How does your parish grow?

[GenkiGirl]

Hey guys! It's been aaaaaaaaaaaages since I've posted here, but I lurk occassionally. My husband, daughter and I moved to another state to be closer to family, and while here we have finally been cristmated (my little Lily was baptised) and are fully part of the Orthodox Church now, which totally rocks.

Here where we live there are a few Orthodox parishes, some Greek, Romanian, Antiochian, and a couple OCA churches. We're going to a small OCA mission church that is only 10 minutes away (what a blessing!) :clap: But I do not exaggerate when I say small. On any given Sunday there are only 12-15 people present. The priest is quite aged and is a part-time priest, only serving the Divine Liturgy. He really doesn't seem to have much of a vested interest in growing our church. He's nice and all, but he's tired and waaaay past retirement.

My husband has a hard time understanding why we're staying at this church that is not really growing (we're the only new people to have walked in the door in over a year), but I really feel that since it's in our area and it's where we were brought into the church it's where we should stay.

I want to do what I can to help our parish not just survive, but to grow. Unfortunately, a couple people left the church because of some hurt feelings, and another family moved out of state. Our little church is dying, and it's frustrating because it seems like the majority of the members don't see that as a problem. There are a few really faithful members that are very actively trying to grow the church and share the faith with the community.

Other than pray for our church, I'm not sure what to do. There were a few weeks when one of the committees was looking for ideas, and I put some really basic ones out there (make a web page or blog, put an ad in the phone book...or even just a phone number, get listed on the OCA parish site), but since then-and that was months ago- I haven't heard anything.

Any ideas? I'm just so frustrated. Having moved from a fantastic, healthy and growing church in Colorado, it's very discouraging to come to a little church that is struggling to stay alive...but it doesn't even seem to see how close to death it is.

Thanks for listening. Part of the frustration is that I don't feel there are many people who I can talk to about this situation. :)

[MariaRegina]

I have the same problem where I live. We used to have the most dynamic parish in California and now we are close to closing the doors.

I cannot mention names. Just pray. However, the most divisive problem concerns the type of liturgy that we have. The Parish Council wants English-Only Services but many of our parishioners are FOB (Fresh off the boat) from Russia and would like to see some Russian - at least the Lord's Prayer in Church-Slavonic along with the one in English. However some people are bean counters and do not want to stay in church one minute longer.

Where is the love? What has happened?

[ArmyMatt]

I go to a small OCA Church in State College, PA, so we have the advantage of being a college town (Penn State and all). and we have an Eastern Orthodox street preacher who preaches on campus, so I guess if you have someone who feels that calling, that could help.

other things that I guess you could do would be to have your Church sponser a G-rated open mic night and coffeehouse somewhere, where you can evangelize about the faith when people come. this makes it easy because people usually feel more relaxed an unthreatened, and that kind of atmosphere promotes discussion.

any thoughts?

[buzuxi02]

Its tough to grow a parish when you have such a small parish served by an aging priest. A parish needs a ministry, nothing wrong with an older priest of course but usually a younger priest is more gung ho and can better spearhead such ministries. In my church theres a ministry where diapers and used strollers and anything a new mother may need is collected and given to poor mothers. An ongoing food drive, anything to get your Church noticed. The parish can also allow the young people to participate in ways they will always remember. One of the parishes i attend, very large membership, but abit stagnant, so when the original priest retired the new priest decided to use as many girls who volunteer as myrr bearers on Good Friday, dressed in white.
Everytime the priest performs an infant baptism he invites all the children, whether they be Orthodox or not) to gather around the baptismal font, and i mean pressed up against the font as he performs the triple immersion, etc etc.

In the area i live in, the greek churches in the past few decades have seen extraoridnary growth simply through marriage and their children. We have been blessed in this area that when an Orthodox marries a non-Orthodox, their children tend tp be are raised in the Orthodox church, and the spouse tends to convert as well.
This is important, I know the priest of a small OCA parish where the opposite kept occuring, the young people would marry outside the church and attend the spouse's non-Orthodox church,when he took over this dying parish, he noticed mostly older people, their sons and daughters visibly absent. He made it a part of his mission to stop this bleeding, and constantly informs his parishioners that Orthodoxy is the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and to be fooled by the modernist notion that all faiths are equal. Since then his parish has reversed the downward trend from about a dozen people attending weekly to over 20 including the conversion of a devout young asian family

[Kristos]

Barry White...

[MariaRegina]

We are seeing the same thing in our OCA parish.

Young couples come to be married but never attend. Then they bring their babies to be baptized, but we do not see them again until another little one needs to be baptized. Those children never attend liturgy except for Christmas and Easter. It is no wonder that they marry outside of the Church when they grow up.


Pray.

[Rkman]

One of the problem is Orthodox churches have very weak missionaries in western world in the sense of preaching orthodox gospel to the public at large. People who converted to Orthodoxy have done so by their own effort of researching various faiths and then choosing Orthodoxy. It is hard to grow a church like that. At the same time Protestants and at times Catholic church are using every trick in the book to convert Orthodox in Eastern Europe to their faiths.
Adding to this Satan organised this world in such way to distract people from spirituality. Everything around us is preoccupying our thoughts and distracting us from working on salvation.
It is also fact that many people turn to God only when they are in hardship and suffering. When everything in their life is going smoothly they don’t think about God.
Blessed is the Lord who allows wars, famine and diseases upon nations so they would repent and turn to the road of salvation.
Just some of my thoughts on this topic.

[Greg the byzantine]

Church growth is the big issue now isn't it, and it's quite sad to see what's happening. Our parish grows and yet does not grow, the number of so called "members" grow as families move to the area and pay their $250 membership dues, yet the pews are filled with the grandmothers, and the husbands that the grandmothers managed to drag along with them. Our sunday school in my lifetime (Which is not very long) went from a prosperous 9 grade system with each grade being taught by a teacher who also had an assistant, down to a 3 class division where we divided between the youngsters, the pre-teens, and then teens, and now we don't even have a sunday school anymore. It's sad what's happening to my parish, and I'm not helping any either by going with my cousins to their parish, just so I'm not the only person between the age of 16-25 going.

We really need priests who are a bit warmer and who speak English and can approach children and young adults. People think we don't want to come to church because we are young, but really we just want to feel like we belong there, and that we are not the exception to the rule. We recently had an Archimandrite assigned to our parish after our elderly priest died, and not only is he very hard to approach, he refuses to use English, and he has a temper (practically yelled at the congregation during Holy Week). So where are the good priests? Priests get a lot of abuse from stupid parishioners, but they have a calling and as shepherd of the flock they need to bring both the young and the old back to the church.

[Chocolatesa]

The parish where my parents live is tiny, usually only 8 people or less at the Liturgy, and no one at Vespers except my mom when she goes. It's in a small town about an hour away from the city where I live, but there's 3 or 4 other towns within a 20-minute drive though. There's a few older people, and 1 family with children, and the priests wife and 2 sons, and my godparents. It's kind of a rotating attendance though cause it's rare that everyone's there all at once, except for the feasts, then it's usually packed. Of the other 2 churches I go to here in the city, 1 is medium sized with about 20-30 members and the other about 150 people. Neither have many children though, and don't seem to be growing much.

[Anhelyna]

You know , what Greg has just said makes a whole lot of sense to me :)

OK I'm EC - but we have these problems too - ours is a dying Parish :(

We have a really nice Priest but his English even after over 12 years in the country is still very limited .

We have about 3 children that I see regularly ,and a family with a teenage boy BUT that family are RC .

the parish has been in existence for many years - the first Ukes came over in WWII and worked very very hard - usually on the land and learned enogh English to survive , married guid Scots lassies and raised a family. Now their wives were usually RC and of course had language problems and the children were not really brought up using Ukrainian [ example coming a wee bittie later :) ] The children got married and moved away , as they do . got married and forgot a lot of their Ukrainian and the resulting grandchildren - well we don't see them .

I've been going there now for 2+ years - the Liturgy is in Ukrainian [ well we are Ukes aren't we ^_^ ]

For the last year we have been having the Readings in English as well as Ukrainian and they were to be read not chanted as they are in Ukie. For Nativity - I chanted and indeed have chanted ever since. Father realised I knew what I was doing and told me to carry on - yes I had asked his permission.

Earlier this year Fr started to use a few phrases of English in the Liturgy - some of the Blessings and different parts of the Anaphora and some of the petitions in the Litanies. This has NOT gone down well - I raised the discourtey of answering his English in Ukie and was more or less bluntly told to back off by 1 lady who admits she doesn't understand his sermons [ in Ukie of course]

Now the problem is I know that the UGCC Priests in the UK have been instructed to increase the amount of English used . This was told to me by my SF after the European meeting/retreat of the UGCC Clergy of Germany , France , Spain , Italy and the UK. But I can't say this - can I ?

Fr has been away on holiday in Ukraine for the last 3 weeks and we have had a priest from Ukraine over - he's a wonderful singer , was here last October when Fr took a late holiday . Fr Josyp speaks a teeeny bit of English and sent a message to me this week via our Sacristan to say he wanted to see me after DL - when he thanked me for Chanting the Apostol and said what a differenc it makes to the liturgy not having it read in a monotone . Oh all this was relayed through an interpreter though he did manage to say 'God Bless you and thank you " :D

He has caused jaws to drop at the Little Entrance when he didn't go just from the Deacon's Door to the Royal Doors - he came down into the body of the Church and presented the Gospel Book to me for Veneration - not terribly common in the UGCC and certainly NEVER in our Parish.

However - re language use - this week I was chatting to our local Latin Trad [ no Mass in Latin in this Diocese ] and we were talking about language - I'm busy preparing a copy of the Liturgy in English for her - we can't buy them easily in the UK , mine all come from the USA - and we were joined by the lady referred to above and in conversation she admitted that though she can respond to everything in the Liturgy she has no idea what it means - she is just parrotting words !!

Now how many more are like this in non-English useage parishes ?

If there are no children in the Parish - why ?

If there are no young couples / people - why ?

if there is no teaching being done - why ?

If the Parish is not growing - why ?


BTW I can't move to a Parish where English is used - mine is the only EC Parish in Scotland !! and the GOs aren't much better - they have DL once per month in English though they do have Greek School :D ]

[rusmeister]

It's small comfort, but just come over here and check out my parish! There are easily 100 regulars now where there were 40-50 a few years ago, and with visitors we clear 150 almost every Liturgy. :cool: No age trends. Lots of little kids. Now, if only we had a nursery for the wee ones to run around in...

[Dorothea]

Hey guys! It's been aaaaaaaaaaaages since I've posted here, but I lurk occassionally. My husband, daughter and I moved to another state to be closer to family, and while here we have finally been cristmated (my little Lily was baptised) and are fully part of the Orthodox Church now, which totally rocks.

Here where we live there are a few Orthodox parishes, some Greek, Romanian, Antiochian, and a couple OCA churches. We're going to a small OCA mission church that is only 10 minutes away (what a blessing!) :clap: But I do not exaggerate when I say small. On any given Sunday there are only 12-15 people present. The priest is quite aged and is a part-time priest, only serving the Divine Liturgy. He really doesn't seem to have much of a vested interest in growing our church. He's nice and all, but he's tired and waaaay past retirement.

My husband has a hard time understanding why we're staying at this church that is not really growing (we're the only new people to have walked in the door in over a year), but I really feel that since it's in our area and it's where we were brought into the church it's where we should stay.

I want to do what I can to help our parish not just survive, but to grow. Unfortunately, a couple people left the church because of some hurt feelings, and another family moved out of state. Our little church is dying, and it's frustrating because it seems like the majority of the members don't see that as a problem. There are a few really faithful members that are very actively trying to grow the church and share the faith with the community.

Other than pray for our church, I'm not sure what to do. There were a few weeks when one of the committees was looking for ideas, and I put some really basic ones out there (make a web page or blog, put an ad in the phone book...or even just a phone number, get listed on the OCA parish site), but since then-and that was months ago- I haven't heard anything.

Any ideas? I'm just so frustrated. Having moved from a fantastic, healthy and growing church in Colorado, it's very discouraging to come to a little church that is struggling to stay alive...but it doesn't even seem to see how close to death it is.

Thanks for listening. Part of the frustration is that I don't feel there are many people who I can talk to about this situation. :)
Hi, GenkiGirl. :wave: What church were you going to in Colorado? We live in the Springs and go to a small church, but not that small. We have around 60 families. :) I love it! I do much better in the smaller churches. lol I don't do well around crowds and getting to know folks. Where did you move to?

We just had our post-festival meeting yesterday after Liturgy and were discussing what to improve for next year (it seems, every year, it gets better for us). But there were other concerns about trying to get Orthodoxy out there, not just the festival, although, the festival is the best non-threatening and non pressured way to bring people to the church to check it out on their own and ask questions if they wish without being pushed, you know what I mean? Anyway, we discussed all of that. One of the gals suggested something that I thought was a really good idea for our church, and could be for yours as well (even though there's not many there). Beverly (the lady who was talking to us about this suggestion) said that there is an interfaith church group that meets once a month to cook and bring food to different shelters. The group consists of many Christian churches such as Catholic Charities, the Methodist church and Luthernan churches in the area. They also take turns taking in homeless people at their churches once a week. She suggested we join this group and help with the homeless and do more outreach. I thought this was an excellent idea. We certainly can find volunteers for once a month!! And it will get us noticed as, yes, we are a Christian Church as well, and people in other churches will see this as well as whomever we come about who happens not to be in a church. So, I was wondering if there were any groups around your area where your little church could join in and get recognized that way. Just a thought. :)

[Mary of Bethany]

Thankfully, our parish - and our whole diocese - has a much happier story to tell, but I can empathize. When I first converted, my parish (then still a mission) was struggling badly. They had been in existence for over 10 years, but were still in a horrible little store front (we not so affectionately now refer to it as "the swamp" :) ), had a very small core of families - a good Sunday saw about 40 people, and an aging priest who just did not have the energy to cope with the demands of parish life any longer, and whose health was beginning to fail.

The diocese was finally able to assign a young priest to us so that the elderly priest could retire. The change was instantaneous and remarkable, and it continues today. Before the following Pascha, we moved to a rented church building, started drawing many, many families, and now we are ready to start building a proper Orthodox temple on land we purchased nearby. We now average well over 100 people, with 150 not being uncommon. We are attracting many converts as well as Orthodox immigrants. This kind of growth is being repeated all across the diocese.

So it can be turned around, but I think a lot depends on the support of the diocese and the availability of new priests who aren't content with the "status quo" of the parish. When our new priest came, many of the parishioners didn't share his vision of what a parish should be, and they left for other parishes where they were more comfortable. God bless them, and I'm sure they're quite happy where they are, but they have missed out on a truly wonderful parish community.

Mary