Introduction to Orthodoxy

Article by Andrew Smith :: Photo courtesy Sarah Meggitt Photography

On this post – and a few upcoming posts – I’m going to be talking about Fr Daniel Sysoyev.  Some people will be very familiar with his life, but many won’t have heard of him, so I’ll give a brief introduction here.

Fr Daniel Sysoyev was an Orthodox priest who served in Moscow.  He was murdered in 2009, in part because he was a successful evangelist.  He was notable because he evangelised the people of Moscow – not just Russians, but any ethnicity or religion who happened to live there.  His missionary work was in earnest for about 10 years, and most of the people he converted were in the last 5.  Fr Daniel didn’t do this by chance: he had planned and instituted programs designed to bring people into the Church.

Firstly, I’m grateful to Fr Peter Alban Heers, an American priest serving in Greece, for talking about Fr Daniel’s program in a Postcards from Greece podcast on Ancient Faith Radio.  Check out the show for yourself.

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Any parish interested in growing needs a program, of sorts.  Not necessarily a high-priced program, not even a slick program, but some sort of plan to go about bringing people into a parish – and, of course, having a parish worth bringing people into.

This program – rather, two – a spiritual program and a missionary program – must work hand in hand.  The spiritual program covers things like services, when Liturgy will be on, prayer and the like.  The missionary program is about talking to people, making the church welcoming, and so on.  Foundational to this is the priest praying.  They have to pray themselves, and have to encourage prayer in the congregation.  Prayer isn’t just one person talking to God, and isn’t a group talking to God – it also allows other people to talk to God as well.  There can’t be any evangelism without prayer.

In Fr Daniel’s parish – named for St Thomas the Apostle – there was always someone praying.  This person was able to welcome people to the church, to assist people who were walking by and were curious for whatever reason (in business, termed ‘locational marketing’).  This person was knowledgeable enough to give a tour of the church, and to give flyers about important matters – Baptism, Communion and the like – but did not need to be tertiary-educated in theology or anything like that.

Others have written about Fr Daniel’s achievements, lauding them and saying how they wouldn’t work in Western countries (e.g. America, England, etc).  What is noteworthy is that while Russia is a culturally Orthodox country in a way that Western countries simply aren’t, this doesn’t translate into every Russian being in church on Sundays.  Quite often, it would mean much the same as in Western countries, where people might go to church for Christmas or Easter but mostly ignore the church for the rest of the year.  Fr Daniel was working in a place of superficial Christianity, and there may be more similarities than are immediately apparent.

Moreover, such challenges may have been worse in a culturally Orthodox milieu.  Like in Western countries, Fr Daniel also struggled against a merely cultural kind of Orthodoxy – a mindset that is easy to fall into in that culture, but a mindset no less spiritually damaging.

Having someone in church wasn’t just limited to private prayer, either.  Fr Daniel made sure that his church did morning services, evening services, as well as services on weekends.  It really was a place of prayer, and this was very attractive to a lot of people.

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This series will continue for the next few posts.

Do you think that these ideas – planning for growth, daily services, prayer-first, church tours on-call, pamphlets – would work in Western countries?  Have you tried any of these?

Leave your comment below!

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