I am always looking at statistics and maps as I plan out and pray about our mission strategy. Rocky Mount, Wilson, and Goldsboro, North Carolina are about the same distance apart, and we’ve recently had some interest from Mt. Olive, so I thought to add that to the map as well. The four towns form almost a straight line down the Western border of Eastern North Carolina. Let’s pray that by 2020 there will be Orthodox Churches in each place!
Month: December 2011
-
Orthodox Church in Pittsboro, NC
The Historic Courthouse in Downtown Pittsboro Last year, my family and I visited Pittsboro, North Carolina. We went shopping in their downtown area, and also drove around the area where Jordan Lake is (not being terribly outdoorsy people, though, we did not go on the Lake). I know two families that live in the area surrounding Pittsboro, and after my visit, I can see why.
Whenever I go to a new place, I pray for the people there that they will come to know Christ and the Church which He established: the Orthodox Christian Church. It is hard to imagine that residents of small towns like Pittsboro would have many opportunities to encounter Orthodox Christians, especially clergy. In my article “If Orthodoxy Is True, Why Have I Never Heard of It?” I give some reasons for why Orthodox Christianity is not well-known in the United States. However, it’s also true that Christ will ask each of us individually how we have worked to fulfill the Great Commission, and we will not be able to rely on any excuses.
A native of Pittsboro would have to travel 50 minutes in order to attend liturgy at St. Mark the Evangelist Orthodox Mission Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is currently a small group of faithful traditional Orthodox Christians meeting at my home chapel while we grow large enough to afford a building. Even the closest New Calendar Greek parish—St. Barbara’s in Durham—is 22 miles from downtown Pittsboro. It is highly unlikely that Orthodoxy will reach large numbers of people in Pittsboro and greater Chatham County until an Orthodox mission parish is established in Pittsboro.
Yet we also know that the Internet has been a great tool for linking people to other people, places, and institutions which would have been inaccessible a generation ago. Perhaps someone in Pittsboro is currently looking into the Orthodox Church after having read about it online. Perhaps this post may reach him or her at the time when he or she is thinking of moving from curiosity to commitment. Yes, it is quite possible that some day, you will be the one bringing Orthodoxy to Pittsboro! Send me an email or give me a call (919-827-4945) today if you are Orthodox or are looking into Orthodoxy and wish to bring the True Faith of Christ to your community. We at St. Mark’s will do everything in our power to help you!
-
Serving Proactively
My godson recently posted this reflection on his blog: Seeking for More. He notes for instance that:
[R]outines and the sticking to the status quo can also have drawbacks. In our life as Christians, we might be able to do more. Maybe we could be doing more to help the poor and the sick, or it could be as simple as maybe needing to be there more for a friend or family member who is need of advice or in need of our love and support…[P]arishes always need help from their parishoners to help keep things running, whether it be helping by sitting on the parish council, cooking food for Trapeza, or cleaning. We should always be looking for more, each according to their abilities. How many of us are eager to look for more when it comes to increasing our financial status, or look for more in regards to advancing in our careers? We should be even more eager to pursue more in regards to our spiritual lives and in regards to our life in the Church.
Orthodox Christian spiritual writings caution us against pride and presumption, and we should not ever try to do spiritual things for our own glory, or without prayer and first consulting our priest/spiritual father. However, we must not go to the other extreme and become inert, never acting to progress, never feeling empowered to step up, or worse, never noticing the things around us that need to be done because of too much of an inward focus.
Let’s be clear: the floors at Church need swept, the chanter needs someone else to step up and help him, the priest needs more altar servers, and the person in charge of coordinating a charitable event needs someone to relieve him or her when they become overburdened.
You’re reading this because you are the person God is calling to help. Whatever you are thinking right now that you could be doing to help at your Church is probably what you should go and volunteer to do next Sunday!
-
Wake Forest Needs an Orthodox Church
Wake Forest, North Carolina is a fast-growing suburb of Raleigh, the state capital. The population in 2009 was estimated to be 27,915, up from 12,588 at the 2000 census. Wake Forest has a family-friendly atmosphere, a reputation as a safe place to live, and offers many opportunities for recreation and shopping, with a mixture of national and regional chains and local small businesses. Wake Forest is also home to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, which I blogged about visiting a few months ago.
What Wake Forest does not have, however, is an Orthodox Church.
As readers of the blog know, I am the pastor of Saint Mark the Evangelist Orthodox Mission Church, which is currently a small chapel community meeting in North Raleigh. We are traditional Orthodox who observe the Patristic Old Calendar and do not participate in ecumenical activities. There are also three parishes which belong to the New Calendar Church here in Raleigh. The following map shows the location of Saint Mark Orthodox Mission Church in relation to the locations of these three New Calendar parishes:
View Raleigh Parishes in a larger mapI am interested in the process of establishing missions and parishes in general, so while St. Mark’s does not have relations with the three New Calendar parishes over the aforementioned issues, it is nonetheless interesting to see how they have organized themselves. The second map shows the three New Calendar parishes, with a ten-mile radius highlighted around each one:
View Raleigh Parishes – With NC Radius in a larger mapIt is interesting to note that those living in the suburb of Cary, North Carolina, are at the intersection of the three parishes, and thus have the most coverage. Yet Wake Forest does not fall within the ten-mile radius of any of these parishes. From Downtown Wake Forest, the distance to these parishes is as follows:
Holy Trinity: 18.7 miles (28 minutes’ drive)
All Saints: 25 miles (36 minutes’ drive)
Holy Transfiguration: 25.4 miles (34 minutes’ drive)
(By comparison, St. Mark’s is 10.2 miles from Downtown Wake Forest [17 minutes’ drive]).For many Orthodox, the prospect of a 30 minute drive is not too much in order to attend Church, but we also must recall that there are no other Orthodox Churches located up Capital Boulevard (Route 1) really until the Richmond area; thus, someone living in Henderson, North Carolina would have to travel 45 miles (54 minutes), whereas if there were a parish in Wake Forest, his commute would be shortened to 28 miles (33 minutes).
The Antiochian and OCA parishes are of a decent size, but not in a position to plant a daughter mission, while the Greek parish could plant a mission in Wake Forest or some other area of North Raleigh which would alleviate some of the pressure. However, they recently decided to expand their parish, a move which will cost several millions of dollars. They have their reasons for doing this, pooling resources being an effective way to manage their fellowship and charitable programs being one, also a desire not to split up a well-coalesced parish family into two, etc., but my concern and interest here is with missions and church planting, so further analysis and commentary is unnecessary.
In our Greenville, North Carolina mission, we are the closer of two missions to the city proper, and have more of an outreach and public visibility, and so we have grown by having people new to town come to the parish, even if they were not previously traditional Old Calendar Orthodox, or even Orthodox at all, but in Raleigh, with the existence of three established New Calendar parishes, mission strategy has to be different. Here, there is more of a need to highlight the distinctive nature of our traditionalist witness in order to convince new people to attend.
However, there is still a great opportunity to appeal to people in a geographic sense, as Wake Forest is not well covered by existing parishes, and there are people who cannot travel even 15 miles on a regular basis. Also, if we seek to have Orthodoxy grow, being able to invite family members and friends and neighbors is essential, and many are reluctant to travel so far for a visit. Finally, the proximity to the Baptist seminary is a good reason to have an Orthodox presence, as more and more Protestants discover Orthodoxy, which is the same Church established by Jesus Christ Himself and which has preserved all of the Apostolic doctrines without alteration, unlike the Western Churches.
For these reasons, Wake Forest needs an Orthodox Church. Saint Mark the Evangelist Orthodox Mission is currently meeting in my chapel in North Raleigh, but we are open to meeting wherever there is availability. Our Orthodox Church in Greenville, NC was founded when one family stepped forward and donated the land needed to have a Church building. Perhaps you are a pioneering Orthodox Christian living in Wake Forest who would like to donate land to establish a Church. Perhaps you are the pastor or a board member of a non-Orthodox Church which has been looking to relocate, and you would like to donate your current building to our mission efforts. Or perhaps you are just someone finding out about the Orthodox Church, and you want to talk about it with me. Whatever the case, send me an email or give me a call, and let’s see what the Lord has in store for His Church in Wake Forest, North Carolina!
-
Oops, Wrong Number!
Today I was doing some chores around the house when the phone rang. It was my Google Voice account alerting me that someone was trying to reach me. For those who don’t know what Google Voice is, it allows you to have one number which can ring to all your phones, has voicemail, and call screening. I don’t actually use it that much yet, though, so when I didn’t recognize the number or the name that was on the call screening, I hung up and let it go to voicemail.
The caller left a voicemail, and asked if I was the person who worked on her company’s phones, and to please call her back. I could have ignored the call, but on the one hand, I didn’t want her to wonder why whomever she was trying to contact wasn’t returning her call, and on the other hand, I wanted to find out why my number was being handed out by a third party.
I called her back, explained that my number was a Google Voice number which perhaps used to belong to the person she was trying to reach, and that I was an Orthodox Christian priest, not a phone technician. At that point, she mentioned that she might call me back asking for prayers some time, and I referred her to our website and told her about our Orthodox mission work in both Raleigh and Greenville. After mutual pleasantries, the phone call ended.
I’ve come to learn that we can never know why things happen or what might result from the actions we take, and to not take any interaction for granted. I plan to send the lady a follow-up letter and invite her to services. Something may happen, or nothing may come of it, but either way, I had a chance to pray for the woman and tell her about the Orthodox Church. For this, I am thankful. There are many stories of people coming to faith from the most unlikely ways.