Tuesday, October 27, 2009

A Missions-minded Orthodox Church?

You can find them every now and then: the Antiochians in the USA are one example--though mostly they are converting Christians to Christianity (something I don't find terribly impressive). But there is also the Orthodox Church in Indonesia, whose senior priest is himself a former Muslim. (Who converted to evangelical Christianity and only later became Orthodox.) Here is their website, I recommend their newsletter which has some nice pictures. It makes me glad to see that there are places where Orthodoxy is still out planting churches and catechizing and evangelizing non-Christians.

Friends of Indonesia

2 comments:

Unknown said...

A little hard on us, don't you think?

Abu Daoud said...

David, you think I'm being hard on the Orthodox? Maybe it's my context in the Middle East. Here so many of the Orthodox are (in practice) atheists.

Example: in my city the Orthodox church has the most 'members' but if you look at people going to church to worship, you will find more Baptists (a very tiny group officially) than Orthodox in church. Also, here you will find schools belonging to Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, and Melkites. But the biggest church? The Orthodox? Nothing. Very sad to see Orthodoxy in the Middle East. It is in drastic decline. And I love Orthdoxy, so I'm not speaking out of bitterness or anger here. Just from my own experience and what I've seen.