was a famous sociological book in the 60′s called “The Lonely Crowd.” We’ve much deeper into its realization now than then.