If this comment causes too much friction I'll delete it if you don't do it first. I have been observing some things lately in my own parish and am trying to wrap my brain around the problem and see if anything can be done. I'm a convert, and I've been orthodox about 5 years now. My family joined the church because we really needed Jesus, and He led a priest and his wife to reach out a hand to us. That said, I understand that I have no authority to stand on in making this comment but I'm going to do it anyway.
What I've observed, both in seeing new people flood into the Church recently AND in my own journey to being a member of the church (which I never was growing up, by the way, not in ANY church), is that any attempts at piety are laughed at, scorned, and called "convertitis" by the initiated, by those who grew up in the church, or those converted so long ago that they may as well be cradle Orthodox. I've even heard it from clergy. Oh, she's wearing a long skirt and headscarf? How culty! Must be one of THOSE people. Why can't she just be like the rest of us? Fasting? Evening prayers? Who actually does that? That's cute, give it a few years and we'll see. Or, God forbid, you kindly ask someone to stop talking during the readings of the scripture, your convertitis is showing.
I've seen grown adults who have been Orthodox their entire lives actively distracting infant and toddler children who were being perfectly quiet before from the reading of the Gospel by talking to them! Those are formative experiences that are going to shape the way that child interacts with the church, and what you're teaching them right now is that they are more important than the very Gospel, the proclamation that Christ Jesus has defeated death! So if that's the case, of course they're going to think it's unimportant. They're going to think church is a social club, that it's all about them - and once they get older, they're going to find a better social club with less rules. Especially if you subscribe to the "prayer and fasting is for converts" and effectively divide your life between "Christianity for a few hours most Sundays" and "The real world" which is driven by secular desire for wealth, power and pleasure.
There's a serious disconnect somewhere that's causing this. My reason for wanting to be in church and to hear the Gospel and attend weekday service has nothing to do with Rad-Trad behavior - in fact, I find that particular subculture quite irritating but try not to judge - and has everything to do with remembering life before the church. My whole family, including my teenage daughter, remembers very clearly how a house blessing and nightly prayer changed our lives, saved us from despair, and we don't want to go back to that. But we also don't appreciate being treated like we're taking the Faith "too seriously." Yes, my family attends most of the services our parish offers, we try to keep the fasts, and yes, my daughter and I wear head scarves and long skirts in church. Why? Because the priest who drove 3½ hours to bless the home of some semi-pagan miscreants told us that, if we wanted to try to keep faith, we should pray every morning and every night, attend church as much as possible, and that ladies (and men, frankly) were expected to dress a certain way in a house of prayer as part of an effort to reorient oneself toward prayer and worship. And this priest was Russian, so yes, headscarves. So, we listened to him.
All of this is to say that if youth ministry isn't focused on educating young people about our beautiful theology, the reasons we do what we do, WHY we're expected to behave and dress certain ways, and does not encourage prayer, fasting, and mindfulness, and doesn't focus on all of the absolute treasure we inherit from our faith, in terms they can understand - of course they're going to leave the church. We've given them no reason to stay, and certainly haven't directed them to Christ. We can't align our lives with the secular garbage being tossed at us in every direction and expect children to see any value in attending church. We really have to try to live as Christians outside of 2 hours on Sunday and really talk to our kids about God. We have to lovingly and kindly have expectations of them, and we have to lovingly and kindly help them live up to those expectations, and help them up when they fall, just like the rest of us. We can't let the world dictate our schedules and our motives and then cry that our kids are rebelling against the church as soon as we let them out of our sight. We can't sit there talking to them during the Gospel reading of they're sitting there quietly engaging with it the way only children do. We also can't expect them to be perfect little youth club robots. We have to somehow get past our own sinfulness and failure, and bring them to God.
This is part of the repentance that those of us who grew up in the Church need to reckon with. Do we believe what we say we believe? Have we committed ourselves to Christ?
Thanks Steve :) Those of us coming from outside, particularly older kids, truly have an unfair advantage (not that there should be any kind of "cradle vs convert" dynamic, but unfortunately, it does exist). Convert kids often end up learning about the faith with their parents, and that alone often gives them at least little more motivation to stay in the church or understanding of what and why. On a large scale, I can't figure out what we're doing wrong. As an adult orthodox Christian, I'm part of the problem. Can we in the church really teach kids anything that might replace or at least help where there might be deficiency in the home? All homes have deficiencies, nobody is perfect. What about people like me who have tons to share from their own failures and experiences, (someday with a priest's blessing) but are simply lousy teachers?
I've noticed convert kids, sometimes PKs, and kids who regularly serve or sing/chant (in their native language) tend to absorb a lot - but that simply doesn't describe most people. What can we do? What can I do? It's been on my mind for a year or 2 now as I'm seeing more children born and being raised in the Church. My parish is a small community, but in my travels within the USA I've been seeing the same things, regardless of the archdiocese or community size. Perhaps I ought to practice what I preach and pray 🙏
I’m a parent too, and it is on my mind constantly. How do I show them that all this is real? That the God who made the stars made them too and taught us how to love and worship Him, that the ‘rules’ are there to help us draw near to Him, that everything has meaning and every person we meet is an immortal, as CS Lewis put it.
I want to raise saints but that means striving to be one, which is…frankly hard. Far easier to just make a baby laugh in church and call it good enough.
This all makes so much sense. I want to suggest however an over-emphasis on the institutionalization of young people as the core problem. And this is simply because all the programs you talk about that Catherine participated in - that mountain of ministry stuff - is not present in many many parishes. Bigger parishes have those things to offer, most small - medium sized parishes have some to none of that to offer. But the young people in those parishes are becoming disenchanted or disengaged just the same. I don’t believe the core of the problem can be categorized as institutionalization across the board because that isn’t the experience of many (I almost want to say most based on my own experience) young people. Those young people never felt a part of ANY group other than the community itself and are equally disconnected. However the solutions, as you suggest, lie below all that, at the point where we’ve failed to help them develop their true, real relationship with Christ and find their true, real place in the Body of Christ. That is where we’re missing the mark whether they’ve had the opportunity to participate in youth groups and learn from formal church school curricula or not.
This is a great point. Last year, I gave some presentations to a diocese in the OCA. Basically all the clergy said what you're saying: we don't have an abundance of programs but are nonetheless "institutionalizing" kids into something that isn't the Church.
You might be interested in a course I put together a few years ago that really gets into this:
It seems that we are failing to describe the church as the Church to young people. So their connection is to the community and not to God. I have done a lot of thinking on the fact that many young people are not even encouraged to look for a parish when they leave for college or move away. Are we making that part of college visits, for example. Just thinking out loud
Maybe because being a part of the Church (in a deep sense) isn't on our radar. Or part of what we see as the "good life" we're raising young people to pursue.
Good analysis and a little scary. I just read where Saint Porphyrios said to stop praising children but rather encourage them to ask God for His help in using their talents successfully. I daresay prayer is where our relationship with God and His saints is really activated. And, after all, who is better equipped to pray his way through the day than an Orthodox Christian with the Jesus Prayer?
Reading these words is like looking in a mirror that describes to a T how we were raised, and raised
our children, doing all the "right things" without realizing all along that we didn't "know Christ", not in the way that He wants us to be, icons in His Image.
This hit home for me when I heard a priest this past winter say that he asked his Sunday school kids what Christmas is all about, and they had to be prompted to answer "Jesus." Your article here adds another level of conviction and I like the simple question to evaluate what we do. "Does this make sense without Christ?" Thanks, Steve.
Outstanding article, Steve! Remembering my Catholic childhood, I can tell you that *kids won't ask.* I was aching for our teachers to tell us anything about Christ. They always stopped short. It's a brave, brave 13 year old who raises her hand, in front of whole group, to say, "Tell us about Jesus." Not me! I doubt my teachers would have known what to say. But I, since I was 10, *wanted to know*!
So much to say and so little space. I encountered what you described with myself and both of my kids. I nodded through your entire blog. I submit, however, that our problem is not unique to us. It is evident throughout the West because we separate our faith from our lives, we work in a secular material world, and "God talk" is suspicious because it is often hijacked with monetary and political motivations. Also, though I understand you disagree with the three statements you made in your intro, I would submit something you did not mention: Orthodoxy is incompatible in a legally secular nation-state such as anywhere west of Greece/Bulgaria/Romania. Despite the brave talk of converts and seekers, the phyletism of the Orthodox churches and their inability to compete with Protestants or even Catholics like the Jesuits, destroys whatever chance of placing a permanent foundation.
In seriousness though, as an almost lifelong participant in everything Steve talked about here, and also as someone who only recently began opening my eyes to some of these real issues and very painfully addressing the shortcomings in my own catechism and spiritual life, reading this gives me a lot of hope because I do think that one of the first issues here is an issue of ignorance. Those of us who fit this description, we all need to be made aware of our incorrect framework and we need to have this philosophy or framework or worldview, whatever we will call it, quickly corrected, so things can start making sense. I was a secular materialist and I had no idea. I thought I had the phronema of the Church. I was raised in the Church. I was serious. I have a theology degree from an Orthodox school. But I needed to have my wrong framework corrected. I am a work in progress but that single thing being pointed out and worked on was like finding the chink in the armor. The old man has a chance to die now, so he can live.
If this comment causes too much friction I'll delete it if you don't do it first. I have been observing some things lately in my own parish and am trying to wrap my brain around the problem and see if anything can be done. I'm a convert, and I've been orthodox about 5 years now. My family joined the church because we really needed Jesus, and He led a priest and his wife to reach out a hand to us. That said, I understand that I have no authority to stand on in making this comment but I'm going to do it anyway.
What I've observed, both in seeing new people flood into the Church recently AND in my own journey to being a member of the church (which I never was growing up, by the way, not in ANY church), is that any attempts at piety are laughed at, scorned, and called "convertitis" by the initiated, by those who grew up in the church, or those converted so long ago that they may as well be cradle Orthodox. I've even heard it from clergy. Oh, she's wearing a long skirt and headscarf? How culty! Must be one of THOSE people. Why can't she just be like the rest of us? Fasting? Evening prayers? Who actually does that? That's cute, give it a few years and we'll see. Or, God forbid, you kindly ask someone to stop talking during the readings of the scripture, your convertitis is showing.
I've seen grown adults who have been Orthodox their entire lives actively distracting infant and toddler children who were being perfectly quiet before from the reading of the Gospel by talking to them! Those are formative experiences that are going to shape the way that child interacts with the church, and what you're teaching them right now is that they are more important than the very Gospel, the proclamation that Christ Jesus has defeated death! So if that's the case, of course they're going to think it's unimportant. They're going to think church is a social club, that it's all about them - and once they get older, they're going to find a better social club with less rules. Especially if you subscribe to the "prayer and fasting is for converts" and effectively divide your life between "Christianity for a few hours most Sundays" and "The real world" which is driven by secular desire for wealth, power and pleasure.
There's a serious disconnect somewhere that's causing this. My reason for wanting to be in church and to hear the Gospel and attend weekday service has nothing to do with Rad-Trad behavior - in fact, I find that particular subculture quite irritating but try not to judge - and has everything to do with remembering life before the church. My whole family, including my teenage daughter, remembers very clearly how a house blessing and nightly prayer changed our lives, saved us from despair, and we don't want to go back to that. But we also don't appreciate being treated like we're taking the Faith "too seriously." Yes, my family attends most of the services our parish offers, we try to keep the fasts, and yes, my daughter and I wear head scarves and long skirts in church. Why? Because the priest who drove 3½ hours to bless the home of some semi-pagan miscreants told us that, if we wanted to try to keep faith, we should pray every morning and every night, attend church as much as possible, and that ladies (and men, frankly) were expected to dress a certain way in a house of prayer as part of an effort to reorient oneself toward prayer and worship. And this priest was Russian, so yes, headscarves. So, we listened to him.
All of this is to say that if youth ministry isn't focused on educating young people about our beautiful theology, the reasons we do what we do, WHY we're expected to behave and dress certain ways, and does not encourage prayer, fasting, and mindfulness, and doesn't focus on all of the absolute treasure we inherit from our faith, in terms they can understand - of course they're going to leave the church. We've given them no reason to stay, and certainly haven't directed them to Christ. We can't align our lives with the secular garbage being tossed at us in every direction and expect children to see any value in attending church. We really have to try to live as Christians outside of 2 hours on Sunday and really talk to our kids about God. We have to lovingly and kindly have expectations of them, and we have to lovingly and kindly help them live up to those expectations, and help them up when they fall, just like the rest of us. We can't let the world dictate our schedules and our motives and then cry that our kids are rebelling against the church as soon as we let them out of our sight. We can't sit there talking to them during the Gospel reading of they're sitting there quietly engaging with it the way only children do. We also can't expect them to be perfect little youth club robots. We have to somehow get past our own sinfulness and failure, and bring them to God.
May God help us all.
This is a good and thoughtful comment, thank you!
This is part of the repentance that those of us who grew up in the Church need to reckon with. Do we believe what we say we believe? Have we committed ourselves to Christ?
Or is this just a club?
Thanks Steve :) Those of us coming from outside, particularly older kids, truly have an unfair advantage (not that there should be any kind of "cradle vs convert" dynamic, but unfortunately, it does exist). Convert kids often end up learning about the faith with their parents, and that alone often gives them at least little more motivation to stay in the church or understanding of what and why. On a large scale, I can't figure out what we're doing wrong. As an adult orthodox Christian, I'm part of the problem. Can we in the church really teach kids anything that might replace or at least help where there might be deficiency in the home? All homes have deficiencies, nobody is perfect. What about people like me who have tons to share from their own failures and experiences, (someday with a priest's blessing) but are simply lousy teachers?
I've noticed convert kids, sometimes PKs, and kids who regularly serve or sing/chant (in their native language) tend to absorb a lot - but that simply doesn't describe most people. What can we do? What can I do? It's been on my mind for a year or 2 now as I'm seeing more children born and being raised in the Church. My parish is a small community, but in my travels within the USA I've been seeing the same things, regardless of the archdiocese or community size. Perhaps I ought to practice what I preach and pray 🙏
I’m a parent too, and it is on my mind constantly. How do I show them that all this is real? That the God who made the stars made them too and taught us how to love and worship Him, that the ‘rules’ are there to help us draw near to Him, that everything has meaning and every person we meet is an immortal, as CS Lewis put it.
I want to raise saints but that means striving to be one, which is…frankly hard. Far easier to just make a baby laugh in church and call it good enough.
This all makes so much sense. I want to suggest however an over-emphasis on the institutionalization of young people as the core problem. And this is simply because all the programs you talk about that Catherine participated in - that mountain of ministry stuff - is not present in many many parishes. Bigger parishes have those things to offer, most small - medium sized parishes have some to none of that to offer. But the young people in those parishes are becoming disenchanted or disengaged just the same. I don’t believe the core of the problem can be categorized as institutionalization across the board because that isn’t the experience of many (I almost want to say most based on my own experience) young people. Those young people never felt a part of ANY group other than the community itself and are equally disconnected. However the solutions, as you suggest, lie below all that, at the point where we’ve failed to help them develop their true, real relationship with Christ and find their true, real place in the Body of Christ. That is where we’re missing the mark whether they’ve had the opportunity to participate in youth groups and learn from formal church school curricula or not.
This is a great point. Last year, I gave some presentations to a diocese in the OCA. Basically all the clergy said what you're saying: we don't have an abundance of programs but are nonetheless "institutionalizing" kids into something that isn't the Church.
You might be interested in a course I put together a few years ago that really gets into this:
https://effectivechristianministry.org
Thank you - I've taken the course :)
It seems that we are failing to describe the church as the Church to young people. So their connection is to the community and not to God. I have done a lot of thinking on the fact that many young people are not even encouraged to look for a parish when they leave for college or move away. Are we making that part of college visits, for example. Just thinking out loud
Good question!
Maybe because being a part of the Church (in a deep sense) isn't on our radar. Or part of what we see as the "good life" we're raising young people to pursue.
Good analysis and a little scary. I just read where Saint Porphyrios said to stop praising children but rather encourage them to ask God for His help in using their talents successfully. I daresay prayer is where our relationship with God and His saints is really activated. And, after all, who is better equipped to pray his way through the day than an Orthodox Christian with the Jesus Prayer?
True!
Yet have we internalized a sense that God isn't there? So we don't reach out to Him throughout the day.
Reading these words is like looking in a mirror that describes to a T how we were raised, and raised
our children, doing all the "right things" without realizing all along that we didn't "know Christ", not in the way that He wants us to be, icons in His Image.
Ouch. Well said, Rosa!
This hit home for me when I heard a priest this past winter say that he asked his Sunday school kids what Christmas is all about, and they had to be prompted to answer "Jesus." Your article here adds another level of conviction and I like the simple question to evaluate what we do. "Does this make sense without Christ?" Thanks, Steve.
I'm glad it was a helpful read, Fr David!
Great message, Steve. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for reading, Ben!
Outstanding article, Steve! Remembering my Catholic childhood, I can tell you that *kids won't ask.* I was aching for our teachers to tell us anything about Christ. They always stopped short. It's a brave, brave 13 year old who raises her hand, in front of whole group, to say, "Tell us about Jesus." Not me! I doubt my teachers would have known what to say. But I, since I was 10, *wanted to know*!
So much to say and so little space. I encountered what you described with myself and both of my kids. I nodded through your entire blog. I submit, however, that our problem is not unique to us. It is evident throughout the West because we separate our faith from our lives, we work in a secular material world, and "God talk" is suspicious because it is often hijacked with monetary and political motivations. Also, though I understand you disagree with the three statements you made in your intro, I would submit something you did not mention: Orthodoxy is incompatible in a legally secular nation-state such as anywhere west of Greece/Bulgaria/Romania. Despite the brave talk of converts and seekers, the phyletism of the Orthodox churches and their inability to compete with Protestants or even Catholics like the Jesuits, destroys whatever chance of placing a permanent foundation.
It's okay, we will live in tents then ;)
In seriousness though, as an almost lifelong participant in everything Steve talked about here, and also as someone who only recently began opening my eyes to some of these real issues and very painfully addressing the shortcomings in my own catechism and spiritual life, reading this gives me a lot of hope because I do think that one of the first issues here is an issue of ignorance. Those of us who fit this description, we all need to be made aware of our incorrect framework and we need to have this philosophy or framework or worldview, whatever we will call it, quickly corrected, so things can start making sense. I was a secular materialist and I had no idea. I thought I had the phronema of the Church. I was raised in the Church. I was serious. I have a theology degree from an Orthodox school. But I needed to have my wrong framework corrected. I am a work in progress but that single thing being pointed out and worked on was like finding the chink in the armor. The old man has a chance to die now, so he can live.
Thanks for writing, Steve.
"It's ok, we will live in tents then."
I love that! Well said.