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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Continuing the series on applying Fr Daniel Sysoyev’s missionary techniques to Orthodox who live in Western countries, we come to his missionaries, lay co-workers and missionary school.

• Educated laypeople are important and need to have their talents directed.

To some extent, this is already done in parishes.  Parishes often look at their needs and see positions that need filling.  Priest, Choirmaster, various Parish Council positions, leaders of ministries (e.g. Sunday school teacher), and so on.

This can actually be fairly short-sighted.  Instead, start looking at the people that are in the parish, and the talents that they can contribute.  These might be gifts that they use in their day-to-day lives, such as the teacher who also teaches Sunday school; or it might be vaguely related, like the person who likes reading becomes in charge of a bookstore.

Where possible, a person should be put in charge of something that they are already good at – an accountant helping (or being) the treasurer, for example, or someone who spends a lot of time on the internet to maintain the website.  There are, obviously, roles that need to be filled because they need to be filled – someone to open the church and light the candles, someone to handle the church finances, etc.  Time spent on these things, if given to the wrong person, may be time better spent elsewhere.

The critical finding from this is that people have talents that are for ministries that the parish hadn’t previously thought of.  A salesperson might be well placed to be the foundation of a greeter’s ministry, for example.  This is some of the development of ministry that is possible.

• Establish a missionary school.

Most parishes will find this difficult to imagine.  Not just who would design the curriculum for this, but who would be the people involved in this?

An application of this may not be too difficult.  A missionary-minded priest may have one or two willing helpers, for example: start there.  It doesn’t have to be too involved – have a discussion over coffee once a week, aiming to have one idea to implement each time.  People who come into the church will often want to share their joy with others – this can grow the number of missionaries.

In time, successful missionaries can start sharing what has worked for them – and from here, a school can be born.

• Have these trained missionaries doing progressively more difficult tasks.

After a couple of meetings trying to find new methods to use – or using the ones in my upcoming book – there should be a way to identify which ideas are easy and which are challenging.  That’s okay – start on the easy ones first, then move to the harder ones as time goes on.  By the time you get to the hard ones, you might have a few more helpers to make it just that much easier.

• Recognise that days when nominally-Orthodox people come to church are great opportunities to talk about the significance of the day.

Every church-going Orthodox, particularly those who are in more established parishes, is aware that there are particular fluctuations during the year – Easter, Christmas, Theophany, days when memorial services are done – when all these people will flood into the church, and then leave, not to be seen until the next major day.  Where do these people go?

That’s more of a rhetorical question, of course.  The more important one is, why do these people go?

Rather than be derisive (which unfortunately happens in some places), Fr Daniel identified that these days were great opportunities to encourage people to come more often.  He would explain the significance of the day as part of the Christian life – something that is easily applicable for us today.

• Use loudspeakers so that people outside the church can hear you, especially when it is overcrowded.

This suggestion will depend on the church building itself.  Larger parishes can do this, particularly for Easter and other big feast days, as there is ‘overflow’ of parishioners into the surrounding area; smaller parishes will have more difficulty, and will have less need.  In many Western countries, also, this could be a problem with neighbours or other noise violations.

Having come to the end of this section, how many suggestions do we have?

• Educated laypeople are important and need to have their talents directed.
• Have a group of missionaries sharing ideas on a regular basis.
• Have these missionaries train themselves by doing progressively more difficult tasks (with the goal of a ‘school’ of sorts)
• Recognise that days when nominally-Orthodox people come to church are great opportunities to talk about the significance of the day.
• If you’re able to use loudspeakers and it is beneficial to your congregation, use them.

Obviously, these suggestions may need further adaptation depending on the parish being evangelised, but the principles are still there – and two can be utilised verbatim.

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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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