Anastasios Hudson

Month: February 2012

Developing Future Church Leaders
Father Anastasios and Andrew at His Baptism

In January, my godson Andrew moved to Raleigh to help us in our missionary efforts here in North Carolina. We met about eight years ago online, when he was still in high school and had just developed an interest in the Orthodox Christian faith. Eventually, he embraced the faith, and when he was baptized in January 2008, I served as his godfather.

The work that began here with lay-led services in November 2006 has certainly blossomed, but there is much to do; a lifetime of work, in fact. Orthodox Christianity is not well-known in the United States, and our traditionalist stance towards the questions of Ecumenism and the Church calendar places us even more in the minority. As such, Andrew did not have a parish to attend where he lived out West, and so coming to North Carolina to work with me was the best option for him to have a regular Church life. He also shares with me a great desire to see Orthodoxy spread here.

We thank God for sending him to us, because he is a hard worker and is quickly learning the many facets of serving in a small mission community. This has raised the question in my mind of streamlining and replicating the experience, because I’ve never been a “one trick pony” so to speak. My goal is to establish Churches which plant other Churches, and to do so aggressively. Rather than just starting one parish, I hope that a network of parishes will be established in this region over the coming years, and in fact, we are currently witnessing people across the state come forward and pray for and plan for missions in their own cities and towns.

How then can we best replicate this on a larger scale? It is important to learn from the work others are doing. Recently, I found the Raleigh Fellows program, and it intrigued me. I hope that this Anglican program can be adopted into an Orthodox context. I am currently in discussions with one of the Fellows to learn from the program.

The idea is still new in my head, but basically young men (eventually women as well) would come to the area to learn from me and the other leaders of our missions in North Carolina how we have accomplished what we have accomplished, and more importantly, develop their spiritual lives and hone their vision of the Church’s evangelistic work so they can apply it autonomously in their own contexts.

Perhaps in five-seven years we will have five or six young men living in the area and learning how to plant Orthodox missions, to be sent out upon the completion of their work to spread the Gospel and then found similar programs and initiatives in their area. Some would stay in North Carolina to help us, while others would serve in disparate places where there is a need for Orthodoxy to be established.

If you are interested in becoming an intern/fellow in such a program, please let me know, so that you can provide input as we lay out the vision for such a program. Others are invited to pray for us, or to support us financially in our efforts. Contact me for more details, and God bless you all.
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February 26, 2012
A Church Building Catch-22
In November 2006, my wife, her brother, and I began to pray the Service of the Typica on Sundays, as we embarked on our journey to establish an Old Calendar Orthodox Christian mission parish in Raleigh, North Carolina. For the first year, we were often alone, only being joined a few times by others. Eventually, the Metropolitan decided to ordain me a priest in 2008, so that we would have a regular sacramental life and so that we would have a greater ability to spread the faith.

Interestingly enough, about the time that the bishop decided to ordain me, a man in Raleigh contacted me and began to attend service. He eventually became my chanter. The same month, a family contacted me from Greenville, North Carolina, and expressed a desire to have a parish in their area. They were able to get together the resources to provide a location for worship, and this led to the Greenville mission growing much faster than the Raleigh mission. Now, our Greenville mission is doing quite well, is self-supporting, has a building, and is able to reach many people in the community.

In Raleigh, we are still meeting in my home chapel, though. In the beginning, my wife and I reasoned that God wanted us to focus on growing the Greenville mission, which was a considerable feat given the distance, lack of resources, and small number of attendees in the beginning. However, through Grace, the community grew, and now has 30+ members. Recently, though, more and more people have been contacting me in Raleigh, and asking me questions about the faith.

It’s kind of ironic, because I am not able to walk around Greenville witnessing and evangelizing and inviting people to our parish, but in Raleigh, where I live and have many contacts, I am not able to invite people to a Church, because we meet in my home chapel. Sure, I invite some people, but discernment is necessary as there are unfortunately dangerous people out there, and at the same time, many are uncomfortable to worship in a home chapel as well, even though this is the way of the early Christians.

Hence, in Raleigh we are in a bit of a Catch-22: we need more people to be able to afford to rent or own a building, and we need a building to attract more people! Of course the Church is not only about the building, but rather is about Christ and a relationship with Him and through Him other human beings, but the Church building does provide an important function in providing a beautiful worship space, a place where visitors feel welcome, safe, and possibly anonymous if that is their desire, and fellowship opportunities. I make the most of what I’ve got, and minister to people whose needs are not met by the established parishes in the area, but I nonetheless know that more people could be reached if we were to have a place to meet.
Seeing how the Lord has blessed Greenville, I am not worried about the future, and know that in God’s time, we will obtain a permanent place to worship and fellowship. I do want to highlight our situation, however, because I know that there are people who could bring us a step closer to obtaining a Church building if they only knew of our presence in the area. Perhaps that is why you are finding this article.

We do not seek an extravagant Church building, but we do seek to have something meager in which to worship, fellowship, and serve. If you have the means to help us make this happen, or you are able to assist partially, please let me know. If you belong to a Church that is going through hard times and may be on the verge of closing, please let your community know about our struggle and if possible, perhaps we could take over your building if you feel you are unable to continue.
By 2014, we can obtain a place to gather formally, and together is how we will do it. Keep us in your prayers, and let us know if you wish to help!
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February 17, 2012
Pikeville and Fremont, NC
Ten days ago, I went to Pikeville, North Carolina in order to bless the home of some parishioners. Pikeville is above Goldsboro, and many residents are affiliated with the nearby military base. Pikeville has around 700 people, and is thus quite small.

While en route, my GPS brought me through the nearby little town of Fremont, with approximately 1400 residents. I enjoyed seeing the older homes, and the slow pace of life. It looks like a fantastic place to be a kid, although perhaps teenagers complain about the smallness of it and lack of shopping establishments!

As always when I am on these travels, I wondered how we can bring Orthodoxy to these small towns. Obviously, parishioners living there would provide a good first step, but oftentimes our parishioners have migrated from elsewhere, and might not themselves be integrated well into the local community. Reaching native North Carolinians in small towns might thus be more difficult, and perhaps it would take a conversion from a tight-knit family to get the ball rolling.

I can’t stop dreaming of one day seeing Orthodox parishes and missions dotting the landscape of Eastern North Carolina. Please join me in prayer for this intention!
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February 14, 2012
The Value of Lay-Led Services
Last Sunday, fourteen people gathered together in worship and fellowship at our parish on the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. They prayed the Service of the Typica, also known as the Reader’s Service, which is what Orthodox Christians do when there is no priest available to serve liturgy.

As most know, since our founding in mid-2008, I have traveled from Raleigh three times a month to serve the Orthodox Christians of Greenville, NC. The other weekend of each month, our faithful gather for a lay-led service, following the words of the Savior: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Having a regular life of prayer is essential to the Christian life, and our parish does not want to go a week without worshipping as one body.

In some Orthodox parishes, if the priest were absent, the Church would be closed that day. Yet Reader’s Services have a long history in the Church, and highlight that through our baptism, we all share a part in Christ’s priesthood, even while some of us are set aside for the ordained ministry. We all benefit from worshiping God and asking His blessings, hearing the reading of Scripture and the hymns, from praying for each other, and from being present with each other to encourage one another.

In times of clergy shortages or social strife, lay-led services have sustained the Church in many places. They are also a tool for missionary expansion; for instance, a family that lives some distance away from the Church could pray Typica on the weekends they cannot travel to the parish, and begin to invite others, eventually forming the nucleus for a future mission parish.

It is such a blessing for me as a priest to see the faithful maintaining the cycle of prayer even when I am not able to be present, and instilling a sense of spiritual responsibility in their lives and their children’s lives. I invite everyone to come out on the Sundays when Typica is celebrated. Fourteen people this Sunday; how many a year from now? It is an exciting time!
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February 11, 2012