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How do we evangelize these people? They have a distorted view of the Scriptures and they are destroying the faith of individuals, separating families, destroying Churches. How do we reach these people for the Orthodox Faith?

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Ray ...

You bring up a very interesting topic.

I've often wondered how to evangelize.

We have to face it head on too - Our American Secular culture (pop rock, fashions, and what is "in" ) in my humble opinion creates an amazing chasm to be crossed from orthodoxy / byz cath to modern evangelicals.

They seem to like to be inspired like in rock concerts etc etc.
Could they sit through a Divine LIturgy?
Could they pray Molieben's and Akathists?

How to we approach the young?

I have a friend who is a guitar player and they have a little concert every Sun Night at the Methodist church - I went because I love modern religious rock music (some of it and his son is my son's friend and I wanted to cement the bond between us all by attending.

Teens are mostly interested in the opposite sex and sex in general (dating, girlfriends etc ala Disney channel type stuff)
Dances etc.

Could we relatively conservative religious ever be able to match the power of an evangelical rock band - power hitting service so popular among the evangelicals today?

How would you integrate a gathering like that into a culmination of praying the Divine Liturgy?

How do we approach modern secular culture from an evangelical standpoint - with an ancient (and in my eyes much more wonderful) service and prayers and liturgy?

Could we hold a "sock hop" type dance after Divine Liturgy?
Before?

I'm afraid our religion appeals to conservative and dare I say elderly people?

I wonder if all religions are facing this problem ? Episcopals for example tend to have older people who are familiar with services during the 40's 50's 60's 70's so the young attend with their parents but I don't see a lot of them flocking to the traditional religions and churches.

In fact Orthodox regularly looses each new phase of immigrant children to evangelicals from what I see - and I've read countless articles detailing this for several dacades.

I would venture to say it is a daunting task

Probably the best way to increaes or evangelize in this religion is one to one - one at a time - building very slowly at a snails pace.

On the other hand - look what happened to the Crystal Cathedral in Irvine CA - the Roman Catholics bought it from a bankrupt evangelical church - because what they were preaching - got old and got stale and got boring and the congregation changed (now they go to the mega rock concert gathings instead of the Crystal Cathedral (now a Latin Rite church probably catering mostly to Hispanic immigrants in S. Cal)

An age old problem my friend

I would be very curious to see what our brethren on this site say about this topic.

It seems to me that Eastern Catholics and the Orthodox are actually in a unique position to evangelize Evangelicals and other "Bible" Protestants for whom Roman Catholicism is more or less the ecclesiastical equivalent of the Great Satan, simply by being there and by being what they are.

As far as many "Bible" Christians are aware, there are Protestants and Papists (and Mormons, who don't count) and that's it. Now, I know there are alot of "Bible" Christians for whom the antiquity and sense of the sacred of the Catholic Church is something they value and find themselves mysteriously drawn to. They know there's something compelling about it. Something beautiful about it. Something other-worldly about it.

"Romish Popery" is, however, an abomination, as far as they are concerned. But apart from certain
"high church" segments of mainstream Protestant denominations whose theological and political liberalism appalls evangelicals, the evil "Romish Popery" of pontiffs, pompous prelates, and pedophile priests (as they view it) is the only place where that sense of liturgical mystery and sacrality can be found. Or so they assume.

Enter Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism as acceptable alternatives to "Romish Popery". Suddenly the sacred beauty of Catholic worship that they find themselves inexplicably drawn to is no longer an impossible option for them due to prejudice against or fear of Rome and Roman ways.

No, the way to evangelize evangelicals isn't to make Eastern Catholicism or Orthodoxy more hip or contemporary. People who actually prefer cotton candy over filet mignon shouldn't be the ones you attempt to appeal to (you never will appeal to them).

Focus, instead, on those evangelicals who realize their religion is cotton candy and who are only eating the cotton candy because they think the Romans are the only ones serving filet mignon. The way to evangelize these evangelicals is to simply make them aware of Eastern Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Tell them that there is an alternative to the Roman Catholic Church that they are missing.

For that matter (I realize I've said this before), I think alot of Roman Catholics would keep the catholic faith if they realized that Roman Catholicism wasn't the only Catholicism out there. So many disillusioned Roman Catholics end up becoming evangelicals, after all, unaware that they can leave the "Roman" behind while retaining the "Catholic".

But Eastern Christianity, I think, has to do a better job, somehow, of making itself more widely known. It also needs to do a better job of making people understand that ethnically-labelled churches (Greek Orthodox; Ukrainian Catholic) are not exclusive to persons of one ethnicity or another (as many people quite understandably assume is the case) but are open to anyone sincerely seeking Christ in his authentic Church.

Eastern Christianity needs to more effectively establish itself in the mainstream. Simply making Eastern Christianity known within the culture and permitting its Churches to drop the labels of ethnic exclusivity is, I believe, the best way for Eastern Christians to evangelize.

My thoughts exactly! We don't know the great opportunities we have and as a Church we need to realize this and pursue them.

Excellent summary. I can not stress enough how thoroughly this addresses the OP's question.

Yes, that is so true. I have a pentecostal friend who respects me because I don't go to a Roman church. It's very curious.


This is also very true. In the greater Albany NY area we have UGCC churches and a Maronite church. I believe the Maronites do better than we do attracting "non-ethnic" parishioners, even though Arabic (and Aramaic) is much more prominent in their English liturgy than Ukrainian is in ours. The idea has been expressed that this is primarily because they don't have an ethnicity / nation-state in their name.

How is this solved? I think many of our people would flip out if they took the U out of UGCC. Allegedly there was a proposal a while ago to rename the church the "Kievan Catholic Church." This is an interesting idea - it's still Ukrainian, but like the Maronites it doesn't have that ethnic name. I haven't a settled opinion yet, though. I'd like to hear what others think.

One exception *might* be Greek. A thoughtful "Bible" Christian should be impressed that a church has a connection to the language of the New Testament. I'm guessing. Maybe I'm wrong.

It's own parishioners would be a good place to start that understanding.

I'm not sure. To formally and officially style the Church as "Greek Catholic" would very probably imply Greek ethnicity to Americans, who would surely tend to compare it to "Greek Orthodox". I may not be giving my fellow countrymen enough credit (although I doubt that is so).

What about, for example, the name shown on this forum: "The Byzantine Catholic Church"? It says alot about what the Church is without imposing an ethnicity. "The Orthodox Catholic Church" and "The Eastern Catholic Church" also come to mind. Just a couple of thoughts...since you asked.

All this stuff about branding is a waste of time. Look how much money Evangelicals spend on branding their churches, and the little return they get for it. Forget about the name, just be more aggressive in putting yourself before the world. Restore and celebrate the Liturgy with love and reverence. Live the Liturgy after the Liturgy. Be the shining city upon the hill. Do that, and people will not think twice about the name. They'll only say, "I want to get me some of that".

Be assured, I do not question the allure of Eastern Christianity irrespective of what its various churches are called. Quite the contrary, my point is that Eastern Christianity can, in fact, have a universal appeal to any looking for an authentic Christian church that preserves the sacredness of ancient forms of worship.

The point I suppose I was attempting to make is that, no matter how attractive so-called Eastern Christianity may actually be to anyone of any cultural background, Westerners may well be inclined to imagine (quite understandably) that Churches bearing ethnic designations are exclusive to Christians of the ethnicities indicated by the names of the churches, and that they are therefore closed to them.

For whatever may be true of the branding and rebranding of Evangelical churches (I honestly can't speak to that), the fact is that none of them are saddled with apparent constraints of membership based upon ethnic heritage.

And one also has to consider the level of comfort one has with respect to styling himself something he is not. An Evangelical of Latino or Irish or Asian or African heritage can become a Catholic. Fine. But he can't become a Ukrainian. He can become Orthodox. But he can't become Russian or Greek or Serbian. It would be painfully awkward, say, for an Argentinian-American Evangelical who has converted to an Eastern Catholic church to explain that he is now a "Ukrainian Catholic" to his family, friends, and co-workers. Not so much awkwardness if he could explain, instead, that he was a "Byzantine Catholic" or an "Eastern Catholic".

I don't think re-styling the Eastern Churches in the culturally-diverse West is a waste of time, at all. I think it is an indispensible step to growth (and perhaps even survival), in fact.

All these comments are great!

I hope we put them to use in our own evangelical situations.

English liturgies help removing ethnicity helps... but I also think that some of the ethnicity lends itself to a mystery of who we are.

and it is true - evangelicals and protestants in general seem to crave what we have by default - an authentic christianity based on sound theology and a direct connection to the original early church (which I think they tend to feel is missing in their own "brand").

Antiochian Orthodox Church has capitalized on this and they have converted protestants in droves!

But mainly I am inspired to live the liturgy and be the example - to as many as I can.

In my town; and where I was, in California, there was no qualms about tying an ethnic group to a particular parish. Heck, there's a designated parish, with the designation of "Vietnamese" on the building, somewhere in NE Portland.

Granted, the reasoning behind such may be different, from your average Ruthenian designation tied to a given Byzantine Catholic parish.

Even my co-worker calls herself, Irish Roman Catholic. There's another church, in the same vicinity, as my home parish, called St. Stanislaus Polish Roman Catholic Church.

To me, tying the ethnic association, with a given church, or parish, is indicative of their particular practices, or expressions of a tradition handed down, over centuries.

Filipino Roman Catholics do things vastly different, from your average Anglo-Saxon Catholics (Simbang Gabi - Nine nights before Christmas, where people would go to mass, at 4am). Also, during Holy week, there's a giant procession/reenactment of the crucifixion.

When it came to carols, we sang a variety (at the Ruthenian parish) coming from regular sources, as well as hymns coming from the Slavic tradition; I personally enjoyed the latter. It was breath of fresh air.

The de-ethnicization of Latin parishes is a misbegotten byproduct of "the spirit of Vatican II". It was quite common indeed, for parishes to have very distinct ethnic identities. Then, with Vatican II and the emphasis on the "vernacular" came the mistaken belief that this meant all parishes should be vanilla American--whatever that means.

This took an interesting form in the 1970s in a traditionally Czech parish near my wife's home town in north Texas. The old Czech priest had retired, and was replaced by a young, hung-ho product of the post-conciliar seminary system. He announced from the pulpit that from now on, they were only going to sing "American" hymns, and in English--none of this Czech nonsense. There was mumbling in the parish.

Christmas eve came around, and as the people gathered for midnight Mass, a big, strapping Bohunk farmer stood up in his pew and began singing a Czech carol, in Czech. All the other people joined in. This was followed by a string of traditional Czech carols, while the priest was having an aneurism by the altar.

He departed from healthier climes shortly thereafter.

Getting back to the opening post about evangelizing Evangelicals, my experience is that you can't stereotype these people. I've found that they are serious Christians and have become wonderful friends and allies against the oversecularization of the American people. They have an enthusiasm that you seldom see in Catholics and Orthodox.

There is a much richer harvest if we try to teach the un-baptised, of which there are many in our own neighborhoods.