Mission in the Orthodox Church

Editor’s note: The following post arises from small group reflections from The Rise of Global Christianity, 1910–2010, taught by Dr. Todd Johnson at Boston University in the Fall of 2010. Led by doctoral students, the small groups discussed lectures given by Christian scholars in various disciplines, including significant changes that have occurred in global Christianity over the past 100 years.

On October 13th, Father Luke lectured on the brief history of Orthodox Church, focusing on what happened to the Orthodox Church in the last 100 years. He pointed out that people are very ignorant about the mission work of Eastern Orthodox, although long before the Protestant missionaries began their mission works, Eastern Orthodox missionaries were engaged in mission work including translating the Bible while respecting the indigenous culture. In his lecture, he explained the characteristics of Orthodox community under the rule of communism and the recent spiritual renewal of Orthodox mission work.

After the lecture, our group members got together and shared their reflections on the lecture. Initial reaction of most members was that they were surprised about the emphasis on missions in the Orthodox churches. But one student wanted to know what is the main message being emphasized in the Orthodox Church’s mission work. He claimed that when we serve as missionaries, we had better focus more on Jesus Christ over denominational differences. In his thought, this will help us unify as the body of Christ, rather than emphasizing the differences that often get elaborated. Our discussion moved on to the issue of denominational competitions in the mission field and agreed on that we should not give priority to denominational logics over Jesus Christ. Another student said that the call to attend an Orthodox church to learn history moved him to appreciate and strive to understand the wider perspectives of Christianity beyond our own context as Protestants or Catholics. We all agreed that it is not beneficial to have knowledge of only one side of the coin. And one student pointed out that as western Christians have much to learn about the Orthodox Church, orthodox Christians also have much to learn about western Christians. The other student said that Orthodox churches seem to have a greater emphasis on mysticism and, in his thought, monastic life also has an emphasis on creation and connecting with creation.

After sharing our reflections, our conversation turned to the ethnic characteristic of Orthodox Church after one student asked “Does a church with one ethnicity (ie. Russian orthodox, Greek orthodox) have a greater challenge in its perspective of world missions?” This question was a much thought provoking one, but due to the lack of time we could not have enough discussion time for that issue.

Hye Jin Lee, discussion moderator