Sysoyev’s Program for Westerners: Ethos and Plans
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 headed an extremely successful missionary program in Moscow. His activity was 1993-2009, cut short by martyrdom – being as he was active a mere 18 months ago (indeed, most of his success came in the last few years), his methods are far from dated.
However, Fr Daniel was operating in 21st century Moscow, in a country that was generally returning to Orthodoxy after decades of Communist repression. My question is, can Fr Daniel’s methods be applied in Western countries? If so, how can they be applied?
- Identification that having a spiritual program and a missionary program were both needed.
This is the first step in any missionary plan. A missionary program without a spiritual program leaves, at best, stunted Christians (and often lapsed Christians), which is not a positive goal. It is important to remember that Orthodox missionary work is not about the numbers of people in the pews on Sunday – it’s about bringing people to God through the Church that He founded.
Conversely, a spiritual program without a missionary program isn’t a missionary plan – it’s just a schedule of services. Good work can come from this – indeed, it’s probably the single most common program in Orthodox parishes today – but it’s far from a missionary program.
This would be somewhat difficult in current parishes, though. Some parishes are very comfortable serving the people that they’re serving, in the way that they are serving them. A priest who finds himself with such a parish would find it difficult to motivate the people towards establishing a missionary plan – and any who came into such a parish could be made to feel entirely unwelcome and unwanted.
- The priest must pray.
Nothing will come from a missionary plan that lacks a praying priest. It just doesn’t work like that. At best, it becomes an exercise in getting people to be in church or at church events, but it misses the whole point of bringing people to God.
- Leaving the church open with a tour guide.
- Twice-daily services
These are both extremely time-consuming activities. Many doubt whether they could be done today in the context that many parishes are in: most adults working, many priests having secular employment.
This makes it difficult, but it also means that less likely people need to be considered. Is there someone in the parish who is a university student? Works in different hours than others?
Could the church be left open with a resident tour guide? Perhaps. Perhaps a team of tour guides would be necessary – with one person for each day of the week, for example. This is especially the case for beautiful churches, or churches in good locations with lots of people walking by. If a church is in the middle of a suburban area and people go places predominantly by car, then this may not be feasible.
Perhaps having twice-daily services is too much – once-daily services could be a good start. Perhaps services couldn’t be in their expected times – a 7pm vespers may attract more people than a 4pm vespers. Perhaps these services could be led by trained laity, rather than requiring clergy to lead each service. It goes without saying that there will probably be few people at these services – those people leading the services will need to be self-motivated.
What does this mean, so far?
- If a parish wants to do missionary work, they must have a spiritual program and a missionary program; that is, services and talks, and ways to attract people to those services.
- The priest of such a parish must pray.
- Perhaps the church could be left open, particularly if it was in a good location.
- Daily services can be workable if there are trained people to lead them.
Rather than continue with the next section immediately, I’ll move to the last section of Fr Daniel’s plan, including a publishing house and plans for further expansion of his missionary program. This is probably a good thing to remember: a missionary program should not stand still. There will always be a point where doing something isn’t working anymore. People used to talk about having an ad in the Yellow Pages – something that is probably not as effective as having a website, for example. Always be on the lookout for other ways to spread the message.
- Run a publishing house, publishing prayer books, etc, in different languages.
There’s a limited amount that this is practically feasible. Parishes generally have access to some form of publishing, and are doubtless able to send books off to Lulu.com (or ebookling) to get books made up. However, in most cases, this is simply impractical, and it’s much easier to get the book from a local Orthodox bookstore or seminary press.
However, the principle can still be upheld. Parishes, where possible, should have a parish bookstore so that people are able to read books, order books in, and learn more about the faith.
Many Western countries are multicultural. California has a high Hispanic population, various parts of Australia have high Chinese and Indian populations, Canada has an entire French-speaking province. All of these are opportunities: where there are ‘minority’ languages present, parishes should be careful to stock a couple of introductory or prayer books in these languages – even simple booklets that the parish has made with comb binding.
- Consider having confession vigils.
This will depend on the parish. The purpose of this was for people who wished to be cleansed of their deeper sins to have the opportunity, without feeling like they are holding up the line. However, this may not be immediately necessary in many parishes. In Greek-tradition parishes, for example, people confess outside of services (say, during office hours), so the priest and penitent are able to work through any major sins together without needing to listen for the next part of the service. It is something that major Slav-tradition parishes could consider, but most parishes would be too small for this to be a great issue – and when it is, an appointment through the week would suffice.
- Consider making missionary trips to different parts of [your country].
This was another thing that Fr Daniel considered. It certainly seems to be the mark of a mature ministry, to be able to help other regions that needed help. It may be beyond the scope of a beginning parish ministry in Western countries, though a pan-Orthodox ministry could do this. OCMC is well-known as the American external missionary body, also doing trips to Alaska (as well as overseas), but there’s no reason why a council of churches together in a city (e.g. all the churches in, say, Alberta) couldn’t organise such a trip to a small region within or outside the state.
However, depending on the people involved, it could be a good training exercise: do missionary work in another place, being a full-time missionary for a week or two, then coming back…it’s perhaps worth considering.
So, how can we apply this section?
- Have an active bookstore. Make some booklets for speakers of ‘minority’ languages.
- Make sure that people who need ‘deeper’ confession are able to get that.
- Missionary trips to other places could be a good goal for a missionary ministry.
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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 – daily services, open churches, bookstore, missionary trips – would work in Western countries?
Has your parish implemented a spiritual and missionary plan?
How have you prayed for mission?
Have you tried any of these, and want to tell of your experience?
Leave your comment below!
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Yes all these can and have worked, in our experience, to varying degrees of success. Having daily services, open churches and a bookstore can and does work in 21st century secular Australia – as long as the church or mission is in a well placed location with lots of people walking by during the day. This would have to be in places like CBD’s (downtown), shopping strips and other such busy streets which are easily accessible by public transport, or have parking lots, or are located near freeway off-ramps so that people from all around town can access the mission.
A quiet, leafy, suburban area will yield different outcomes. You can still have daily services but perhaps only a morning or an evening service.
I think the priest-missionary will need to start the cycle of services and then hopefully teach the more faithful and frequent members and visitors how to conduct reader’s services. If the priest cannot find a layperson(s), then his prospects for expanding missionary activity will be severely limited as he will be required to stay at church and conduct these services himself. To abolish daily services in order to focus on other missionary outreach activities would be disastrous.
Would, perhaps, a daily vespers service be something that could be aimed for – at 5, 6 or 7pm, depending on the location of the church?
One strategy employed by Fr Andrew Damick is matins one day, vespers the next, from Monday to Saturday – http://saintpaulemmaus.org/schedule.html – perhaps that could be an example?