Christ is Risen!
I'm on the mailing list for St. Vladimir's Seminary, so every once in a while they send me a request for donations. Once a year, they include a small theological tract with the mailing. This year, that tract spoke to the missional vocation given to all Christians through baptism. I found it highly encouraging, and wanted to share a few thoughts from it with you all.
The pamphlet's author, Fr. Hatfield, has spent significant time in missions - first as a Protestant (in South Africa) and then with Orthodoxy (on the board of the Orthodox Christian Missions Center, and as a co-chair of the OCA Department of Evangelism). He's working on an expanding set of courses in missiology for St. Vlad's.
He opens with an audacious quote: "Christian initiation and its attendant rite of baptism is the proper and primary business of the Church."
Think about it for a minute. Yes - we would say the Eucharist holds center, but the early church tended to view the Eucharist as the continuation of the Baptismal regeneration. We are indeed commanded to eat the bread and drink the cup often, but Christ's final words to His community as His ascension were "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." After the Church had gained ascendency over the empire, Baptism became less of a focus and Eucharist (especially in the West in the 800's) rose dramatically in its centrality. This is not to say that either one has been dismissed by the Church at any time - both are vital. But, as Fr. Hatfield explains the quote, "The Orthodox Church is in the business of making converts." He quotes Archbishop Anastasios of Albania as saying: "A Church without mission is a contradiction in terms... Indifference to mission is a negation of Orthodoxy." Hatfield then makes the strongest claim in the text, expanding the idea to say: "A Christian not engaged in mission is simply not a Christian."
More after the jump
Fr. Hatfield's comment may offend Orthodox Christians. It seems to reek of the very evangelical fervor that converts to Orthodoxy (myself included) are happy to leave behind. We see evangelism in the Orthodox Church as necessary, but not every Christian as, by default, an evangelist. We resist the usage of language that sounds too close to the Protestant-Evangelical culture around us. We see evangelists in Greece or Russia as offensive, and that makes evangelism itself carry a negative connotation. We see it as, even, foreign to Orthodoxy - something outside our tradition.
This quietistic attitude cannot stand. We may not utilize the same MEANS as Evangelical Christians (though I don't see anything wrong with borrowing ideas from them so long as the ideas borrowed are consistent with Orthodoxy), but Hatfield adaquetly answers the above knee-jerk, reactionary response to his call to evangelism.
He states: "For too many in Orthodoxy, words like 'evangelism' and 'outreach' are not claimed as our own and are given over to others. This sad fact keeps the 'Pearl of Great Price' hidden in ghetto worlds where cultural preservation and so called 'ethnic pride' is substituted for 'Gospel Truth.' All too easily our faith communities have created a surrogate gospel supported by surrogate ministries that betray our baptismal identities as Orthodox Christians"
I cannot agree strongly enough. Just as we are all called to prayer even though some (monks) are called vocationally to prayer as a full-time ministry, and just as we are all called to sanctify creation & to minister to one another's needs even though some (priests) are called vocationally to pastoring as a full-time ministry, so we are all called to evangelism even though some (missionaries) are called to it full-time. We are not all the same part of the body, but we are all called to contribute to the work of the body - and the work of the body (that is, the Church) is to be the pillar and ground of the Truth. If we are not proclaiming the Truth to those who need to hear it (evangelizing) we are not the body. The body is to be Christ's presence on earth - and Christ spent His time loving and preaching to those who were in need of a physician. If we are not among the sick, offering them healing, then we are not the body. A Christian not engaged in mission simply is not a Christian.
How can we go about doing this? First, there must be the will. We must, as a Church, see this as our purpose. This is not foreign to Orthodoxy. Our tradition is rich with saints called equal-to-the-apostles and enlightener-of-(insert nation here). We celebrate Sts. Cyril and Methodius as heroes of the faith, chant the names of Sts. Herman and Innocent at every American matins service, praise and celebrate St. Constantine (despite some of the grave decisions he made) precisely because of his (in essence) converting an empire to the faith. Missions is a path of holiness as much as monasticism - indeed, the two often went hand in hand. There has never been a time in the Church where missions has completely died.
So the first thing we must do is reclaim what is already ours: missions belongs to Orthodoxy, and Orthodoxy to missions.
I think, also, that we would do well to return to our history to see the particular means and methods which Orthodox missionaries have used in the past. We should, furthermore, look at how it is that other churches in the West have so successfully "engaged the culture" (to borrow an evangelical phrase). Where we can, we should adopt what they have done that has worked - though, obviously, we need to ensure consistency with the great tradition in doing so.
And if anyone says that such a borrowing is incompatible with Orthodoxy because Orthodoxy is perfect as it is, that is just heresy. Absolute heresy. To proclaim that we possess the means of reaching the fullness of the Kingdom is Orthodoxy, but to forget the corresponding axiom that we are the hospital of the sick (that is, sinful and fallen) is heresy. We HAVE all the medicine needed to heal our sickness, but we must also take that medicine. We cannot let the proclamation of Orthodoxy slide into triumphalistic pride. If we do, we will (ironically) lose our Orthodoxy by our pride. Humility is the Orthodox way, and humility recognizes its own failings and seeks any and all appropriate means to heal those failings. If we are honest with ourselves, our Western brothers and sisters have much to teach us about reclaiming an evangelistic vision. This doesn't means swallowing their methods and theologies uncritically - but rather we should compare them to the Orthodox tradition and borrow what we can.
The opening quote of Hatfield's essay continues: "Our major work is the evangelistic business of claiming people for the Kingdom and fitting them for life in that Kingdom."
As we seek to grab hold of that Kingdom ourselves, let us also reach out to grab the others around us that we may all enter the Kingdom as one. If we do anything less, we fail to measure up to the fullness of the love of God which continually reaches out towards all people, and which wills that ALL should be saved and come to the knowledge of the Truth - to the knowledge of Christ.
In the love of the risen Christ,
Macarius
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