I will admit I like to read lots of blogs on various topics. Some of my favorite revolve around church growth and other such church topics. I am for example re-reading Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Church. I believe that there are many things we can learn from each other weather we agree or not on doctrinal or practice of our faith. No idea should be discounted just because it is not an “orthodox” idea. We are all in this together and need to support each other.

Recently Trinity College in Connecticut released a new study called “American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population” Now it should come as no surprise to people involved in church work that less than 18% of the people in the US attend church on Sunday morning. Many things contribute to this and this is a phenomenon that has been taking place since the 1970’s so we should have been ready for it. I think, for the most part, that religion has become something that is not essential in people’s lives. How do we reverse this trend? Can we reverse this trend?

I have been reading a blog called “Confessions of a Small-Church Pastor” authored by Chuck Warnock. Chuck is a Baptist Pastor in Virginia and writes a blog for churches of no more than 300. Lot’s of great stuff and I think all of us that pastor these types of churches should be reading his blog and learning from each other. Well today he had a posting called “The Indispensable Church” In this post he asks the question, “How can church become indispensable to a community?” He claims we need to stop asking the question how can we get more people to come to church? and focus on the previous question.

I am sure that those of us who are involved in church work would love to pastor church of say 1,400 families, well not me anyway I think those churches are too big and should be broken up. I am looking for the church that lives the mission of Jesus Christ. The other question Pastor Chuck asks is, “If our church was to close tomorrow would anyone notice?”

I would like to think people would, and I am sure he means people other than the ones who attend the church. What are you doing as church to make yourself indispensable to the community?

Here at St. Michael’s we have begun a feeding program that we call the Community Meal. One night a month we provide a meal to anyone who wish to come for free. I usually do the cooking and people like Laura, John, Linda & Vic come and help serve the meal. It is great and we get about 40 people or so each month. Different menu each month and last month one of the local restaurants provided the meal. Does this make us indispensable, not yet but I hope we are working on it.

So that’s the question. Are we just providing liturgical services? This is important don’t get me wrong, but what are we doing to further the mission of the church as Jesus taught us. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those in prison. What are we doing?

If you follow this blog then you know that this past weekend I attended our Deanery Meeting in Rochester, New York. The focus of the first part of the meeting was on Orthodox Unity. Much has been written around the Internet about this topic and I am going to add to that a little in a series of blog posts on this very topic.

Let me begin with the simple fact that this is a long and complicated process that from the outside looks very simple. I grew up in the Roman Church with her top down approach to all things church and that is simply not the case in the Orthodox Church. The ecclesiology of the Orthodox Church is very different but at the same time similar to that of the Church of Rome.

To try and keep things simple the Orthodox Church does not have a single head as does the Church of Rome. The Patriarch of Constantinople is considered the Spiritual Head of the Orthodox Church but in the spirit of collegiality he is Primus inter pares or first among equals. The Ecumenical Patriarch is not a Pope in the same sense as the Pope of Rome. From a very practical point of view the EP only has jurisdiction over the churches that come under his authority. Okay a circular argument I know. Where things get a little dicey is here in the US and Western Europe but that is for another day.

In the ancient of days there were four original patriarchates that were called autocephalous. They are Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. We must add Rome to that list and actually Rome would take the first place in line. After those come the other churches in order of precedence: Russia Serbia Romania Bulgaria Georgia Cyprus Greece Poland Albania Czech Lands and Slovakia Orthodox Church if America. The OCA has a disputed Autocephaly and again that is another topic. An Autocephalous church is simply a church whose leader does not report if you will to someone above them. The Patriarchate of Romanian for example is an autocephalous church. Patriarch Daniel is the head of the Orthodox Church in Romania and if there was to be an organizational chart of the Christian Church in the world he would be on the same level as the Pope of Rome. The present holder of the office is His Beatitude Daniel, is the Archbishop of Bucharest, Metropolitan of Muntenia and Dobrodgea, locum tenens of the throne of Caesarea of Cappadocia, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church. With me so far?

The big question that needs to be answered is who gets to grant the status of Autocephaly? Is it left to the EP alone or can the Mother church grant it to her daughters? This is where things get confusing if they have not already done so.

Here in the United States we have 10 canonical Orthodox Churches each with their own structure and leadership. We also have what is called overlapping jurisdictions. For example in Boston there are two bishops with the title Bishop of Boston and that does not include the Catholic Archbishop of Boston. Now there also exists, and if you do a simple google search of the term Orthodox you will find several thousand so called “orthodox” churches in the US and other places. We are dealing with the canonical ones here.

A conference of all the patriarchates in the world was called at Chambésy Switzerland in June and some action was taken to resolve issues in what is being called the Diaspora or churches outside of the common Orthodox Lands. The document is short and can be read on the web page of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and other places. The main thrust of this document is the calling of an Episcopal Assembly. At present there is an organization of ruling bishops in the US called the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in America (SCOBA). The Membership of SCOBA at the present time is made up of the 10 ruling bishops from the 10 canonical jurisdictions. This new assembly will increase the membership to all of the Canonical Bishops in the USA and Canada. I am unsure of how many that will be. The idea is to start to work on administrative unity. There is a call for an Autocephalous American Orthodox Church and that may be a reality one day but for now we just need to work together. The interesting thing about this assembly is that each jurisdiction will have one vote. Each bishop will not vote but they will vote as a block. So am Archdiocese such as mine with two bishops will have the same vote as the OCA with man more than that. The assembly has been called for sometime in May of 2010.

In the next article I will focus a little more on this concept of Autocephaly and also on the canonical vs non canonical churches.