A Baptist Minister Visits an Orthodox Church - Pt 2

Dear Parish Faithful,

If you recall, I forwarded an article written by a Baptist minister last Wednesday. It was a very lively description of his first visit to an Orthodox parish for the Liturgy. (For those who didn't see or read it, you can find it below). This prompted two very interesting responses from two of our own "converts" to the Orthodox Church, Frances Fowler-Collins and Terry Morgan. With their permission, I am going to forward these two responses, beginnng with Frances' today and Terry's possibly by tomorrow.

It is very important that we pay close attention to how a non-Orthodox Christian reacts to his/her first encounter with the Orthodox Church. This will assist us in how we meet, encourage and hopefully integrate these seekers into the life of the Church, and more specifically, our parishes.

Fr. Steven

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Dear Fr. Steven,

As a recent convert, I found this article very interesting although my first (well, second) experience of Orthodox worship was quite different. Let me first describe my very first experience. It was on Christmas Eve at St. Alexander Nevsky in Paris many years ago. The service was entirely in Russian; the church was filled before we arrived; we had to stand in the narthex the whole time; there were no liturgy books, greeters, etc. Needless to say, this was not an ideal introduction to Orthodox worship.!

My second experience was at St. Anne's in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and the difference between the two suggests several things that St. Anthony the Great could do better. At St. Anne's there was no greeter at the door, but obviously certain people had been designated as "stealth" greeters or had taken this ministry upon themselves. Before I had been there five minutes, a woman about my age came up, introduced herself, and asked if I had ever attended an Orthodox service. When I told her about my past experience, she went and got a liturgy booklet (which was pretty close to what was actually done at St. Anne's, too), brought me the flyer with the toparia and kontakia on it, and stood by me throughout the service, helping me when I was lost. She also brought me a piece of the antidoron after she took communion. At the end of the service, she invited me to stay for the coffee hour after church. My reaction to t he service was that it was absolutely beautiful and that I would love to come back.

Let me say that my first visit to Christ the Savior five years ago fell somewhere in between. I was greeted almost at once by a woman about my age who also invited me to the Adult Forum and coffee hour. When I realized that there was a bulletin with the troparia on it and went back to the candle table to get one, they were all gone, and a young man standing there gave me his. However, this was before we had the new service books and I found the old ones very difficult to follow. No one offered me antidoron and no one came up to me as the service was ending to go with me to the coffee hour.

In conclusion, I would say that we certainly should not "water down" our liturgy or practices to become more "seeker friendly," but as Orthodox Christians we do need to find ways to make the transition into Orthodox worship easier for people like the Baptist pastor and his family.

Frances