Introduction to Orthodoxy

Article by Andrew Smith :: Photo courtesy Sarah Meggitt Photography

This post will be continuing the series on Fr Daniel Sysoyev.  If you don’t know who he is, check out my first post.

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Fr Daniel had a number of fantastic ideas, most of which he applied, and many of these were quite successful.  What were they?

• Identification that having a spiritual program and a missionary program were both needed.
• The priest must pray.
• Leaving the church open with a tour guide.
• Twice-daily services

• Educated laypeople are important and need to have their talents directed.
• Establish a missionary school.
• Have these trained missionaries doing progressively more difficult tasks.
• Recognise that days when nominally-Orthodox people come to church are great opportunities to talk about the significance of the day.
• Use loudspeakers so that people outside the church can hear you, especially when it is overcrowded.

• Give two talks each week and three sermons each weekend.
• First talk was a Bible study, after Vespers.  2 hours, Old and New Testaments, serve refreshments afterwards.
• Second talk was the catechetical school.  Five talks over five weeks, 2 hours each, repeated cyclically through the year.
• First sermon on Saturday night vigil, about the Saint and ethics.
• Second sermon in middle of service, about the Gospel reading.
• Third sermon at end of service, about the Epistle reading.
• Post recordings of all sermons online.
• If services have gaps, fill them with Scripture.
• After services, have refreshments.
• Have special talks during the year.

• Run a publishing house, publishing prayer books, etc, in different languages.
• Consider having confession vigils.
• Consider making missionary trips to different parts of Russia.

So, the question needs to be asked: how many of these are applicable to the situation of Orthodox Christianity in the ‘Western world’?

We’ll be getting to that in our next post.

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This is the first post discussing the application of Fr Daniel Sysoyev’s missionary plans in the Western world; you can see the description and documentation of his plans in previous posts.

Do you think that these ideas would work in Western countries?  Have you tried any of these?

Leave your comment below!

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