Going to church Athenian-style

Our local Greek Orthodox church with our local Joel Clark on front steps

The walk to Joel and Hannah’s school takes us past the local Greek Orthodox Church, Αγίας θεράποντας or Ayias Therapondas (this is the best thing I can find quickly for those who, like me, want to know a bit about the geezers who get the privilege of having churches named after them! Read with a pinch of salt or three).

It was a peaceful and relaxed morning and I was ahead of schedule so I popped in to the building for the first time in a while. There were a couple of priests doing their thing at the front, behind the ornate iconostasis, and perhaps 30 worshippers: 20 or so mostly women sitting or kneeling in the pews and the rest, mostly men, loitering at the back (like me). At the same time as I went in one of the mums from school came in, bought a 10c candle, lit it and left, all in the space of 30 seconds.

I went back to take this picture later when the service wasn't on

Two things struck me. The first was how very clearly it was a service. I have deliberately stopped calling our church meetings services. This is a religious word, or a civic word, not a gospel word – when we gather at church we do not partake of a service. Services are things done for us, like meals on wheels, or Watford Gap, or the NHS – good things, or at least necessary, but not really much to do with hearing God speak as a family, communion with Christ, mutual encouragement and an expression of sacrificial love.

This morning’s observations however were of a service: the priests stood with their backs turned to the congregation, who played no part whatsoever other than to kneel at the appropriate point and perhaps listen. They recited old Greek – quite relaxing to listen to, and at times even intelligible (λάβετε, φάγετε which is ‘take, eat’) – and would have carried on if no one had been in the building. This is a far cry from the one anotherness of New Testament spirituality. When I think about this kind of service, it does seem a little like the kind of service that councils provide. As long as it’s happening everything is OK, but we don’t need to participate in the delivery of it. I’m not saying that is what it’s about, but it does seem so to me as an outsider.

The second thing that struck me is that these services are being delivered daily in thousands of similar settings across the entire Orthodox world. Even though there are only a handful of ‘faithful’ in each service, that’s a fair number of Greeks coming into contact with some kind of words about Jesus. We are led to understand that very, very few Orthodox people have what you might call a living faith, a real, personal trust in Christ and his saving work on the cross. Only God knows the faith or otherwise of any person, and so our speculation is pretty useless. However, while there is little evidence from the way people live to suggest there are many followers of Jesus here, there must at least be a fair amount of spiritual hunger and questioning among these scattered groups.

Though our ministry is with students, few of whom voluntarily darken the doors of (the already gloomy) church buildings here, we would love to get more involved in the home and church lives of those around us in the neighbourhood.