What is a Mission?

By Priest Eric George Tosi

Chairman of the Department of Evangelization

In the 1790s a group of monks from Russia arrived on the Alaskan coast. They had been sent there by the Russian authorities to minister to the settlers. Upon arriving they decided to split up, each heading their own way. The spread throughout the region establishing communities. Some were killed, some left to go back and some settled in the villages. They preached the Gospel to the natives. They translated the scriptures and services. They cared for and educated the people. They protected them from outside influence and engaged the culture. The people responded to this love and churches were built. Whole communities were baptized and churches were built. Their legacy lived on long after they died.

Back in the 1920s, a young couple emigrated from a small village in Galacia. They were seeking a new life in America, a place where opportunity abounded and they can raise a family in peace and stability. They settled where they could find a job and where there were other people of their culture. They soon gathered together and decided that they needed a place where they could express their Faith. They were in a strange culture and the Church became a gathering place for them. It was a place where they found dignity and they could pass on their traditions to their children. The gathering grew and they found a small building to worship. Every so often a priest would pass through the town. While there he would serve the Liturgy, baptize the children and perform all the necessary services for these people. The people saved their money and put it towards a purchasing their own building. They bought some land and built a church, often relying on their own hands and skills. The community grew and they petitioned the bishop for a priest. After the priest arrived the community grew even larger. The people had their own church.

In the 1980s a group of protestant Americans began a search for the “True” faith. They found that the modern American religious experience had not filled their spiritual quest. They gathered together in small groups and studied the Scriptures. They read the history of the Church. They gathered in prayer and asked God to guide them. In their quest, they discovered the Orthodox Church. They made inquiries and contacted local Orthodox clergy. They attended the services and discovered that the roots of the Christian Faith. They remodeled their worship space and began to emulate the Orthodox services. Their journey twisted and turned. Some stayed and some left. But eventually they decided they had discovered the Church and en masse were received into the Orthodox Church.

What is common with all three? They all were missions and they are all part of the tapestry of the Orthodox Church in America. They all are a part of the ancient Faith. While these are simply three very common stories that could represent a host of parishes and missions in the North America, they are a powerful reminder of where we have come. In a sense, they all carried forth that same commission. All three stories represent the history of the Church in North America and specifically the history of the Orthodox Church in America.

Missions exist everywhere in North America now. It is hard to believe that there was a time when faithful Orthodox and those who were seeking the Faith could not immediately find a Church. Yet the reality is that so much of this continent has been filled in. That does not mean we are everywhere, because there is so much more to do. But it does mean that people can find the Church if they are seeking. The new media and demographics means that people have an access that can only be imagined twenty years ago. So the Orthodox Church has continued to remain faithful this mission throughout our entire history. All three of those examples represent a way in which the Church was established over the past 200 years.

So what is a “mission”? Believe it or not there is not set formula. It can range from a small struggling gathering of people to a large and established parish. All have the same common denominator...salvation. That is ultimately why we must plant missions, to save our souls, to preach the Gospel and to plant the Church. Whether it is a small community seeking the truth to a large parish reaching out to the surrounding community, they all bring people to salvation. This is the first criteria and must be the single most important focus of any community. Archbishop Anastasios Yannoulatos, one of the great modern missionaries, wrote, “mission implies a witness to the living Trinitarian God, who calls all to salvation and binds human beings together in the church, who otherwise would not belong to it or have lost their tie to it. This characteristic [reaching the non-believer - those unaware, indifferent or hostile to the Faith] distinguishes it from mere pastoral care, which is directed towards those already incorporated into the Church...Mission is ‘inward’ or ‘internal’, when it takes place within its geographical, linguistic and cultural bounds, and ‘outward’ or ‘external’ when it reaches beyond these bounds to other nations and lands.”

So there it is. A mission is salvation. It can reach inward to ourselves or outward to others. But the goal always remains salvation and truth. Each of those three examples above can fit into both of these categories. Each of these examples exemplify how a mission engages a person, a community and the world. If the Church ever loses sight of that single fact, at best it becomes a club and at worst...well we won’t go there. But the mission of “missions” (so to speak) is always to be focused on our souls. It is for salvation that God became Man, it is for salvation that Christ walked among His Creation. It is through salvation that the Church becomes relevant. As it says in Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all things shall be added unto you.”

So this is where we begin. The mission must be one that brings people to salvation. This should always be the first criteria and one which the Church in America should never lost sight. While those three examples may have a differing environment around them, a different history and even a different context, the simple fact is that they all where together because they knew (however intrensic and unspoken) that their souls depended upon it. A gathering of people who seek their salvation is tuly what ecclesia (Greek for ‘to come togther”) is about.

But there is another dimension to this gathering. Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, another of our great modern teachers, wrote, “Mission is one of those words much used and much abused today in America....On the one hand every Christian is called to be a missionary. Every Christian is sent....My being a missionary can be understood in a threefold way. In the first place I am sent to myself....In the second place I am sent to others...And finally, I am sent a s a missionary to the world....It is indeed the eternal problem for each Christian individually and for every Christian generation to find their modality of mission- the way God wants them to fulfill their missionary calling.”

So again, we are all called to be missionaries and all churches are missionary by our very nature. As Fr. Alexander states, a mission is not only to oneself (though firstly), it is also to be sent to others and the world. A mission cannot be a mission when it is “hidden”. It cannot reach out and engage. But how this engagement happens is critical. To be a missionary is not simply to be “good samartin” (though this examplifies the love that all Christain should exhibit) not is it to be on a box in the corner of street quoting verses. But rather it is to system so to speak. In all three examples, a system was followed, the Church was established. Not just a community but a Church. And a Church implies all that comes through it and from it. A mission reaches outward through the Church.

We know this, our Church has a structure, a hierarchy and a tradition. We must always remain faithful to this which has been handed down to us. This enables us to be the “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” It prevents us from simply being “out there” and enables us to be “sent” or truly apostolic. So we must always flee to this refuge when encountering the world for it is only in here that we find sanity, truth and love in its fullness. It is very easy today in “post-modern” and “decontructionalist” world to simply disregard the methods and institutions. Yet these are the very reasons that the Church survived and thrived for over 2000 years in radically different cultures and environments. This is exactly why all three of those models survived and flourished. When St. Innocent gave instructions to missionaries he stated, “The dogmas of the faith and the substance of the actual doctrine should be kept to so strictly as not to allow anything contrary to them in word or deed, though in the face of death itself. But some allowances should be made for new converts, as regards to certain imperfections in the rites, partly in consideration of local conditions, partly in expectation of their growing firmer in faith and the new mode of life.” In other words, hold fast to the Faith which is has been handed down and present it as such, understanding that context may change....but the message is the same.

So here we are again, what is a mission? Well as we have learned, it is the engagement to oneself and society. It is the respect and adherence to our structure and tradition. It is also one more thing...it is activity. All of the three examples did not show a passive approach to faith but rather a real active search for the Truth. They gathered, they built, they prayed, they engaged. The missions sought to build upon the foundations that were giving to them (wherever that might have been...the ‘old country’ and the ‘new world’). The planned, they struggled, they grew, they had good years and bad years. But in the end the mission succeeded because God wanted a Church there. God had planted the vine and we nurtured it. Mission is just that, a nurturing. Anyone who knows gardening knows that the planting must be planned, the soil must be right, the plant must match the conditions, there must be watering and feeding, pruning and caring. All of this is required to get the vine to produce fruit. Missions need that same care, love and attention so that through us cooperating in a synergy with God’s Divine Plan, a mission is planted, nurtured and grown to bloom.

Many of us can think back to the struggles in our own missions and parishes. We hear the stories, we remember the struggles and we remember the joy. This is part of our corporate history as the Orthodox Church in America. But we can also look back and say, what a glorious journey. Our missions are all on that glorious journey. In some ways they are easier today, resources are more available and the Church is so much more established to assist missions. Yet the missions all have new struggles and challenges from both within and without. The success of a mission is directly proportional to how each Christian, each mission/parish, in fact the entire Church engages these struggles. Its activity towards them will ensure that the Church does not become a “relic” (though that has a bad connotation) but rather the Church. It requires all of our participation in not only our own salvation but the salvation of the world.

So again to answer the questions...what is a mission? A mission is vehicle for salvation, an community that engages oneself and society, and a carrier of activity. All there are to be found in every growing prospering parish in the Orthodox Church in America. All three are the indicators of the path. All three have been present in the Church since Pentecost.

So is your parish a mission? Does it meet the criteria? Does it hid its light under a bushel or is it a light on the hill? In the ideal, the answer is yes. Our mission to North America demands nothing less.