In light of the recent exchanges on The Observer about converts, cradle Orthodox and the future of American Orthodoxy, we are republishing Terry Mattingly’s essay that touches on these important issues. This article was adapted from an address titled “So What Do the Converts Want, Anyway?” given at the 2006 Orthodox Christian Laity conference in Baltimore. Terry Mattingly, an advisor to AOI, is director of the Washington Journalism Center, editor of the www.GetReligion.org
What Do the Converts Want?<\/strong> It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in Liturgical Studies to tell the difference Baptists worship at several different times during the week — at least Now, that ratio should sound familiar to many priests who lead Vespers If there is an experience in life that will teach you the meaning of The bottom line: The Sunday night experience in a Baptist church is very Who comes to Vespers? Who comes to confession? Who comes to the feasts, and Where They’re Coming From<\/p>\n On one level, many Orthodox converts are fleeing megachurch At the same time, I believe that most of these converts are coming out of These Orthodox converts are seeking mystery. They want a non-fundamentalist If they stopped and thought about it, most Orthodox converts would call That’s the approach of the converts. They are not looking for “Orthodoxy Now when we ask this question, “What do the converts want?” we may as well A few years ago, the wife of an Orthodox pastor told my family, “You When we were seeking Orthodoxy in the hills of Tennessee, we tried to Looking for Worship<\/p>\n The American converts are not looking for some kind of post-Vatican You see, the people who want to worship, want to worship.<\/p>\n One of the trends in American journalism is to try to create newspapers for Also, the converts want their children to be Orthodox. They are looking for My wife is a librarian. With a librarian and journalism professor in the Now that may seem like a cruel thing to say. In many Orthodox churches The converts also want good preaching, since many come out of church I remember something that happened when my family was part of an ethnic Emotions are OK. Movement is OK. Beauty is OK. Humility before God is OK. Let me be blunt. Americans who visit an Orthodox church will judge the Americans will want to take part in the service. If they have mustered up Converts, Assimilation, and Unity<\/p>\n Truth is, I believe there is a link between this issue and that of America is all about assimilation. But I need to stress that Orthodox I believe that Orthodox Christians have divided into two different camps, It’s an interesting mix of what they’ve given up and what they’ve chosen As threatening as it sounds, our goal — if there is to be a united This will be painful. It will be hard, but it will also be joyful and The Convert-Friendly Church<\/p>\n Let me return to the issue of children. In my experience of Here is that hard truth again. If their children are to practice Orthodoxy, Let me stress that there is no such thing as a “convert church,” but there The worship in these churches will be in English, and the people — all the In conclusion, let me offer this parable.<\/p>\n I have a friend who wants to be Orthodox — more than anything. He has for For five years, he has been struggling. One year at Pascha, he witnessed My friend saw this and, trust me, this was not what he was looking for. He If there is to be unity in Orthodoxy in America, that unity will emerge out
\nBy Terry Mattingly<\/p>\n
\nbetween a Southern Baptist church and an Orthodox church. You can get some
\npretty good clues just by walking in the door and looking around. But there
\nare some similarities between the two that might be a little trickier to
\nspot. For instance, let me tell you about what life is like on Sunday
\nnights in a Southern Baptist congregation.<\/p>\n
\nthey did in the old days when I was growing up as a Southern Baptist
\npastor’s son. One of those times is on Sunday nights. Back in the early
\n1980s, I was active in a church in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in which the
\ntypical Sunday morning crowd would be about 200 to 300 people, which is
\nrather small for a Baptist church, but fairly normal for an Orthodox
\nparish. Then the crowd on Sunday night would be from 40 to 45 people.<\/p>\n
\nservices. But the similarities don’t stop there.
\n
\nBefore the age of 30, I became a deacon and the finance chairman of that
\nchurch — which, in the Southern Baptist way of doing things, meant that I
\nwas the only person, not excluding the pastor, who saw the annual pledge
\ncards. I was the only person in the congregation who knew who was giving
\nwhat.<\/p>\n
\noriginal sin, finance chairman is that role. What I discovered through that
\nexperience is that there is no connection whatsoever between how much a
\nfamily gives to the church and how much money that family makes. Instead, I
\nfound that the key connection is faithfulness in worship. If you attend the
\nSunday night service at a typical Baptist church and look around at the 40
\npeople there in comparison to the 200 or 300 in attendance on Sunday
\nmorning, you will find that about 80 percent of the church’s giving is
\naccounted for in that group.<\/p>\n
\nsimilar to that in Saturday evening Vespers services in an Orthodox church.
\nAs Bishop Antoun told me once, if you look at who attends Great Vespers and
\ncomes to confession, you are looking at about 80 percent of the service,
\nthe giving, and the energy in most parishes.<\/p>\n
\nwhy do they come? That’s where I would like to start as we consider this
\nquestion: What do the converts want?<\/p>\n
\nChristianity. They are coming because they want something on Sunday morning besides a rock band and a giant plasma TV screen. Converts are also fleeing from mainline Protestantism, which is in the midst of a three-decade statistical nosedive and demographic suicide.<\/p>\n
\nthat core 20 percent of their former churches. They are active, highly
\nmotivated people. They read, they think, they sing, and they serve. That
\nhunger for more, that hunger for sound doctrine, is sending them to
\nOrthodoxy.<\/p>\n
\napproach to the faith, but they are not fleeing the faith of the ages. They
\nare trying to get back to the trunk of the tree. All around them are
\nchurches that are either modern, postmodern, post-postmodern or
\npost-post-postmodern.<\/p>\n
\nthemselves premodern, since the modern world has not served up a wide array
\nof dependable answers. They are looking for beauty. They are looking for a
\nlife that can give them some degree of stability and peace, while helping
\nthem face the realities of the world around them. They want Orthodoxy. And
\nit is crucial to know that the converts want more Orthodoxy, not less. In
\nthe words of Frederica Mathewes-Green in Facing East, “In Orthodoxy less is
\nnever more. More is more.”<\/p>\n
\nLite.” They want more.<\/p>\n
\nadmit that many Orthodox will hear that question as, “What do the Americans
\nwant?”<\/p>\n
\nalready have your churches; why would you want to join ours?”<\/p>\n
\nattend the local Greek Orthodox parish — the only parish within a one- or
\ntwo-hour drive. When we called, they would — literally — not give us the
\ntimes of the services. We came to Orthodoxy in spite of them, not because
\nof them. We ended up starting a mission.<\/p>\n
\nII, carved-down liturgical experience. They have that all around them. They are not trying to cut the service down another 15 to 20 minutes so that more
\nyoung people will hang around — as if that would work. Speaking as a
\njournalist, I can tell you that the lively, growing Roman parishes are not
\nthe ones that have cut the Mass down to 45 minutes.<\/p>\n
\npeople who don’t read. This seems to me to be somewhat contradictory.
\nSimilarly, there are many churches that are creating worship services for
\npeople who do not want to go to worship services. The Orthodox converts are
\nnot interested in those churches.<\/p>\n
\nchurches that will offer their children a winsome, living faith that they
\nwill want to follow.<\/p>\n
\nhouse, we care a lot about reading. Researchers tell us that if parents
\nwant their children to read, the children must see the parents reading. The
\nparent reads to the child: this is the only way to hand down the love of
\nreading. The same is true with worship and faith.<\/p>\n
\nacross America, the average age of the parishioners is about the same as
\nthe average age of the people in mainline Protestant churches. Many
\nOrthodox churches are having trouble retaining their young people, so they
\nare seeking ways to stop the bleeding. But there’s the rub. If you are not
\ncreating new faith, you will not retain the children of those who had the
\nfaith in the first place. As the old saying goes, God has no grandchildren.
\nYou have to give the faith away.<\/p>\n
\ntraditions that place an incredible emphasis on preaching. This does not
\nmean pounding on pulpits, because no one is doing that anymore — not even
\nthe true fundamentalists. However, the converts do not believe that
\npreaching is the only sacrament, which is the rule in most of
\nevangelicalism. They want to worship with all of their senses. They want to
\nworship with their whole bodies.<\/p>\n
\nparish that had installed pews in the sanctuary. During Great Lent, the
\nnumber of people who came to church on Wednesday nights — for the Liturgy
\nof the Presanctified Gifts — was small, so we could stand in the front of
\nthe church. Freed from the pews, all sorts of Orthodox things started
\nhappening again. Prostrations returned. People were bowing, people were
\nworshiping with their whole bodies. It was a very moving experience.<\/p>\n
\nAnd more than anything else, participation in worship is more than OK — it
\nis essential.<\/p>\n
\nvitality of that congregation based on how many people sing and take part
\nin their worship. That is really unfair to many Orthodox who were raised to
\nstand in quiet holiness, but it’s the truth.<\/p>\n
\nthe courage to walk through the door of an Orthodox church in the first
\nplace, they’re not going to want to just sit or stand once they’re in
\nthere. They will feel left out, if there is no way for them to sing, if
\nthere is no way for them to take part in the service. The church will have
\njust sent them back out the door. Let me repeat: Americans will judge the
\nspiritual vitality of an Orthodox parish on whether or not the congregation
\nis reverently and enthusiastically singing, praying, and participating in
\nworship.<\/p>\n
\nOrthodox unity. To make my point, I need to use a dangerous word —
\n“assimilation.”<\/p>\n
\nbelievers face two different forms of assimilation. One asks them to
\nassimilate into America at the level of culture and language. The other
\ntempts them to assimilate on the level of doctrine and practice.<\/p>\n
\nwhether this choice is conscious or unconscious. In many parishes, we see
\npeople who are struggling to assimilate into American culture but don’t
\nknow what parts to accept. They are struggling to retain their language and
\nto some extent their art. But on the level of faith and practice, they have
\nalready assimilated and their children have as well. You walk into their
\nhomes and you see little or no iconography. Yet when you walk into their
\nchurch, they are not speaking English.<\/p>\n
\nto cling to. As an Orthodox priest of an ethnic parish once told me: “Most
\nof the members of my congregation have never been to confession in their
\nlives. They have no idea that this even exists as a part of our church.
\nThey see no connection between confession and the life of our parish and
\nthe sacramental reality of our parish.”<\/p>\n
\nOrthodoxy — is to be united in worship and sacramental practice. This
\nunity will blend gifts from across our great ethnic traditions. However, it
\nwill be a vital, growing Orthodoxy that at the congregational level can
\nwelcome Americans with open arms. It will make them feel strange, but it
\nwill be a place they can become a part of and even help change over time.
\nThis Orthodoxy will assimilate on the level of culture and language, but it
\nwill not assimilate to America at the level of practice, sacrament, and
\ndoctrine. It will not compromise on the essentials. It will not compromise
\non what unites Orthodoxy around the world and through the millennia. It
\nwill create a worthy expression of Orthodoxy that will, over time, be
\nunique to this culture.<\/p>\n
\nmiraculous. It must happen. This is, quite frankly, what the converts want.<\/p>\n
\nOrthodoxy, I have found nothing more poignant or more painful than talking to ethnic parents and grandparents whose children have left the faith. They can’t understand. They thought America was going to be a wonderful place. They thought America was going to be a place that would make them feel at home. They thought they were offering their children a better life. Now, in some sense, America has taken away their children.<\/p>\n
\nthey will have to believe it, they will have to want to practice it. The
\nfaith will have to be their own.<\/p>\n
\nare convert-friendly Orthodox churches. Even a church that is largely made
\nup of converts must, in the end, be a church that welcomes all Orthodox
\npeople. Meanwhile, there are ethnic parishes that are full of people who,
\nas Fr. Joseph Huneycutt on the Orthodixie weblog likes to call them, are
\n“reverts.” There are cradle Orthodox priests who are as on fire as any
\nconvert will be in their lifetimes. You see, this is not about ethnicity.
\nWe are not talking about the “convert era,” but a “convert-friendly era.”<\/p>\n
\npeople — will be singing. You will see lots of children, and chrismation
\nrites and adult baptisms will not be strange, mysterious events. The list
\nof their children who are headed off to church camp will be long. Some of
\nthese churches will have tight budgets, but they will be tight because they
\nare struggling to cope with growth, not decline. You will find people being
\ncalled to the priesthood, the diaconate, and other forms of service.<\/p>\n
\na number of years been visiting a nearby Orthodox church. But there’s a
\nproblem. You see, this friend also has business that takes him to Chicago,
\nand when he is there he worships at All Saints Orthodox Church, a vital,
\nconvert-friendly parish. He sees the Orthodox life there and he wants it
\nlike life itself. His problem is that he cannot find it where he lives.<\/p>\n
\nthis painful, sad scene. This service, of course, is the high point of the
\nChristian year. Yet, at the high point of that service, as a small choir
\nentered the sanctuary singing, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling
\ndown death by death,” the members of the congregation stood in silence —
\nwatching.<\/p>\n
\nwanted Orthodoxy, for himself and for his family. He wanted more, not less.
\nHe still does.<\/p>\n
\nof the sacramental life of the Church. We will sing unity into existence.
\nWe will pray unity into existence. We will confess unity into existence. It
\ncan happen no other way. We must live the faith and then give it away.<\/p>\n